Royals News: Grim Cole Ragans update, Seth Lugo return, Abraham Toro Triple-A hot-streak

The Kansas City Royals are sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of no return having lost six of their last seven games entering Wednesday's action. Amidst their woes has been a revolving door of characters brought on as a result of injuries piling up. In the past week or so, three key Royals in Vinnie Pasquantino, Seth Lugo and Kyle Isbel have landed on the IL while several names have moved no closer to returning from the shelf themselves.

One of those names is Cole Ragans. If last week's injury setback was a hard development for Royals fans to hear, Tuesday brought along a whole new level of worry for the ace's health.

After feeling some negative symptoms in his elbow recovery, Anne Rogers of MLB.com reported that Ragans is continuing to experience those same symptoms and will remain shut down. According to manager Matt Quatraro, "a concrete answer on what’s going on" is hopeful over the next few days after the ace meets with another doctor.

After the pain the Royals faithful went through last season with Ragans injury history, they're unfortunately in familiar territory. This time though when it comes to lingering elbow issues, especially in an arm with Tommy John history like he has, it's hard not to think of the worse.

Seth Lugo's anticipated return date announced after terrifying on-field incident

Last week, Royals fans witnessed one of the scariest ordeals in baseball after Seth Lugo took a 106.6 mph comebacker off the head in his last start against the Texas Rangers. However, the veteran righty escaped major injury and only landed on the 7-day concussion IL as a result.

And now the Royals can anticipate a return of one of their rocks sooner than many may've expected immediately after his scare. According to reports, Lugo is expected to activated from the the concussion list on Friday.

With Ragans and Kris Bubic on the shelf, the Royals and their dwindling pitching depth could desperately use a successful arm like him right about now. Through 79.1 innings across the All-Star starter was throwing to a 3.86 ERA and 3.56 FIP.

Abraham Toro could be postioning himself as a viable injury replacement option

With all the injuries piling up, most recently with the uncertainty surrounding Maikel Garcia after his early exit on Tuesday, the conversation around reinforcements has become much more prominent.

In this case, after Josh Rojas didn't make a lasting impression in his brief stint with the Royals this year, should Garcia land on the shelf, they may be looking for a new replacement option in the infield. And while his 99 wRC+ in Omaha isn't anything spectacular for someone with nearly 1600 major league plate appearances under his belt, perhaps the veteran utility man is turning a new leaf.

Since May 24, Toro has been on a tear with the Storm Chasers. He's slashing .375/.420/.578 with two homers, 12 RBI, a sub-20% K-rate and a 158 wRC+ across 69 plate appearances.

Even if it's not for Garcia and he somehow avoids the IL again, their injury luck hasn't cooperated in general. And with a potential selling approach at the trade deadline looking more and more likely for Kansas City, perhaps his services may be needed sooner rather than later.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow