With MLB spring training games in full swing, scouts are descending on Florida and Arizona to get their first looks at live action. Plenty of the players they are watching are new versions of themselves, whether they spent the offseason developing a new pitch, remaking their swing or simply adding strength.
As the buzz around those players grows, here are 10 standouts who have impressed evaluators in the early days of spring training.
The comparison sounded too ridiculous to be true. One evaluator, smitten by the 26-year-old pitcher, said of Ragans: “He’s left-handed deGrom.” To comp a pitcher who has thrown all of 136 major league innings with Jacob deGrom, Major League Baseball’s undisputed king of stuff, feels like an exaggeration.
Well, look at Ragans’ first start this spring: His fastball averaged 99.2 mph. He threw one at 101 with 20 inches of induced vertical break. Not a single starter in MLB last season hit 101 with that sort of vert, which means the ball doesn’t drop nearly as much as an average fastball. Ragans throws a four-seamer, changeup, slider, curveball and, perhaps best of all, a cutter that was sitting at 95. In the past, injuries kept Ragans from reaching his promise. If he can stay healthy, he has the makings of one of the best pitchers in all of baseball.