The Phillies negotiated a reliever on Saturday, the second in two weeks under new baseball operations president Dave Dombrowski.
The Phils acquired Sam Coonrod, a 28-year-old right-handed reliever from the Giants in exchange for pitcher Carson Ragsdale, his choice of the fourth round in the 2020 draft.
Coonrod has shot 51 games for the Giants in the past two seasons, posting an ERA 5.74 with 35 eliminations and 22 walks in 42⅓ innings. Much of the damage against him was done by left-handed hitters. He is considered right-handed at 0.225 / 0.319 / 0.314.
Coonrod’s fastball averaged 98.7 mph last season. He used five pitches. He played more sinkers (average 97.9) than four seamers, and also used a changeup, slider and curveball.
According to Statcast, Coonrod ranked in the top five in average four-seater fast ball speed and in the top ten in sinker speed, among the pitchers who played a minimum of 50.
The Phillies need bodies in the corral and must see potential in Coonrod’s repertoire. Just before the new year, they made a low-risk, high-reward deal with the Rays, acquiring Jose Alvarado from Garrett Cleavinger in an exchange for left-wing substitutes.
Coonrod’s name was in the news at the start of last season, when he was the only player on both sides of a Giants-Dodgers game not to kneel during the national anthem as a gesture against racial injustice.
“I didn’t mean anything against that,” he said after the game, according to the NBC Sports Bay Area. “I don’t think I am better than anyone. I am a Christian. I simply believe that I cannot kneel before anything but God – Jesus Christ.
“I am a Christian, as I said, and I just can’t agree with some of the things I read about Black Lives Matter. How they lean towards Marxism and say some negative things about the nuclear family. I just can’t get on with it.
“I chose not to kneel. I feel that if I knelt, I would be being a hypocrite. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Like I said, I didn’t mean any harm to anyone.”
From Alex Pavlovic of the NBC Sports Bay Area:
Coonrod joined the major leagues in 2019 and had a strange season during the reduced season, briefly becoming a national figure when he refused to kneel during a moment of union at Dodger Stadium. Coonrod was injured earlier in the year, but when he returned from rehab he was playing harder, regularly hitting three digits. He quickly saw time as the closest, registering his first three career saves, but gave up a home run in the final inning of a crushing defeat on the final weekend of the season.
Ragsdale was one of four Phillies draft picks in 2020, a draft that has been reduced to five rounds because of the pandemic. The Phils had only four choices because they lost the right to the second round when they signed Zack Wheeler last season.
Ragsdale has 1.80 m and 225 pounds from the University of South Florida. He started his career at the USF as a pain reliever, underwent Tommy John surgery and lost the entire year 2019, then returned in 2020 as a holder before the coronavirus shutdown.
An excerpt from his preliminary Baseball America report:
“He is more of a pitcher of control over the command, and because of that and a below average third pitch, some scouts think he has a better relief profile. However, there are teams that think he has a chance to begin.
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