Ragans career day leads Royals to 4-2 victory over Guardians

Ragans continues his brilliance, and the offense showed some juice!

Cole Ragans shoved. When his team needed it most the ace straight up delivered. A career high 7.2 innings and 10 more strikeouts, while allowing 4 hits and 1 earned run.

The Royals get back to .500 after avoiding a sweep in Cleveland. Although the game didn’t start out great. After a double play ended a hopeful top of the first inning, Ben Lively struck out the side in the top of the second. With 2 outs in the bottom half of the second and Jhonkensy Noel on first, Daniel Schneemann, hitting just .053 on the season lined one into the left center gap. Noel rounded third and Bobby Witt Jr. had plenty of time to throw him out at the plate, but a very errant throw let Noel score, and with nobody covering the plate, Schneemann raced around to score as well.

2-0 Guardians and what felt like a giant gut punch to the Royals who had struggled on both sides of the ball all series.

But a Vinnie Pasquantino 2-2 single to right was followed up by a mammoth 2 run homer by Salvador Perez. An 0-2 hanging sweeper was taken over the big wall in left for Perez’s second homer on the season and tied the game at 2.

In the fifth, Freddy Fermin came back from 0-2 to work a 1 out walk, Kyle Isbel would work a full count before lacing a double off the wall in right center and then Maikel Garcia would stay hot smacking a 2-run double after that. And that’s all the Royals would need.

Cole Ragans would simply masterful. After getting the first two outs of the 8th inning, sitting at only 89 pitches and the 9 spot in the order coming up, manager Matt Quatraro decided to pull Ragans and go with Erceg. He would promptly get a strikeout to end the inning.

Carlos Estevez would get the top of the order in the 9th, and Steven Kwan would hit a leadoff single, but Estevez buckled down and struck out Jose Ramirez, Carlos Santana and Kyle Manzardo to end the game. Estevez blew a fastball by every single one of them.

Garcia and Isbel each had 3 hits on the day. Ragans picked up his first win of the season, and Estevez would record his 5th save.

The Royals head to the Bronx to take on the team who eliminated them in 4 games last year in the ALDS, the Yankees. Seth Lugo will toe the slab to kick off the series. First pitch is at 6:05 p.m. central time.