Ryan
Prager

The junior left-hander entered the Mississippi State series with just three walks against 41 strikeouts on the season and proceeded to build upon those totals with four strikeouts in the first inning. He then breezed through the second before surrendering a pair of unearned runs in the third, both runs scoring on bloop singles to the outfield. Prager went on to strike out eight and walk one over 6.1 innings of work. There isn’t much secret to Prager’s success. He’s a high-pitchability southpaw who combines bat-missing stuff with elite strike-throwing ability. He attacks early, gets ahead in the count and works quickly with a large shoulder tilt delivery. All is repeated with a consistent 6-foot-6 to 6-foot-7 release height on all of his pitches. He relies mostly on a high-ride 90-91 mph fastball and a bat-missing 82-83 slider, but can also subtract with a quality, low-spinning changeup (1400s rpm) at 82-84. He went over bats with his heater and under them with his breaker. His 73.1% overall strike rate of all pitches thrown is in the 99th percentile in D1 baseball, while his slider is 79% which is the 100th percentile. His chase % which measures the total number of pitches that are thrown outside the strike zone and swung at, divided by the total number of pitches thrown outside the zone also sets the ceiling in D1 college baseball at 38%. Currently, Prager is regarded as a third-round prospect. With continued good health and any uptick in velocity, he could sneak into the later picks of round two.