What Happened With Cole Ragans On Opening Day?

It was not an Opening Day to remember for the Kansas City Royals. They lost 6-0 to the Atlanta Braves at Truist Field in Atlanta. The offense was punchless. They not only scored zero runs but also had just five hits, all singles. 

However, one of the bigger disappointments of Friday's Opening Day loss was Cole Ragans, the Royals ace who was making his third-straight Opening Day start for Kansas City.

In four innings of work and on 90 pitches, the lefty allowed four runs on six hits and four walks. While he struck out five Royals batters, he also gave up seven hard hits and three home runs. It certainly wasn't the kind of start Ragans wanted to begin 2026, especially after a 2025 campaign in which he posted a 4.67 ERA and only pitched 61.2 IP due to injury.

Thus, what takeaways can Royals fans have from Ragans' Opening Day start? Is it something to panic about, or is it just a blip on the radar for Ragans, similar to Pittsburgh's Paul Skenes and San Diego's Nick Pivetta, who both had brutal Opening Day outings as well?

Let's take a look at three things that stuck out from Ragans' start on Friday.

Ragans Struggled With Finding the Zone

When looking at Ragans' TJ Stats summary from his first outing of the season, he had some positives and negatives (though Royals fans will certainly focus on the negatives). Below is his summary from TJ Stats. 

In terms of the positives, Ragans still did an excellent job of generating whiff, as evidenced by his 31.7% whiff rate. He was also average in terms of generating chase, especially with his slider. His primary breaking pitch had a 43.8% chase rate and a 36.4% whiff rate. Lastly, his overall TJ Stuff+ was solid at 101, with his four-seamer, slider, and changeup all sporting grades of 50 or above. 

That said, his command was just not sharp against Atlanta.

Ragans had a 34.4% zone rate, with two of his pitches having zone rates under 25% (slider and knuckle curve). His four-seamer, his most thrown pitch at 50%, had a 35.6% zone rate. The lackluster zone rates with the four-seamer and slider also correlated with poor xwOBACON marks on those pitches. He gave up a .569 xwOBACON on the four-seamer and a .668 xwOBACON on the slider.

When looking at his pitch chart from Friday's game, Ragans did a good job of keeping the ball out of the middle-middle part of the strike zone. However, he missed badly in a lot of areas, and as a result, Braves hitters became more selective as the game progressed.

The breaking stuff was particularly tough for Ragans to control. He missed a lot with his slider and knuckle curve low in the zone, as evidenced by all the yellow and blue dots around the shins and feet of the batters. Thus, it's not a surprise that his zone rates were so poor on his slider and knuckle curve on Friday night.

Overall, the CSW wasn't bad at 27%, but the walks were still brutal, and his spotty command also resulted in some balls left in the zone that Braves hitters took advantage of. Ragans gave up three bombs, and here's the location of Ragans' pitches that Braves hitters went yard on. 

Honestly, those are major mistake pitches by Ragans. The most egregious command blunder was that changeup up in the zone, which Ozzie Albies absolutely teed off on for the first run of the game.

It's one thing for Ragans to give up the free passes due to walks. Conversely, it's another thing when he's serving balls up in highly hittable areas because he isn't able to locate pitches effectively.

Safe to say, it is a start that Ragans is ready to move on from (and quickly). 

Footing Issues With the Four-Seamer?

Early in the game, Ragans seemed to lose his footing on the mound, nearly falling over after pitching the ball. The scene looked similar to what happened in Toronto a few seasons ago, when Ragans fell over on his follow-through and struggled to get his control back together for the remainder of the outing.

Granted, Ragans didn't have quite the meltdown in Atlanta like he did North of the Border. That said, it seemed like his four-seamer was being thrown much differently in the second half of his outing (innings 3 and 4) than in the first half (innings 1 and 2). 

The 28-year-old Royals ace did a good job of peppering the four-seamer on the edges. However, he didn't locate the four-seamer as consistently up in the zone as he typically does. Ragans seemed to live more down in the zone with the four-seamer, especially later into his outing.

Here's a look at his four-seamer pitch chart from the fourth inning of Friday's game.

Ragans has only one pitch that's up and clips the edge of the strike zone, which is where a pitcher wants to be with a four-seamer of Ragans' profile. He either missed badly or stayed around the middle to lower edges of the strike zone.

A key correlation with his atypical four-seamer location in the fourth inning is that Ragans' velocity dipped considerably in the fourth inning. He averaged 93.7 MPH in that inning. In the third, he was also down to 93.9 MPH. For comparison, he averaged 95.8 MPH in the first and 94.6 MPH in the second. Furthermore, this is what his four-seamer pitch chart looked like in the first inning.

Ragans still missed up in the first inning, but he was also hitting the edges better and painting those edges up in the zone with his four-seamer. That wasn't happening later in the game. It could be that Ragans didn't have a good feel for his pitch. Thus, he was sacrificing velocity for control, something he has done in the past when he's not having a good feel for the four-seamer. 

The mound conditions could've contributed to that four-seamer's velocity and effectiveness. For a pitcher with mechanics like Ragans, being off in the slightest can throw everything off in a dramatic way. It's been an issue before for Ragans in the past, and it seemed like that problem reared its ugly head on Friday night.

As the "ace" of this rotation, Ragans needs to make adjustments and find ways to get batters out when he isn't getting chases and whiffs or having great feel on his four-seamer. 

Ragans' Home Run Issues (Can More Cutter Usage Help?)

Ragans gave up three home runs and allowed an xwOBACON of .495. Of course, a 60% HR/FB rate, as was the case on Friday, is not sustainable in the long term. Eventual flyball regression will help Ragans' overall line.

That said, we have been seeing a concerning trend with Ragans on the long ball since the start of 2025.

In 2023, he had an HR/FB rate of 5.2% in 71.2 IP with the Royals after coming over from Texas in a mid-season trade. In 2024, the HR/FB rate increased to 8.1%, 186.1 IP. Last season, his HR/FB rate was 12.3% in 61.2 IP. Thus, Ragans experienced a 7.1% increase in HR/FB rate from 2023 to 2025.

Furthermore, as the HR/FB rate went up, Ragans' groundball rate (GB%) trended downward. With the Royals in 2023, he had a 45.5% GB%. In 2024, his GB% decreased to 40.7%. Last year, his GB% was 36.8%. While his HR/FB rate saw a dramatic spike over a three-year period, his GB% experienced a sharp dip over the same timespan, with his GB% dropping nearly 10 percent from his Royals debut.

An issue with Ragans is that he often sells out for the strikeout. When he doesn't get them, it leads to either walks or mistakes in the strike zone that are barreled, often for home runs. While his strikeout rates were 29.3% in 2024 and 38.1% in 2025, his barrel rate allowed went from 6.2% to 9.5%. Thus, that seems to prove the point that when Ragans isn't getting whiffs, he's allowing way too much hard contact and, as a result, more bombs.

Ragans needs to generate more groundballs, and a tweak in repertoire could help him do that. As Royals Data Dugout pointed out in our chat during the KCSN Royals Postgame show, an increase in cutter usage could be the solution.

The Royals ace leaned on his cutter as a groundball-generating pitch in the past, especially in 2024, when it produced a 53.2% GB%, the highest among his arsenal. However, that cutter GB% dipped dramatically in 2025, and he seemed to utilize the slider and knuckle curve to generate more groundballs. 

Now, it's a chicken-or-egg kind of deal with the cutter. Did the cutter truly become less effective at generating groundballs in 2025? Or was he simply throwing it less, which resulted in less contact in general because of that decrease in usage? Ragans only threw the cutter 4.3% last year, a career-low, as seen below via Savant.

I'm thinking Ragans needs to mix things up to get his GB% back into the 40% range. Throwing his cutter more and maybe the knuckle curve less could be helpful, especially since the knuckle curve has had spotty control. 

Would such a change result in fewer strikeouts? Perhaps, especially since the cutter has never had a whiff rate higher than 23.8% since 2022.

However, Ragans needs to find a way to keep the ball in the yard and get it on the ground more often. The cutter is a tool he's used before to help him achieve that goal. Perhaps doing that again can get him back on track and neutralize the home run issues.

I'm guessing Ragans will take that dip in strikeouts if it means better and more efficient outings going forward in 2026.