“It was really good and performed really well to both sides, lefties and righties,” Ragans said. “I could take it in the zone, out of the zone. It was firm. It was exactly what I wanted.”
In ‘24, the pitch was more inconsistent for Ragans, but he made do with what he had and still got fairly good results with it. He tweaked the grip heading into last year, and it was back to getting swing and miss and some chase in Ragans’ limited time on the mound – but the movement wasn’t what Ragans wanted.
“It got super depthy and was almost a baby curveball,” Ragans said. “… It was bigger and inconsistent. And just depthy, just straight down. I got some chase with it, some swing and miss with it, but it’s more so about putting it in the zone. I could never throw an 0-0 slider last year. In the grand scheme of things, I didn’t do well with that. And it’s something I do want to do.”