Garrett Richards: Savior
Well. Didn't see that coming. Nope.
If you have been watching Red Sox baseball so far this year, you’ve probably learned two things. First, the Red Sox can hit. Second, Garrett Richards isn’t very good.
OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. You might have also learned that J.D. Martinez is back, Rafael Devers is awesome, and Matt Barnes will crush anyone and everyone without remorse, but it’s true that Richards has had a rough go of things so far.
How rough? His 6.48 ERA probably undersells it. Richards has walked 13 in 16.2 innings coming into Tuesday’s game. Walking 13 in 16+ innings is bad, but it’s even worse when you give up 14 runs (12 earned) and strike out 12. Put simply, when the K% is below the BB%, that’s bad. That’s where Richards was.
Then came yesterday.
Actually, before yesterday came other days, and Richards spent those other days working on fixing his pitching mechanics. Pitching is very complicated, but a good rule of thumb can be to simplify things as much as possible. It’s vital for a pitcher to be able to repeat his mechanics, so when things get to complex, it’s very difficult to repeat a delivery, mechanics get altered pitch to pitch and, that leaves you with scattershot control, or exactly what had plagued Richards coming into Tuesday’s game with the Mets.
During the time since his last start, Richards changed some things up. Here’s a side-by-side of his old mechanics (on the right) and his new mechanics (on the left)
He ditched the whole step back and turn, opting instead to go essentially from a windup position. It might not seem like much, but the effect was dramatic. Certainly the results were as well, as Richards threw 70 of his 93 pitches for strikes over seven innings, giving up one run (a solo homer), striking out 10, and walking nobody. That’s right. The guy with the walk rate higher than his strikeout rate struck out 10 and walked none.
Well, you might say, yeah, but he did it against the Mets and the Mets can’t hit. OK, fair point, except, did you know the Mets lineup is one of the best at avoiding strike outs, tied for third in baseball? And, while you’re pondering that, the Mets are also good at taking walks, ranking ninth in BB%. So what Richards did was actually pretty spectacular on multiple levels.
Now that Richards has figured out how to repeat his delivery, I’m quite curious to see if he can repeat his success next time out.
deGrom On Tap
If Richards wasn’t spectacular, the Red Sox would have lost, a fact made more upsetting by the fact that the Mets pitcher on Wednesday is Jacob deGrom, who is in the midst of a peak-Pedro streak. deGrom has struck out 49 percent of the batters he’s faced this season, and he’s not a reliever running hot for six innings. This is over 29 innings. That’s 50 strikeouts to go along with one earned run (four actual runs) and three walks. So, if you hope to not get swept, kinda gotta win that first one, and that doesn’t happen unless Richards goes back to the drawing board. Lots of credit to him and pitching coach Dave Bush for recognizing what the problem was and putting in the work to fix it.
Dalbec
The young first baseman has had a rough go of things to start the year. After homering seemingly every third at-bat last season after getting called up and keeping that going during Spring Training, Dalbec entered yesterday’s game homerless on the season.
I figured it’s just a matter of time before the massive first baseman knocked one over the wall, so over the past week or so, before every Dalbec at-bat, I tweeted that he was going to hit a homer. A sample of said tweets:
So I didn’t think too much of it when, continuing the joke, I tweeted this out today.
I sent that tweet about 10 seconds before this happened.
Sad to see my silly joke go boom, but good to see Dalbec finally get one. For all the fun though, the guy still has an OPS below .700, though that’s something a small homer barrage could probably fix. Maybe once the Texas series starts in a few days…
More deGrom
As inevitable as a loss on Wednesday feels, the Mets are actually 2-2 in Jacob deGrom’s starts this season, a statement that feels insane given the fact that we’re talking about a guy who has given up one earned run in 29 innings. So how do you beat deGrom? Well, you don’t beat him, but you can sort of out-last him.
In his first game of the season he was apparently on a smaller pitch count, as he lasted six innings against the Phillies despite throwing just 77 pitches. He left with the score 2-0, Mets but New York lost 5-3.
His second game, he threw eight innings against Miami, striking out 14 without a walk, but gave up a solo homer. He left the game after eight innings down 1-0. The Mets lost 3-0.
His third game, he threw six innings and gave up three runs in Colorado, easily his worst start of the season so far. In that start he also struck out 14 , walked one, and allowed a solo homer. That was part of a double-header so the game was only seven innings long, thus Edwin Diaz came on to close what became a 4-3 Mets win in the seventh.
In deGrom’s fourth game he threw nine innings of two-hit, no-run ball against Washington. Oh yeah, he struck out 15 without any walks. The Mets won that game 6-0.
So what have we learned? The way to beat deGrom is to get him out of the game and take your chances with the Mets bullpen. That is difficult though because while deGrom strikes out a lot of hitters, he doesn’t walk almost anyone, so his pitch count stays pretty reasonable. In his complete game shutout against Washington he threw just 109 pitches.
This doesn’t exactly play into the Red Sox hands, as they don’t have a very patient lineup. But then taking pitches clearly isn’t the way to beat deGrom anyway, as that’ll just put you behind in the count and more likely to be his next strikeout victim. The way to beat him then is to swing away, hope he’s off his game a bit and leaves a pitch in a hittable location, and you don’t miss it and get some hard contact. It’ll be a huge challenge for Boston. But, the good news is, even if the Red Sox lose, they made it a bit easier to swallow by winning on Tuesday.