Cole Ragans and the pitching staff dominates as Royals win 3-0 shutout over White Sox

It was a great time.

In their first game against the Chicago White Sox, the Kansas City Royals handed them their 25th loss in a 3-0 victory.

The big story of the game was the return of Cole Ragans to the mound after a one-start absence due to a groin injury. Would he be good? Would he be effective? What about his breaking pitches?

Well, Ragans immediately put all doubts out of mind. Yes, the White Sox are not a good big league team. But they are a big league team and have legitimate professional athletes. They managed to foul off a bunch of pitches—like, a bunch bunch of pitches—but that’s all they were able to do.

Put it this way: Ragans faced 20 batters. He struck 11 of them out, which is good for for a 55% strikeout rate. Dominant.

There wasn’t even a lot of trouble that Ragans ran into. He faced runners in scoring position twice. The first time was the very first frame of the game, where White Sox shortstop and Final Fantasy villain Chase Meidroth singled and stole second base. In the fourth inning, Andrew Vaughn doubled and then advanced to third on a groundout. In both cases, Ragans closed the threat by striking out the next batter.

It took a while for the offense to get rolling. In the first inning, Bobby Witt Jr. walked and stole a base, but Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez left him stranded. In the second inning, Maikel Garcia worked a 3-0 count only to strike out on the next three pitches.

But the Royals did strike in the fourth inning. Witt crushed a line drive single at 113 MPH off the bat and stole second base for the second time, advancing to third on a wild pitch that Salvy nevertheless attempted to swing at. Salvy walked, and Garcia singled Witt in for one run with the infield in.

Kansas City added another run in the fifth inning when Kyle Isbel had a killer bunt single towards third base, beating the throw by half a step. India singled and Witt doubled to drive Isbel in and give the Royals a 2-0 lead.

At this point I would like to take a moment to highlight, erm, some lowlights of the game. The first one came in the fourth inning when India, starting in left field, watched a line drive like a deer in the headlights and didn’t go backwards in time to get it—it was a totally catchable ball. In the fifth inning, India tried to go third base to home on a Pasquantino tapper to first and was thrown out by a mile. It was not a great India performance.

The worst one, though, was an inexplicable Garcia TOOTBLAN. Garcia worked a lovely 11-pitch plate appearance to get on base. That was nice!

A passed ball saw Garcia at second base, and although Garcia successfully stole third base next, he was caught in no man’s land after greedily trying to go home and subsequently thrown out. Womp womp.

The Royals did get another run in the eighth inning against one Caleb Freeman, who was making his big league debut at age 27. Garcia once again walked and made his way to third base, and Drew Waters doubled him home on a nice opposite-field line drive. Oh, and there was a great Pasquantino double play on a blooper in that frame, too. That was pretty cool.

Game Quote

I’m typing this to you from the press box, and I just climbed six flights of stairs from the club level, where we just had the postgame press conference. I asked Matt Quatraro what he thought about that line drive that went above India’s head and what that meant, if anything. “Those are difficult plays,” Q said. Talking about a line drive play directly towards an outfielder, he said “It’s the hardest play an outfielder can make.”

Q didn’t seem particularly unhappy about India’s misplay there, but India’s growth in left field is worth keeping an eye on. My feelings are that it will work itself out and India will end up in the infield if the Royals are playing meaningful baseball in September. The Royals are now 20-16.