a 7-3 victory over the Rockies<\/a>. Kansas City manager Matt Quatraro said Ragans had trouble getting loose before the game and his groin began to bother him as the innings went on.<\/p>\n\u201cAs he was sitting there between innings, between the third and fourth, it tightened up on him,\u201d said Quatraro, who thinks some of Ragans\u2019 command problems during the opening game of a doubleheader were related to the groin issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not talk to him yet, but I would assume, you know, if he\u2019s not comfortable pushing off, you\u2019re seeing him cut some stuff off, which makes sense, based on most of those misses,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cJust probably wasn\u2019t getting through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ragans went 11-9 with a 3.14 ERA and led the league in strikeouts per nine innings during a breakout season last year. He is 1-1 with a 4.40 ERA in six starts this season, including a dismal outing last week against the Tigers.<\/p>\n
\u201cCole was not 100 percent,\u201d Royals catcher Salvador Perez said Thursday. \u201cI could tell from the bullpen he was not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Royals bullpen picked Ragans up, though, tossing six scoreless innings in relief. Zerpa and Steven Cruz tossed two apiece, Lucas Erceg cruised through the eighth and Carlos Est\u00e9vez handled the ninth to earn his sixth save.<\/p>\n
In other injury news, Quatraro said right-hander Alec Marsh would begin a new throwing progression Friday after he was shut down a few weeks ago with more soreness in his right shoulder. The Royals hope to have him back sometime in June.<\/p>\n
Speedy outfielder Dairon Blanco also is on the mend after dealing with a right Achilles injury. He went through a full workout on Tuesday, and Quatraro said it\u2019s possible that Blanco could be headed on a rehab assignment soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a huge step forward. He had a ton of volume out there,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get through this weekend, but if everything goes smoothly, we\u2019ll get him out sometime next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP baseball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/MLB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Royals ace Cole Ragans will undergo testing on his left groin after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2405],"tags":[229,28235,5,1092,230,167,52,4316,12663,2123,55,7093,1107,2602,3736,4,256,7094,168,373,185,6923],"class_list":{"0":"post-141690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-rockies","8":"tag-alec-marsh","9":"tag-angel-zerpa","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-carlos-estevez","12":"tag-cole-ragans","13":"tag-colorado","14":"tag-colorado-rockies","15":"tag-coloradorockies","16":"tag-dairon-blanco","17":"tag-kansas-city","18":"tag-kansas-city-royals","19":"tag-ks-state-wire","20":"tag-lucas-erceg","21":"tag-matt-quatraro","22":"tag-missouri","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-mlb-baseball","25":"tag-mo-state-wire","26":"tag-rockies","27":"tag-salvador-perez","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-steven-cruz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114772087753350808","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}