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To anyone from Southeastern Massachusetts my title means something to you. If you’re anything like me it signifies the first time in your life you were severely disappointed. I can still remember packing into my parent’s station wagon with another family my parents were friendly with. We were headed to the “World Famous King Richard’s Faire“. Six year old Ralph couldn’t believe I was headed to THE fair of THE King Richard. I mean he was the best king ever, and here I am headed to his fair! Me, lowly 6 year old Ralph with a golden bowl cut! Welp, much like everything else in life since, it was a massive disappointment. What was supposed to be a day of jousts, knights, kings and princesses, quickly turned into reality. That reality was drunk bikers with swords, mutton, and the inescapable smell of feces and urine. The strangest part is it smelt just as much like urine as it did poop. It was as if the two smells were competing for dominance, each pushing itself to it’s limits but neither overtaking the other. Needless to say I never went back. I could have, but I did better things with my time like drinking or masturbating. What does this have to do with Garrett Richards and his most recent start? Well let’s just say I was excited, only to be disappointed. That’s my big market tease, trust me you’re bound to be disappointed…

Scouting Report: It’s been 16 months since Garrett Richards the former Angels ace(?) consistently pitched. An elbow injury that should have required Tommy John ended his 2016, and Richards opted for a new Biometric procedure. He was reported to have been throwing pain free in the spring, but still saw his season all but end following a biceps injury back in April. Today we take a look at Richards return, as he makes his second start of the season and first in 5 months. But really he’s 16 months removed from healthy, and there’s a lot of questions surrounding his choice not to not go under the knife. The pitcher we’ll watch today is not the same guy who left us back in May of 2016. Richards has ditched his changeup, and replaced it with fastball usage particularly on his high spin rate four-seamer. He features two fastballs, first a four-seam fastball with mid-high 90’s velocity, and a low to mid 90’s sinker. He relies heavily on the two pitches throwing his four-seamer 54% of the time while featuring the sinker 13.4% of the time. Meaning 67% of his usage is on fastballs, take that Larry Rothschild! His slider is used 26.8% of the time, and features higher velocity than normal, sitting low 90’s to high 80’s. The slider generates a fair amount of groundballs, and gets a lot of swings and misses with a 17% SwStr. He rounds out his arsenal with a flyball generating curveball, that also gets swinging strikes in the mid-teens. He tends to use the curveball to lefties, and working mostly fastball-slider to righthanded batters. Previously he had relied heavily on his changeup versus lefties.

Quick Note: Richards is only expected to throw about 50 pitches so instead of going through pitch by pitch for each at bat I’ll provide general summaries of each frame.

Garrett Richards vs The Oakland Athletics September 5th, 2017 @ Oakland Alameda County Coliseum

First Inning

The first could not have gone better, as Richards only needed five pitches to get out of the inning. Velocity was in the high 90s, touching 97 on a couple of pitches. He also generated three groundball outs. Great inning but lets see what Richards can do with his breaking stuff.

Second Inning

Richards began to mix in the slider in the first at bat of the second frame versus noted fastball slugger Khris Davis, a player known for his struggles against breaking balls. Below you can see Richards freezing Khrush on a 90 MPH slider in the second inning that rung up Davis.

The pitch has nice 12 to 6 movement, and he does a good job to not overthrow it despite how hard it is. You can see Richards ringing up Matt Olson below on the pitch for his second consecutive strikeout to start the second.

He featured a few against Jed Lowrie with absolutely devastating movement. A second 1-2-3 inning to start the game, as Richards stuff looks as crisp as ever.

Third Inning

Opened the inning by continuing where he left off, getting weak ground ball contact from catcher Bruce Maxwell. He followed that up with a walk to Matt Chapman on 7 pitches, 5 of which were fastballs. Though it should be noted he got squeezed on a 2-2 slider that 100% was a strike, before walking Chapman on the next pitch. A hard single up the middle on the second pitch of the at bat to Boog Powell put runners on the corners with one out. A groundball to third led to Matt Chapman caught in a pickle as the Angels get the lead runner with two outs. The inning ended on another weak groundball this time off the bat of Matt Joyce.

Fourth Inning

After opening the inning on consecutive hard hits by Jed Lowrie and Khris Davis, the A’s are starting to jump on the fastball.

After going down 2-0 to Matt Olson, Richards battles back to get even the count with consecutive 97 MPH fastballs before pulling the string on the lefty with a nasty curveball.

After giving up a hard hit ball to left on a slider to Chad Pinder, a ball that was misplayed by Justin Upton, Richards day is done. Things really started to unravel this inning.

3.1 IP, 4 Hits, 1 Walk, 1 Run, 3 Ks, 50 Pitches, 32 Strikes, 7 Swinging Strikes, 50 Game Score

Summary: This is a tough one to come to any conclusions on. Going back to my analogy I had a great deal of excitement about Richards, particularly after he opened the game with three very strong innings. However the 4th showed why Richards might not be worth trusting down the stretch. It’s unlikely he’s going to go deep enough into games to give you wins, his K totals won’t pile up enough to matter. Based on the A’s ability to hit both his slider and fastball the second time through the order doesn’t bode well either. I’d have to see Richards get to at least 90 pitches before feeling comfortable enough to roll him out there for the rest of the season.

Razzball Baseball

Updated Top 100 SP

(rankings for ROS based on 12-team Roto)

RANK SP, TEAM
1 Corey Kluber, CLE 
2 Chris Sale, BOS
3 Robbie Ray, ARI
4 Luis Severino, NYY 
5 Clayton Kershaw, LAD
6 Zack Greinke, ARI
7 Max Scherzer, WAS 
8 Jake Arrieta, CHC
9 Justin Verlander, HOU 
10 Stephen Strasburg, WAS
11 Carlos Carrasco, CLE
12 Carlos Martinez, STL
13 Lance McCullers, HOU
14 Rich Hill, LAD  
15 Jacob deGrom, NYM
16 Sonny Gray, NYY
17 Masahiro Tanaka, NYY  
18 Gio Gonzalez, WAS
19 Chase Anderson, MIL
20 Zack Godley, ARI 
21 Trevor Bauer, CLE
22 Gerrit Cole, PIT  
23 Marcus Stroman, TOR
24 Madison Bumgarner, SF
25 Alex Wood, LAD 
26 Yu Darvish, LAD
27 Luke Weaver, STL 
28 Patrick Corbin, ARI
29 J.A. Happ, TOR
30 Lance Lynn, STL
31 Kyle Hendricks, CHC 
32 Ervin Santana, MIN 
33  Aaron Nola, PHI  
34 Charlie Morton, HOU
35 Jose Quintana, CHC
36 Drew Pomeranz, BOS 
37 Hyun-Jin Ryu, LAD
38 Chris Archer, TB
39 Alex Cobb, TB  
40 Jon Gray, COL
41 Tanner Roark, WAS 
42 Dinelson Lamet, SD 
43 Kevin Gausman, BAL
44 Jose Berrios, MIN
45 Mike Clevinger, CLE 
46 Brad Peacock, HOU  
47 Chad Kuhl, PIT  
48 Michael Wacha, STL  
49 Dylan Bundy, BAL  
50 Julio Teheran, ATL 
51 Kenta Maeda, LAD
52 Jake Junis, KC 
53 Zach Davies, MIL  
54 Dallas Keuchel, HOU
55 Collin McHugh, HOU   
56 Cole Hamels, TEX
57 Rick Porcello, BOS 
58 Jeff Samardzija, SF
59 R.A. Dickey, ATL  
60 Jhoulys Chacin, SD  
61 Andrew Cashner, TEX
62 German Marquez, COL
63 Taijuan Walker, ARI
64 Blake Snell, TB   
65  Eduardo Rodriguez, BOS  
66 Brandon Woodruff, MIL
67 Jon Lester, CHC
68 Johnny Cueto, SF   
69 Mike Leake, STL 
70 Jameson Taillon, PIT
71 Michael Fulmer, DET 
72 Jake Odorizzi, TB 
73 Ariel Miranda, SEA 
74 Adam Conley, MIA 
75 Kyle Gibson, MIN
76 Mike Foltynewicz, ATL 
77 Ben Lively, PHI
78 John Lackey, CHC 
79 Jose Urena, MIA
80 Lucas Giolito, CWS
81 Dan Straily, MIA
82 Trevor Williams, PIT
83 Garrett Richards, LAA
84 Sean Newcomb, ATL 
85  Parker Bridwell, LAA 
86 Tyler Mahle, CIN 
87 Doug Fister, BOS 
88 Kyle Freeland, COL  
89 Rafael Montero, NYM 
90 CC Sabathia, NYY
91 Matt Moore, SF
92 Marco Estrada, TOR
93 Robert Stephenson, CIN   
94 Sean Manaea, OAK 
95 Ty Blach, SF 
96 Seth Lugo, NYM
97 Bartolo Colon, MIN
98 Reynaldo Lopez, CWS 
99 Sal Romano, CIN
100 Kendall Graveman, OAK 
  • Only one note this week, and it’s really just words of encouragement. At this point in the season play the matchups, ignore the names, plan your starters and adds. Do what you can to maximize innings, but most of all target the areas where you need help. Sometimes it’s ratios, and really at that point you just need to fight the urge to start anyone that isn’t 100% safe.

Follow me on Twitter @ProspectJesus, and check out my weekly Live Baseball Show on Fantrax YouTube channel Tuesday’s at 9 PM EST