Series Thread: Rangers Host Toronto For Three Games September 17-19

[Kelleyman]

Maybe the Ragans trade was not a bad trade. It helped get us a WS

The problem was we did not develop him expertly
Not talking about just leaving him a lone as AAA sTarter for a bit but adding to his pitch arsenal as KC did That’s the failure

Not the trade
But hopefully that has been remedied

 

[Kelleyman]

I am not team tank and I hear Bochy saying gotta to win to keep the integrity of the game but there has to be some loyalty to team development and forging a multi year winning culture

If not in that playoff race the end of the sea should be utilized to try out players to prepare for next season.

I am disappointed that I’m not seeing this fully

 

[saddles]

Maybe the Ragans trade was not a bad trade. It helped get us a WS

The problem was we did not develop him expertly
Not talking about just leaving him a lone as AAA sTarter for a bit but adding to his pitch arsenal as KC did That’s the failure

Not the trade
But hopefully that has been remedied

The poor job of recognizing how he had developed the preceding winter led to them misusing him and then unwisely trading him. Had they recognized what he had become and had they not misused him that April, they would have never considered trading him. They would have traded some other prospect(s). They had a vast array of prospects to trade from.

 

[saddles]

I am not team tank and I hear Bochy saying gotta to win to keep the integrity of the game but there has to be some loyalty to team development and forging a multi year winning culture

If not in that playoff race the end of the sea should be utilized to try out players to prepare for next season.

I am disappointed that I’m not seeing this fully

I think playing unproven young guys while veterans sit, goes against something within Bochy. Of course, a whole lot of managers are the same way. I know Wash is. The overprotection of veterans is one of the groupthink problems in MLB. The is the old, outdated mentality that the youngsters have to pay their "dues."

The drawbacks to this mentality are many and they are widespread throughout the league. That is why Cody Bradford will not be able to have two or three bad outings in a row without being removed from the rotation, while a veteran can pitch bad for two months and keep their job.

 

[jaar01]

I am not team tank and I hear Bochy saying gotta to win to keep the integrity of the game but there has to be some loyalty to team development and forging a multi year winning culture

If not in that playoff race the end of the sea should be utilized to try out players to prepare for next season.

I am disappointed that I’m not seeing this fully

I'm with you. Finishing strong means nothing to me. I want to see the young guys get as much playing time as possible. You are either in a pennant race or you're not...and should act accordingly.
Foscue and Duran should be playing every single game. And Leiter should be starting. Giving Scherzer starts is just plain buddy baseball and only hurts this club for next season. Leiter should get his starts and let Max be in long relief if necessary.

In fact, I would shut Eovaldi down now as well. He's hit his innings goal, looked bad last night. No reason to start him again.

 

[fanman8825]

Carter worries me that he missed a whole season especially at his age.

Same here. Let's hope this injury does not linger into next season.

 

[DT LUNA]

I'm with you. Finishing strong means nothing to me. I want to see the young guys get as much playing time as possible. You are either in a pennant race or you're not...and should act accordingly.
Foscue and Duran should be playing every single game. And Leiter should be starting. Giving Scherzer starts is just plain buddy baseball and only hurts this club for next season. Leiter should get his starts and let Max be in long relief if necessary.

In fact, I would shut Eovaldi down now as well. He's hit his innings goal, looked bad last night. No reason to start him again.

Totally agree with you. I would bring Huff and Crim up as well.

 

[jaar01]

Totally agree with you. I would bring Huff and Crim up as well.

I would do the same. Need to shut down Heim. Give Huff his starts behind Kelly.

And just bring Crim up. What harm is there in doing that unless it takes away Foscue at bats?

 

[Kelleyman]

The poor job of recognizing how he had developed the preceding winter led to them misusing him and then unwisely trading him. Had they recognized what he had become and had they not misused him that April, they would have never considered trading him. They would have traded some other prospect(s). They had a vast array of prospects to trade from.

We still would not have gotten what KC got as we were not equipped/failed to develop him
They did coaching we did not do because they were better at that

 

[Kelleyman]

If Nate E starts and gets an injury
That could put us on the hook for next season
Risk/Reward issue

 

[saddles]

 

[saddles]

We still would not have gotten what KC got as we were not equipped/failed to develop him
They did coaching we did not do because they were better at that

His major development gain was in that offseason. That is why Keith Law wrote a ST article highlighting how much better Ragans looked.

 

[saddles]

His major development gain was in that offseason. That is why Keith Law wrote a ST article highlighting how much better Ragans looked.

From MLB.com:

What was behind this transformation? Ragans credits remote work during the 2022-23 offseason with Charlotte, N.C.-based Tread Athletics, focusing on his mechanics and mobility. His time with Tread proved so fruitful that Ragans went back this past offseason, too.

“They helped me just get stronger, help my body move better, mobility stuff, arm move quicker -- just that kind of thing,” Ragans said in August. “It’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

 

[Senator_fan]

I'm with you. Finishing strong means nothing to me. I want to see the young guys get as much playing time as possible. You are either in a pennant race or you're not...and should act accordingly.
Foscue and Duran should be playing every single game. And Leiter should be starting. Giving Scherzer starts is just plain buddy baseball and only hurts this club for next season. Leiter should get his starts and let Max be in long relief if necessary.

In fact, I would shut Eovaldi down now as well. He's hit his innings goal, looked bad last night. No reason to start him again.

I agree with playing the younger guys but some players are going to be free agents and want to build their stats up. Lowe has been batting .360 lately. They may feel entitled to be playing right now.

There may be implications with the players filing grievances with their union. I don’t know if that’s a factor I’m just throwing it out there.

 

[saddles]

More from an Athletic article describing how Ragans was transformed in the 2022-2023 offseason:

From maxing out at 95 and sitting 92 to maxing out at 101 and sitting 96, Ragans underwent a massive transformation in one offseason. The closest qualified starting pitcher gains to Ragans were Nick Pivetta (+2.9 mph) and Sean Manaea (+2.5 mph), so this is a huge leap. He’s been turning heads since spring training with that added velo. Largely, the pitcher credits Tread Athletics, where he trained in the offseason.

“They’re awesome!” he said, pointing out his personal coach was Tyler Zombro there, who has his own story as a pitcher who has persevered after a major injury. “Zombro is the man. They’re awesome people over there.”

The first thing that Zombro and Tread did was analyze video of Ragans doing certain drills to get a sense of his dexterity and how he moved.

“I did a full body assessment with them,” Ragans said. “I videoed all these movements, they saw how my body moves: hips, ankles, (thoracic) spine, all that kind of stuff. They broke it down and gave me all these exercises that would essentially loosen the things that needed to be loosened up and get things moving how they should be moving. My body is just moving better.”

None of these mobility exercises look like pitching. The easiest way to explain it might be “yoga with bands,” but even that doesn’t fully explain the small movements that Ragans does every day.

“All this stuff to loosen up my hips and loosen up my ankles: correctives,” Ragans says. “Different little stretches. Hip 90/90 ER focus, hip axial rotations, IR holds, leg pins.” They sound stranger than they are. Here is one example of these movements, which, according to reports in the physiological research community, are believed to lead to better strength and mobility.

These sorts of exercises can be seen across professional sports development, but there’s still an art to getting the right exercises to the right person. Applied plyometrics, if you will.

“We’re just trying to get everything firing in the right sequence,” says Zombro. “In working with (Tampa Bay Rays pitcher) Pete Fairbanks, he’s had a couple hammy issues, and a right lat, and that’s on that posterior line. So, in Pete’s activation, we have to find a way from the ground up to make sure the left hammy is firing, the left glute, the right lat is ready to be elastic in the throw. We are trying to prime his body in the way he throws. When you work with big-league guys, giving them a generic mobility program that doesn’t relate to exactly how they throw, you’re missing the mark.”

When it came to the mechanics of Ragans’ delivery, one of the first things Zombro and Tread pointed out for Ragans were his toes.

“I was getting toe-y,” Ragans said of his delivery and a tendency to put his weight forward into his toes. “Now, I’m trying to stay in my foot, trying to hide my back hip as long as possible down the mound because that will keep my hips closed.”

The prescription here was something that’s spread across baseball — a weighted ball program that the lefty follows religiously even now that his velo is up, to maintain — but again there were some wrinkles that helped Ragans stay “stacked.”

“Rotational step backs were his biggest plyo-ball drill that got him out of the toe on the back leg and got him in the heel so that he could feel more rotation in the back leg,” said Zombro. “Staying in the heel to allow him to build more counter rotation in the pelvis. Now he’s maintaining that stack so he’s not throwing the ball uphill.”

Some of Zombro’s work was designed to undo the result of two years of rehabbing off of those two Tommy John surgeries. Apparently, throwing on flat ground without facing batters has some long-term ramifications for a pitcher.

“In rehab throwing, it’s fastball, changeup, staying behind the ball, being pushy,” said Zombro. “There’s a corruption window where you are developing patterns that aren’t where you were at max output beforehand.

“We want him to rotate behind the lead leg, and that’s a flat ground compensation that can happen in the rehab process; it’s that table-top finish where you’re not going into that aggressive lead-leg block and you’re not rotating behind that front leg.”

That helped Ragans get from this delivery in 2022:

To this delivery in 2023:

“I’m in my legs more; my mechanics are more sound,” says the pitcher. “I’ve watched videos from last year to this year, I’m more stacked, I’m more compact. The weighted ball program got my arm speed up and got me rotating better.”

The final aspect of a pitcher makeover is often the one that’s most noticeable: a new pitch. In this case, Tread’s internal Stuff+ metric, some coaching from Zombro, a check-in from Royals assistant pitching coach Zach Bove and a lot of initiative from the pitcher himself led to a new slider.

“(On) our data team, one of our analysts, Kieran Liming, has built a cool, shiny app that’s very integrated so we can select pitches and see where Stuff lines up,” Zombro said. “I showed him that when you get your slider to the right of the line, down to sub five (inches of vertical movement), that was our primary goal, you can see that these sliders are grading out to 105, 110, 120. The goal at some point is to get more depth and more glove side.”

 

[saddles]

I agree with playing the younger guys but some players are going to be free agents and want to build their stats up. Lowe has been batting .360 lately. They may feel entitled to be playing right now.

There may be implications with the players filing grievances with their union. I don’t know if that’s a factor I’m just throwing it out there.

Lowe is one thing. Jankowski and Scherzer are each another thing, entirely. Jankowski should not be playing. Scherzer should be in the pen.

We do not owe Heim any playing time, actually.

 

[WastinSomeTime]

It is beyond me how leadership including front office and coaching staff were not able to see how Ragans had seemed to have figured it out in ST. I mean if I could see it how was it they couldn't see it? I said from the very beginning to send him to AAA and let him keep starting. Don't put him in the bullpen. He stunk in the pen but of course our pen was limited once again. As soon as they sent him down Ragans started to get going in the right direction. He was traded after about 3-4 starts.

 

[Duane1952]

More from an Athletic article describing how Ragans was transformed in the 2022-2023 offseason:

From maxing out at 95 and sitting 92 to maxing out at 101 and sitting 96, Ragans underwent a massive transformation in one offseason. The closest qualified starting pitcher gains to Ragans were Nick Pivetta (+2.9 mph) and Sean Manaea (+2.5 mph), so this is a huge leap. He’s been turning heads since spring training with that added velo. Largely, the pitcher credits Tread Athletics, where he trained in the offseason.

“They’re awesome!” he said, pointing out his personal coach was Tyler Zombro there, who has his own story as a pitcher who has persevered after a major injury. “Zombro is the man. They’re awesome people over there.”

The first thing that Zombro and Tread did was analyze video of Ragans doing certain drills to get a sense of his dexterity and how he moved.

“I did a full body assessment with them,” Ragans said. “I videoed all these movements, they saw how my body moves: hips, ankles, (thoracic) spine, all that kind of stuff. They broke it down and gave me all these exercises that would essentially loosen the things that needed to be loosened up and get things moving how they should be moving. My body is just moving better.”

None of these mobility exercises look like pitching. The easiest way to explain it might be “yoga with bands,” but even that doesn’t fully explain the small movements that Ragans does every day.

“All this stuff to loosen up my hips and loosen up my ankles: correctives,” Ragans says. “Different little stretches. Hip 90/90 ER focus, hip axial rotations, IR holds, leg pins.” They sound stranger than they are. Here is one example of these movements, which, according to reports in the physiological research community, are believed to lead to better strength and mobility.

These sorts of exercises can be seen across professional sports development, but there’s still an art to getting the right exercises to the right person. Applied plyometrics, if you will.

“We’re just trying to get everything firing in the right sequence,” says Zombro. “In working with (Tampa Bay Rays pitcher) Pete Fairbanks, he’s had a couple hammy issues, and a right lat, and that’s on that posterior line. So, in Pete’s activation, we have to find a way from the ground up to make sure the left hammy is firing, the left glute, the right lat is ready to be elastic in the throw. We are trying to prime his body in the way he throws. When you work with big-league guys, giving them a generic mobility program that doesn’t relate to exactly how they throw, you’re missing the mark.”

When it came to the mechanics of Ragans’ delivery, one of the first things Zombro and Tread pointed out for Ragans were his toes.

“I was getting toe-y,” Ragans said of his delivery and a tendency to put his weight forward into his toes. “Now, I’m trying to stay in my foot, trying to hide my back hip as long as possible down the mound because that will keep my hips closed.”

The prescription here was something that’s spread across baseball — a weighted ball program that the lefty follows religiously even now that his velo is up, to maintain — but again there were some wrinkles that helped Ragans stay “stacked.”

“Rotational step backs were his biggest plyo-ball drill that got him out of the toe on the back leg and got him in the heel so that he could feel more rotation in the back leg,” said Zombro. “Staying in the heel to allow him to build more counter rotation in the pelvis. Now he’s maintaining that stack so he’s not throwing the ball uphill.”

Some of Zombro’s work was designed to undo the result of two years of rehabbing off of those two Tommy John surgeries. Apparently, throwing on flat ground without facing batters has some long-term ramifications for a pitcher.

“In rehab throwing, it’s fastball, changeup, staying behind the ball, being pushy,” said Zombro. “There’s a corruption window where you are developing patterns that aren’t where you were at max output beforehand.

“We want him to rotate behind the lead leg, and that’s a flat ground compensation that can happen in the rehab process; it’s that table-top finish where you’re not going into that aggressive lead-leg block and you’re not rotating behind that front leg.”

That helped Ragans get from this delivery in 2022:

To this delivery in 2023:

“I’m in my legs more; my mechanics are more sound,” says the pitcher. “I’ve watched videos from last year to this year, I’m more stacked, I’m more compact. The weighted ball program got my arm speed up and got me rotating better.”

The final aspect of a pitcher makeover is often the one that’s most noticeable: a new pitch. In this case, Tread’s internal Stuff+ metric, some coaching from Zombro, a check-in from Royals assistant pitching coach Zach Bove and a lot of initiative from the pitcher himself led to a new slider.

“(On) our data team, one of our analysts, Kieran Liming, has built a cool, shiny app that’s very integrated so we can select pitches and see where Stuff lines up,” Zombro said. “I showed him that when you get your slider to the right of the line, down to sub five (inches of vertical movement), that was our primary goal, you can see that these sliders are grading out to 105, 110, 120. The goal at some point is to get more depth and more glove side.”

Still not a good trade.

 

[saddles]

Still not a good trade.

It was an awful trade because the Rangers had no clue how much better Ragans had become.

 

[saddles]

We still would not have gotten what KC got as we were not equipped/failed to develop him
They did coaching we did not do because they were better at that

You are completely ignoring what Ragans said in the Arhletic article. He was fixed in the prior offaesson by Tread. He needed to get some games in as a starter to implement those things. The difference in him here and in KC is that the Royals let him start. Had we let him start, we would have gotten the same pitcher. In that article Cole pointed out that when he did get the chance to start he saw he was having trouble with lefthanded batters and the first thing he did about that was to contact Tyler Zombro with Tread Athletics about that. Zombro gave him feedback that corrected the problem.

From the article is is very clear that Tread fixed him; not the Rangers and not the Royals. There were some of us on here talking about his improvements in ST last year. That is also when Law predicted Ragans to be one of the best breakout pitchers in 2023. That was 3 months before the trade.

The Rangers just flat out failed big time in recognizing the extent of the improvement, and they failed miserably in how they used him.

Ragans should have been as untouchable as anyone in the organization once he showed what he showed in ST.