the lineup card: Season 2; vol 10
Ryan Sloan initiates his delivery on the mound with a fluid pivot of his front foot. As he rotates his imposing 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame, he leverages his strong lower half for power and extension. His hands separate smoothly, while his tucked glove side and steady head aid in pitch command. With a deceptive flat approach angle and a release from a low three-quarter arm slot, he keeps batters guessing until the ball is halfway toward the plate.
That is all by design.
Of course, this step-by-step instruction guide does not echo in Sloan’s head like an audio cookbook recipe each time he delivers a pitch. Years of honing his craft, while mastering the arts of tunneling and pitch shapes, have ingrained these polished mechanics seamlessly. Contemplating each step in real time would only burden the big right-hander with unnecessary stress
With a heavy 91-94 mph fastball that tops out at 96, a sharp slider that he can throw for strikes in any count and a nasty changeup that fades in and out of the zone, Sloan has mowed down hitters in both the Illinois high school baseball scene and summer showcase circuit. Despite his dominance, you will never catch the projected 2024 first-round draft pick showboating or getting overly fired-up after a strikeout.
“I keep that to myself. I like to call it a quiet confidence. You’re not going to be able to tell if I have a good or bad game, I’m gonna walk off the exact same. I know that I’m better than the person I’m facing. I’m not going to show anyone else that but I’m gonna think that in my head,” Sloan said over the phone, adding that he is at his best when he is relaxed and having fun. “You can’t get way too high or way too low. If you start getting all crazy, you start getting pumped up, you’re gonna get way too high and what goes up must come down.”
Learning the ropes
Sloan, 18, spent the first few years of his life in Oswego, Illinois before moving to Elmhurst in fourth grade. Had he stayed in Oswego, he would have shared a dynamite high school rotation with 2022 White Sox first-rounder Noah Schultz and Mariners fourth-rounder Ashton Izzi. Fortunately, he still grew up around two role-model athletes.
Both of his parents played collegiately at Austin Peay. His father, David, played catcher and was a member of their 1996 Ohio Valley Conference championship team. His mother, Amanda, played basketball and is considered one of the best post players in Lady Govs history, earning a spot in the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Ryan thanked his mom for his height. It also helped that he never had to look far for a meal to accelerate his growth.
His dad is the former CEO and Co-Founder of Naf Naf Grill, a Middle Eastern restaurant chain with locations in 12 states. He now owns three restaurants – Naansense, Blackwood BBQ and Taqueria Invicto – conveniently located within 15 minutes of Sloan’s household.
“It’s a great life, I’ll never really go hungry,” Sloan laughed. “I can come home and he’d be like, ‘Hey, do you want me to make you something?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’d love that,’ so that’s super nice. If I want to go there and get something quick to eat, I know that I’m gonna get some good food in my body.”
Despite the busy lifestyle that comes with working in the food business, his father made time to pass down his love for baseball. He took him to games at Wrigley Field to see their hometown Cubs and also Miller Park (since renamed American Family Field) given that the traffic and prices in Milwaukee were often more convenient for them. Those early experiences, along with his parents’ guidance, helped show Ryan what it takes to play at a higher level.
Sloan began his travel baseball career with the local Oswego Cobras team until he was 8 or 9 years old when he moved on to Top Tier in Chicago to face stronger competition. There, the uber-competitive righty played up a few age groups with kids noticeably bigger than him.
“In the moment, I was like, ‘Why am I playing against kids who are two or three years older than me?’ but my dad kind of saw the future — you gotta learn how to fail at the younger age because baseball is game a failure,” Sloan reflected. “If I played my against own age, I feel like the competition wouldn’t have forced me to want to get better. It helped me a lot in my development, definitely on the mental side of the game, just being able to understand how to take failure and then find positives from your outings.”
As Sloan continued to work on his craft, he began training close to home at Bo Jackson’s Elite Sports indoor training center, also known as the Bo Dome. There, he encountered players from Top Tier’s rival in travel ball, the Cangelosi Sparks. Sloan did not view them as rivals, however. To him, the Sparks players were like-minded guys who shared similar talents and goals. Those are exactly the type of people Sloan wants to be surrounded by, and thanks to his affable personality, they made friends quickly. Despite their friendly relationship, the hard-throwing righty has no trouble flipping the switch when they meet on the field.
“I would much rather compete against my friends than be on a team with them. That’s just me,” Sloan explained, sharing that he takes every opportunity he can to compete one-on-one. “It’s just always been like that. When I was a kid, I always wanted to win. If we were playing a board game, I would be the most locked-in kid on that board game. I would get after Monopoly, and if I lost, it would not be a pretty scene.”
His desire to be the best translated to the mound, earning him looks from Xavier and Indiana University before his freshman season at York Community High School. While throwing a bullpen that winter, Sloan’s fastball which normally sat around 83 mph was clocked at 88 mph on a pocket radar.
Once.
“I probably didn’t touch 88 the rest of the year. It totally could have been a misread, we’ll never know,” Sloan joked. His coaches at Top Tier sent the video of that single pitch to every college coach they could anyway. Almost instantly, the suddenly coveted freshman arm heard from Kentucky, Louisville, Mississippi State, Wake Forest and plenty of other prestigious Division I programs.
Every day after school for two weeks, Sloan dedicated time to throwing or completing a brief workout session before heading home for a series of phone calls. To ease his nerves, he prepared a categorized list of questions for each coach: inquiries about the school, its baseball program, and pitching-specific aspects. The coaches had plenty of questions for him, too, but the way he saw it, it would be embarrassing to say “no” when they inevitably asked if he had any questions for them.
Sloan’s recruitment process concluded nearly as rapidly as it began. He aimed to find a school that had great baseball facilities and provided a degree that could take him places once his playing days ended. The Illinois native decided on Wake Forest, located in warm Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Not only was it a top-50 university, but it also had a new state-of-the-art pitching lab, which combines baseball, science and medicine to revolutionize the way pitching mechanics are analyzed and taught. Their expert staff uses cutting-edge technology to evaluate pitcher’s mechanics and develop customized training programs aimed at reducing the risk of injury and enhancing performance.
The pitching lab stands as a cornerstone of Wake Forest’s reputation for cultivating pitching talent. It is credited with transforming right-handed starter Rhett Lowder, whose fastball peaked at 89 mph before his freshman year, into the seventh overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft. It also helped attract top transfer Chase Burns from Tennessee, who is currently making a case to be the top pitcher to be drafted this upcoming summer.
High school transition
After committing to Wake Forest, Sloan spent the first half of his freshman season with the JV team before joining the varsity team. When the D1 commit arrived, he noticed that the upperclassmen avoided talking to him at first. There appeared to be a false perception that he would be cocky due to his status as a prospect, which could not be further off. He eventually won them over with a three-hit, shutout performance against Downers Grove South, the No. 5 team in the state at the time, proving that he was the real deal and shared the same winning mindset as his teammates. It did not take long for them to form a close bond after that.
The York Dukes practice at 6 a.m. every morning except on Sundays, and once that is over, the players have a tradition of going out to breakfast together. While they never appear to be the best team on paper come playoff time, those shared experiences build chemistry, with everyone fully bought in and contributing. In front of a packed house last June, Sloan took the mound against Hononegah with an opportunity to send his team to the state tournament for the first time in three decades.
For the first two innings, Sloan relied solely on his fastball. Hononegah’s hitters eagerly attacked the first pitch, resulting in routine outs for the Dukes’ fielders. Sloan, content with his low pitch count of 17, understood it would serve him well later in the game. As he introduced his off-speed repertoire, the game became progressively easier.
In the fifth inning, one of the fans on York’s side loudly announced that Sloan had a no-hitter going. A collective groan ensued, with spectators voicing their disapproval at the supposed jinx. Sloan simply chuckled, dismissing any superstition, and proceeded to finish the game in style, tallying nine strikeouts in a commanding 5-0 victory.
Student of the game
Since forgoing hitting after breaking his ankle on the basepaths as a sophomore, Sloan has adapted to a true throwing program — a luxury most high schoolers cannot afford when they also play the field between starts. The Wake Forest signee pitches every Monday. Depending on how his arm feels the day after, he will throw from 60 feet to promote circulation. After a day off, he will long toss and then throw a bullpen to work on things the day after. The rest of the week leading up to his next start includes throwing on flat ground to get a feel for each of his pitches.
In addition to throwing, his trainers at BSF Performance, James Young and Logan Schmitt, create a workout routine for him each week. He will have four or five lifting days, with a couple of recovery days mixed in, while also working on cardio and mobility. According to Young, when Sloan was traveling for showcases every weekend this past summer, the star pitcher always texted him a picture of the hotel weight room asking what to do.
“I think this is where Ryan sets himself apart. He has all the talent in the world but his pursuit to get better is really impressive,” Young said. “I think there are a lot of talented guys that underestimate what it takes to survive at the next level and fail to develop a routine now. Ryan is incredibly mature and doesn’t get too high or too low.”
Even during showcases, Sloan actively seeks feedback to refine his game. When he pitched in the USA PDP event, eight out of the nine batters he faced were lefties, exposing his lack of a putaway pitch against them. Aware of the potential repercussions of predictable backdoor and backfoot sliders against top hitters, Sloan recognized the need to add a changeup. Before facing the predominantly left-handed lineup a second time, he sought insights from 10 to 15 players at the event, delving into their changeup mechanics and situational cues for throwing them.
Tennessee commit Aidan Hayse advised him to grip the changeup like a two-seam fastball but focus on putting the ball deeper in his hand and ripping his middle finger down on the release. That made the pitch rollover and killed its spin, resulting in nearly 18 inches of horizontal break. He threw four changeups in a row to projected top-15 pick PJ Morlando in Game 2 as a test. Morlando swung over it twice, so Sloan knew it had the potential to be a good pitch. Once he became more comfortable with it, it developed into a great pitch.
“It helped out a ton because you don’t see a lot of prep guys or even college guys with really good changeups, so I feel like it’s not really a lost art but it’s just a great pitch,” Sloan said. “I can throw it to righties, lefties, any count and know that I can get it over the plate, or if I need to bury it, I can throw it in the dirt as well. I just think it’s helped out a lot for me becoming a starter profile.”
Sloan’s four-seamer is a true ride fastball with vertical movement, which suits his arm slot well, but he can also manipulate it to cut outside or tail inside to righties when he wants. He has enough confidence and command of his slider to throw it in any count, and now an advanced changeup that can keep even the best hitters off-balance. All the tools are there. The key is learning how to maximize those tools.
The 6-foot-4 fireballer has worked tirelessly to educate himself on the mental side of pitching. He often asks his showcase teammates about pitch sequencing and how they approach different situations. Working with Schmitt at BSF Performance introduced him to the concept of tunneling, which basically designs two completely different pitches in a way that makes them look the same out of the hand. For example, if Sloan throws a fastball up and in against a righty and then a slider away on the next pitch, both will start in the same spot and look the same for the first 30 feet before the slider starts breaking, giving the hitter much less time to decide whether to swing at it.
Sloan’s affinity for numbers has him eyeing a finance degree at Wake Forest. His knack for statistics extends to interpreting data from the TrackMan machine at the Bo Dome, providing insights into his pitch performance—release angle, spin rate, and horizontal movement. This analytical approach allows him to fine-tune his pitch shapes effectively.
But Sloan’s dedication for improvement does not end there. One time when Sloan and Wake Forest pitching coach Corey Muscara both had their flights delayed out of Charlotte Airport, they passed the time by walking up and down the terminal for an hour, discussing how to enhance pitch movement, varying looks better while holding runners on base, and other small details the average fan may not notice on TV. Sloan’s thirst for knowledge is a big reason why he elevates his game year after year, according to York Dukes head baseball coach Dave Kalal.
“Ryan is definitely a student of the game and the art of pitching. He has a tremendous amount of self-discipline when it comes to his routine and understanding what he needs to do to be great,” Kalal said. “He really doesn’t worry about the distractions and noise outside of our team. He doesn’t allow those things to throw him off the course he has in front of him.”
The journey ahead
While Sloan’s spot at Wake Forest is secured, he spent all of last summer proving he could belong on a stage even bigger than college sooner rather than later. In addition to the USA PDP, he participated in the Perfect Game National Showcase, the PG All-American Classic at Chase Field and the Prep Baseball All-American Game in Milwaukee, where he used to attend games as a fan growing up. Yet, it was his experience at the Area Code Games in San Diego that left the most lasting impression.
Fowler Park, home of the University of San Diego Toreros baseball team, is built into the side of a cliff, creating a perspective different from most college ballparks. With steep, amphitheater-style seating rising sharply behind home plate, the venue exudes an aura of intimidation. It was 9 a.m. on the West Coast, and pro scouts filled every single seat. Despite the pressure, Sloan devised a unique strategy to maintain his composure.
“I kind of looked at them as fans, to be honest. We get those types of fans at our state runs, so why not just look at them as fans now?” Sloan explained, stating that he was able to lock in on the catcher despite all of the scouts’ eyes zeroing in on him. “I never want to put pressure on myself. That just doesn’t do any good.”
His performance during each of these events earned rave reviews, landing him at No. 30 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 prospect rankings ahead of July’s amateur draft. Scouts praised his advanced three-pitch mix that could grade as plus once he is fully developed, his strong lower half, and his ability to hold velocity deep in games, declaring that he is “built to eat innings.” He is now developing a cutter which could take his game to another level this spring.
Sloan has had a “good amount” of at-home visits and phone calls with MLB scouts aiming to get to know him since last summer. The projected starter has been mocked as high as 27th overall to the Phillies by Prep Baseball Report, but those projections are not on his radar at the moment.
“Most of my teammates probably look at it more than I do,” Sloan said with a laugh, claiming that they bring it up around him before anyone else sees it. “I’m honored that I’m that high up, but I still got work to do. You can’t become satisfied. Even if I was the number one prospect, I still gotta get better and not get passed by these other guys.”
Sloan considers it a “win-win” no matter where he ends up this summer. If he gets picked in the first round, that organization will likely pay a premium to try and add the workhorse starting pitcher to their prospect pool. If the right-hander decides to go to college first instead, he will land in a “pitcher’s paradise” that has a proven track record of boosting draft stocks and providing a valuable education.
The top-ranked prep arm has chased Division I and MLB goals since he first picked up a baseball, but he still has unfinished business to take care of with his York Dukes teammates beforehand. When asked if he envisions what his college or pro debut will look like in the foreseeable future, he promptly dismissed the notion.
“Not really,” he said in a relaxed tone. “I’m looking right now. I’m looking in the present.”