“In Spring Training they called me in and told me about my slider,” Kyle McGowin recalled in a post game Zoom call after his 2020 debut back on September 5th.
McGowin, 28, started in two of his first 12 big league appearances, and 126 of 134 games in the minors, but this year the Nationals wanted the right-hander to focus on one thing while he worked as part of the 60-Player Pool in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
“They love it a lot,” he was told of his slider. “So they wanted me to focus on using that as a weapon, more so than in the past, as a reliever, so I dedicated the whole time in Fredericksburg learning how to pitch with that pitch all the time, and pitch often with it.