Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.
When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.
This time, I’m taking a look at Angels starter Garrett Richards.
A rather heralded prospect entering 2011, Garrett Richards had a mostly disappointing year in Double-A–yes, his 3.15 ERA was shiny, but striking out just 103 batters in 143 innings in the Texas League, especially for a 23-year-old, is hardly dominating. The righthander got some intermittent work with the big-league Angels late in the year, accumulating 14 innings as a swingman.
While the mediocre bat-missing performance in Double-A casts some doubt on what sort of upside Richards has, it was abundantly clear in the big leagues that he brings some serious arm strength to the mound. He fires the ball in at 92-96 mph with cut and sink with a relatively clean (if arm-heavy) delivery.
The ball moves so much on him that Richards hasn’t quite mastered his fastball command yet–his 63.6% strike rate with the pitch was about average, and it comes with a low number (14.6%) of called strikes. However, the combination of velocity and movement makes the pitch tougher to hit than most fastballs, and therefore he came up with a good 7.9% swinging strike rate with it. All three of those numbers had a reverse platoon split, as the cutting action on his fastball makes him tough on lefthanders. However, he doesn’t work the inner part of the plate to them as much as he should:
Against righthanders, Richards left a lot of fastballs down the middle, which explains his lower called and swinging strike rates on the pitch:
The reverse platoon split with the fastball is key for Richards’ viability as a starter, because he’s basically a two-pitch pitcher. He used his changeup–an 84-87 mph offering without much movement–quite sparingly in his MLB action, instead opting for a fastball/slider approach not unlike that of fellow Los Angeles starter Ervin Santana.
Richards’ slider comes in at 84-87 mph, like the changeup, and he relies heavily on the pitch. It can get overly big and slurvy at times, but it’s a solid groundball pitch when it’s working. Richards has a good sense of location with the pitch, as he pounds the lower half of the strike zone with it:
Perhaps there’s a few too many hanging pitches up in the zone there, but don’t get too worked up over that–even the most precise of pitchers will hang a breaking ball more often than you’d think. The key is that Richards got strikes on over two-thirds of his sliders, including a solid 21.7% called strike rate. Still, though, the pitch is more of a solid-average, groundball-oriented offering than a true plus pitch, and its 10.8% whiff rate reflects that.
And that leaves Richards in a sort of weird area. You don’t see a whole lot of starting pitchers who can average 94 mph and get good fastball movement, while also snapping off a solid breaking pitch and showing average-plus command of both offerings, so it’s easy to fall in love with that. For all that velocity and movement, though, Richards doesn’t really have a true swing-and-miss offering, and furthermore, he’s basically just a two-pitch pitcher without a whole lot of deception.
I have little doubt that Richards, health permitting, can soak up innings as a fourth or maybe even a third starter in the big leagues, but he’d have to come up with a swing-and-miss changeup (or maybe add an overhand curve?) to project to miss enough bats to really advance beyond that. Given his grade of arm strength, I thus have to wonder if he’s best-suited as a back-of-the-bullpen reliever. Then again, the Angels don’t exactly have a whole lot of young pitching depth in the minors, so he may stay in the rotation out of necessity. He certainly should hold his own in that role, but he’ll be 24 in May and isn’t likely to acquire more velocity, so barring an unforeseen step forward in another area, expect competence rather than greatness.
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