Yes Coonrod is 28, but his stuff is present. Also, he is not alone in terms of pitchers that had success with high velocity after being converted to the bullpen from the starting rotation. This statement though is ridiculous and implies sustained failure as a reliever. The facts in context:
2017 - Age 24 - Mediocre starter in AA.
2018 - Age 25 - Converted to relief AFTER TOMMY JOHN SURGERY CAUSES HIM TO MISS MOST OF SEASON
2019 - Age 26 - First sustained relief. High ERA in AAA but misses bats. Gets callup and pitches decently with a 3.58 ERA. Not a great season but the stuff got him a callup where he was not awful
2020 - Age 27 - Pitched poorly but only 14.2 IP. 98 mph average fastball. PANDEMIC SEASON WITH LAT INJURY LATE.
He has less than 100 IP in his career of real bullpen experience when one discounts the tandem starts when he was in rookie ball. But your entire analysis is based on sketchy major league experience in the last 2 years where 1 year was actually decent. And he came back really quickly after TJ surgery so he may not have been all the way back in 2019.
He is definitely all projection, but portraying him as a failed reliever is just flat out wrong. Ragsdale has almost zero college experience because of TJ surgery but there we just look at his stuff? The same is true for both.
Small addition - from this tweet it seems they are the same type of player. Big guy with a fastball that projects in relief. Coonrod was a 5th round pick. Ragsdale 4th underslot so he probably rated 6th-7th round. No idea if it is a good deal but it is really the classic non-deal of teams shuffling the present for the future with fringe big league players. The new front office should get the benefit of the doubt here before we know better.
https://twitter.com/kileymcd/status/1348001697428361216