The Royals are in agreement with ace Cole Ragans on a three-year, $13.25MM deal that covers this season and his first two years of arbitration eligibility, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The signing does not impact Kansas City’s window of team control. Ragans, a Wasserman client, remains controllable through the end of 2028.
Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reports the specific breakdown. Ragans receives a $250K signing bonus and a $1MM salary for the upcoming season. He’ll make $4.5MM and $7.5MM for the following two seasons and would escalate his ’27 salary to $8MM if he wins the Cy Young in either of the next two years.
Ragans has a little over two years of major league service. He did not reach the cutoff necessary to qualify for early arbitration as a Super Two player. He would have played the upcoming season on a salary around the $760K league minimum before reaching arbitration next winter. This gives him a modest bump this year while allowing the Royals to lock in his earnings over what would have been his first two arbitration seasons. Barring another extension, he’ll go through the arbitration process one time during the 2027-28 offseason before hitting the open market.
Acquired from the Rangers in June ’23 for Aroldis Chapman, Ragans has blossomed into one of the sport’s top pitchers. He turned in a 2.64 earned run average over 12 starts after the trade. That came against a run of mostly soft competition, but the 6’4″ southpaw put to rest any questions about whether that was an aberration. He took a full 32 starts and posted a 3.14 ERA across 186 1/3 frames last year. He ranked fifth in MLB with 223 strikeouts and earned a fourth-place finish in AL Cy Young balloting.
It’s an unconventional extension, as there’s little precedent for a player signing for two or three years in advance of their final pre-arbitration season. Ragans’ future salaries fall mostly in line with what quality starting pitchers can expect to earn in their first two trips through arbitration. As comparison points, Tanner Houck ($3.95MM) and George Kirby ($4.3MM) agreed to slightly less than $4.5MM for their first arbitration seasons this winter. Logan Gilbert is ticketed for a $7.625MM salary in his second trip through the process.
Ragans wasn’t at risk of being non-tendered barring a catastrophic injury, but he’ll lock in some security over the next couple seasons. The Royals have more clarity on their future budgets without running the risk of going to a hearing with their ace in either of the upcoming two offseasons. Having recently turned 27, Ragans is on track to hit free agency in advance of his age-31 campaign.
Image courtesy of Imagn
Good now he’s a more valuable trade asset for the Dodgers or Mets
Royals are one of the few small market teams that keeps their players. Great signing.
Seems smart all around. In 2 or 3 years if they want to approach him with another, bigger long-term deal I would bet this deal helps that cause a good deal. Rewarding him early and paying a little more today is well worth the good will such a signing creates.
The Royals are on the right path and that Witt deal sure looks smart after his monster breakout.
Oh…you must be young.
The Rockies keep theirs, too! To a massive fault!
Fu** the Dodgers!
cooperhill, you’re the worst.
Does that make Gerrit the “lesser Cole”?
He was movable before since he’s under team control even beyond this contract.
Smart, small market team sign. Also, although he left money on the table–maybe a lot–it’s an insurance policy against injury. At some point he’s going to get traded before he hits FA,
Yeah this seems low enough that I wonder what I’m missing. Feels like they expect regression, are concerned about injury or both.
Feels more like its __Ragans,__ specifically, who expects to regress or get injured. Even at half his 2024 performance he could expect to beat this in two arb seasons.
Though he might not beat it by all that much, and $13.5m or about $12.5m more than what he’ll get in 2025 is life changing money, whereas the worst case, 1m in 2025 and TJS that never takes, years of trying get back to competence, then finally in your 30s trying to find a career without, it appears, a college degree…. that can’t be an appealing path.
1m vs 1m to 20m (est) against 13.5 vs 20m… it would take long odds to get me to prefer gambling on the first over the second given I’m now 27 and just had my first good, full season in MLB at 26—and missed three full seasons 2018 to 2020, so I’d know what it’s like to be on baseball’s ragged edge.
It’s just 2 of his arbitration years of control, not his free agent years.
My pick for AL CY this year
Wouldn’t surprise me at all either.
Like Crochet myself. He is tough.
He’s had a very long journey
TJ surgery in 2018, 2nd TJ in 2019, he didnt throw a pitch for 4 years
And now he’s dominating
gl to him
Highway robbery for the royals. I’ve had ragans the last 2 years in fantasy. Absolute stud every since of the word. He’s worth 3 times that contract right now for sure.
Sense when?
Since when?? Look at his stats the last 2 years running. He’s already a top 15 pitcher by his peripherals since the ill fated trade from Texas.
@cdouglas He absolutely is not worth more, that’s not how arbitration process works. This was a great deal for both sides.
Now if he was a FA he’d be underpaid and it would be a steal by KC, that is not the case tho.
He’s making fun of the fact that you said “since” instead of “sense”. So he did it intentionally the other way around.
That went so far over your head your hair didn’t even feel the breeze.. you said “every since of the word” which since should have been sense, so he said “sense when” which was a joke because it’s “since when” woah. Feel like I lost brain “sells” explaining grammar..
Rumour is, the Rangers’ exec whose eval was used to deal Ragans for a few months of Chapman’s time was taken out behind the barn at the 2024 ASB and… well… lets just say he’s having a wonderful time chasing flowers at grand-uncle’s farm.
No one from Texas looks at the trade that way.
Flags Fly Forever.
Thats all it took for him??? What a steal. That contract will make him standout even more when trade talks are headed to Kansas City. Sheesh. Well done.
Wow.
Signing Chapman was such a smart move.
Look what it got them.
In 10 years the Tigers never did. Would not shell out for anything of value…..
Never happened in Tigerville, never hired ….
I’ve seen Cole Ragans pitch. He is barely above average. I don’t see the obsession with him. Hes a fourth starter on a good team at best
What? He had a low 3 era across 180+ IP, with a 10.8/9 SO rate. Dude is a stud
@Patriots12992 look at Andrew Cashners stats and get back to me. They are virtually identical when you adjust for the uptick in strike outs accross the league. No one ever thought Cashner was anything more than a fourth starter
Trolls be trolling
Holy cow, no. Has the inferiority of a Stearns made rotation blinded you on what an ace looks like??? Ragans is the real deal.
@Salzilla he is the modern day Andrew Cashner. Not to mention that he plays in the lowest offensive league in baseball. None of those team’s hitting is scaring anyone
Dude, my apologies, but I can’t stop loling here. He’d be the unquestioned ace of the Mets. He struck on 223 dudes last year, HE IS ELITE.
Ragans would be at the top of the Mets’ rotation. Guess they’re not a good team….
@Jerry Hairston Jr’s Toupee Manaea, Senga, and Peterson are all better than Ragans. The Mets rotation is middle of the pack
Smh lol. I can’t.
@LFG You apparently watched sone other Ragans pitch then.
Did you see President Reagan’s ceremonial first pitch and just got confused?
I will trade any one Mets pitcher in the entire organization for Ragans. Straight up. Today.
Thank God, it’s not all of you.
Ragans is a stud. By every measure. I look at swinging strike rate a lot for indicator of future success and he was 5th in mlb last year, and would have been top 10 year before if he had the innings.
I think this is savvy just for the opportunity for the Royals to avoid arb for one of their best players. If Ragans continues to pop off and get that Cy Young that Ragans seems to be gunning for if we look at the contract, the Royals won’t be paying that much more in the long run.
“Ace”? Lol
What’s funny about that comment? He finished with 4.9 fWAR in 2024, which was 4th best in all of baseball. I think calling him an ace is perfectly reasonable.
He’s been good for all of 1 season lol.
I guess by that logic, Skubal isn’t an ace either
He’s been good for 3 seasons now, just won the cy young and pitching triple crown.
I love extensions. Guaranteed the players life changing money. Gives the team cost certainty.
I like affordable extensions. Maybe not the Trout extension.
Even Ozzie Albies wouldn’t do this deal.
@RunDMC Cold, man. I mean, funny, but cold.
The ballplayers I knew were coarse enough to regularly give a guy like that a hard time. “Hey, Oz, I need an agent. You know anyone?” then uniformly crack up within five seconds.
MLBTR was even writing at the time the deal was lopsided in the Braves’ favor. Stranger than that, MeterSports is still Albies’ agent.
In all seriousness, I think there were/are serious physical limitations from Ozzie and his shoulder where even at 2B he’s a question mark. I believe he had that worst velocity of any 2B, fwiw, this past season, and he doesn’t cover a lot of ground. That shoulder injury early on, from what I heard, really put the fear enough to wanting guaranteed money. And considering the injuries he’s had ever since, I don’t think he was wrong or it’s been as overwhelming in ATL’s favor as much as people like to make it out to be. All-in-all, he’s a good guy and seems to be very happy. That being said, I’d like to see some healthy years before he hits FA to really prove his worth.
The Royals are hedging against a potential big arbitration pay jump for Ragans in ’27. Ragan has already had two Tommy surgeries in the past and now has secured $13.5M as opposed to taking the risk of blowing out arm (and quite possibly ending his career) this season for league minimum pay.
That’s how i see this too. Team and player taking basically the same risk by meeting in the middle. I like it.
I mean, good for him locking up money but it’s a joke that the league has this sort of cost control when clearly his earning power should be a lot more
And then we have fans yelling that it’s an overpay when they sign free agent contracts.
Why, though? MLB players involve about the only place where between labor and management you get anything resembling right-libertarians’ beloved “free contracts, freely arrived at.”
A guy who doesn’t need much to be happy, already has a wife and kids, can pick up 40 acres and a mule next to mom and dad’s place for the low, low price of $2.2 million… it would make all the sense in the world to take $13.5m guaranteed after already having missed 3 years with injury, who suffered an injury requiring Tommy John surgery WHILE recovering from a first Tommy John surgery… it’s easy to see that guy taking the 13 point 5 even if as much as 40 million was available from his first two arb awards if he maxed out his performance in 2025 and 2026.
We’re so used to seeing contractual combat between players and organizations hyped that seeing these types of deals is hard to grasp.
One time when I was in HS I was sitting in a hotel lounge with Mike Henneman and asked him if he thought he was worth that 1.5 million or whatever the Tigers gave him. He says….”Well, it’s what they offered me, so I took it.” He was happy to be in the league and making money and it seemed like a distraction. Some guys are like that. Not sure about Ragans. Henneman was an easy going dude.
It looks like he then went out and put up a 5.79 ERA in 41 innings.
How did pitchers succeed with a 5, 6. 7 K/9 rate? What was the ball filled with… sawdust?