Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 70)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	82	C.J. Wilson	2012	4.54
2	82	Tim Hudson	2007	3.49
3	81	Jake Westbrook	2009	0.00	DNP
4	81	Whitey Ford	1960	3.50
5	81	Bob Veale	1967	4.13
6	79	Johnny Cueto	2017	4.70
7	79	Phil Niekro	1970	4.86
8	77	Tyson Ross	2018	4.39
9	77	Roy Halladay	2008	3.22
10	77	Jake Arrieta	2017	4.38
11	76	Felix Hernandez	2017	4.78
12	76	Tanner Roark	2018	4.49
13	76	Alexi Ogando	2015	3.99
14	76	Clay Buchholz	2016	5.17
15	75	Brandon Webb	2010	0.00	DNP
16	75	Steve Rogers	1981	3.59
17	75	Mike Garcia	1955	4.27
18	74	Warren Spahn	1952	3.26
19	74	Doug Fister	2015	4.89
20	74	Derek Lowe	2004	6.75
21	73	Larry Jackson	1962	4.32	DNP
22	73	Roy Oswalt	2009	4.12
23	73	Roger Clemens	1994	3.22
24	73	Tom Glavine	1997	3.23
25	73	A.J. Burnett	2008	4.43
26	73	CC Sabathia	2012	4.01
27	73	Tom Gordon	1999	5.60
28	73	Orel Hershiser	1990	4.26
29	73	Bill Hands	1971	4.16
30	72	George Pipgras	1931	4.90
31	72	Mel Parnell	1953	3.66
32	72	Carlos Zambrano	2012	5.10
33	72	Ryan Dempster	2008	3.27
34	72	Gio Gonzalez	2017	3.09
35	71	Bob Gibson	1967	3.18
36	71	Bob Lemon	1952	2.99
37	71	Kevin Brown	1996	2.32
38	70	Justin Verlander	2014	4.98
39	70	Don Sutton	1976	3.30
40	70	Jose Mesa	1997	3.06
41	70	Erik Bedard	2010	0.00	DNP
42	70	John Lackey	2010	4.77
43	69	Guy Morton	1924	8.76
44	69	Joe Dobson	1948	4.55
45	69	David Phelps	2018	0.00	DNP
46	69	Justin Masterson	2016	0.00	DNP
47	69	Max Lanier	1947	0.00	DNP
48	69	Lee Meadows	1926	5.04
49	69	Jim Palmer	1977	2.99
50	69	Lefty Gomez	1940	6.59
51	69	Bob Rush	1957	4.85
52	68	Lance Lynn	2018	5.00
53	68	Andrew Cashner	2018	5.71
54	68	Sheriff Blake	1931	6.40
55	68	Yovani Gallardo	2017	5.79
56	67	Cliff Lee	2010	3.56
57	67	Aaron Cook	2010	5.43
58	67	Justin Duchscherer	2009	0.00	DNP
59	67	Doug Davis	2007	4.67
60	67	Anibal Sanchez	2015	5.10
61	67	Mark Buehrle	2010	4.49
62	67	Jack Morris	1986	3.54
63	66	Kris Medlen	2017	0.00	DNP
64	65	David Price	2017	3.62
65	65	Scot Shields	2007	4.32
66	65	Terry Adams	2004	5.27
67	65	Doug Drabek	1994	3.17
68	65	Dean Chance	1972	0.00	DNP
69	65	Johnny Sain	1949	5.73
70	65	Jim Brosnan	1961	3.83
71	65	Kevin Millwood	2006	4.77
72	65	Kelvim Escobar	2007	3.63
73	65	Rick Reuschel	1980	3.85
74	65	Peter Moylan	2010	3.39
75	65	Matt Clement	2006	6.89
76	65	Scott Feldman	2014	4.19
77	64	Wilbur Wood	1973	4.16
78	64	Kevin Gregg	2009	4.98
79	64	Bronson Arroyo	2008	5.22
80	64	Bob Ojeda	1989	3.89
81	64	Adam Wainwright	2013	3.09
82	64	Clem Labine	1958	4.76
83	64	Jered Weaver	2014	3.67
84	64	Jim Johnson	2014	7.59
85	64	Wade Davis	2017	2.45
86	64	Dave Koslo	1951	4.14
87	64	Andy Messersmith	1977	4.75
88	64	Gaylord Perry	1970	3.78
89	63	George Uhle	1930	4.15
90	63	Roberto Hernandez	2012	9.42
91	63	Dizzy Trout	1946	2.70
92	63	Ben McDonald	1999	0.00	DNP
93	63	Francisco Cordero	2006	3.82
94	63	Dock Ellis	1976	3.53
95	63	Jason Marquis	2010	7.21
96	63	Jordan Zimmermann	2017	6.24
97	63	Joe Smith	2015	3.58
98	62	Jack Kramer	1949	5.71
99	62	Barry Zito	2009	4.17
100	62	Dave Goltz	1980	4.78

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		The 2017 season was unkind to the Angels' ace, yet there were a lot of positives when he did step between the foul lines. First and foremost, he pitched. Richards blamed his injuries in part on his changeup, so he hip-pocketed the pitch in favor of a slider that was one of the hardest in the league. It was a successful approach for Richards: The slider induced groundballs around a 75 percent clip and generated a 21 percent whiff rate, which, as the bald bard Larry David might say, is prettay, prettay, prettay good. As always with Richards, it will be more about health than anything else, but here’s hoping 2018 brings the former Oklahoma Sooner good tidings because a healthy Garrett Richards is a fun Garrett Richards.
2017		Richards pitched well in 2016, but he didn’t pitch much. He left his May 1 start due to dehydration, which somehow morphed into a damaged ulnar collateral ligament. Thanks, “according to reports!” Attempts to avoid Tommy John surgery through rest and/or stem-cell treatments often serve only to postpone the inevitable, but in Richards' case the early returns allow cautious optimism and he's been cleared (for now) to rejoin the Angels' rotation in the spring. If he can stay healthy—he’s had knee surgery in the recent past as well—the sinking action on his upper-90s fastball combined with the severe depth of his slider will put him at the top of the rotation for a pitching staff desperately in need of a leader.
2016		After defying traditional trends in 2014 by simultaneously adding velocity while transitioning to longer outings, Richards gave a bit of the bump back in 2015, though his average speed of 96 mph was still higher than it was during his years in relief. The big question surrounding his 2015 performance wasn't velocity, but how his surgically repaired knee would hold up to the rigors of pitching, and he responded by setting a career high in innings pitched. Richards had weak balance in his delivery prior to the injury and the knee woes didn't do his stability any favors. All of his ratios took a step backward, and he led the majors in wild pitches for the second consecutive season, but the scope of Richards' lack of command continued to be obscured by a decent walk rate, as his electric stuff can invoke swings regardless of whether he hits his target.
2015		When asked what was the difference between his two-and-a-half years as underperforming swingman and his breakout 2014 season, the Angels' new ace replied, “The game slowed down for me.” The new state of mound nirvana sped things up for hitters, manifesting in a tick-and-a-half velocity bump in all of Richard's pitches. He accrued strikes at the same rate as 2013, even while pitching out of the zone more often and throwing more breaking balls. He sequenced the strikes better too, allowing him to pitch from ahead in the count more often in 2014 than he had previously. When hitters did put the bat on the ball, they failed to pull for any power. The only thing that Richards didn't do better last year was to maintain the integrity of his left patellar tendon. We can only hope that the damage to his landing leg doesn't permanently disrupt the perfection of his less-than-textbook delivery and send him back into his pre-nirvana, early-career funk.
2014		Richards entered the season as one of the club's best young pitchers�now there's faint praise�and exited no worse for the wear. The Angels used him out of the bullpen at the onset of the year, but an injury to Jered Weaver opened the door for him to make a few starts in late April. He returned to the bullpen until late July, when he rejoined the rotation for a 13-start trial run. The results were good enough that Richards�who does his work with a mid-90s fastball and slider�should be in line to take a back-end rotation spot from the get-go in 2014.
2013		The conventional wisdom had Richards as the Angels� second- or third-best prospect heading into 2012, but Kevin Goldstein wasn�t so confident. �Richards doesn't have a plus secondary pitch, which allows hitters to sit on the fastball and prevents him from racking up the kind of strikeout totals his velocity would suggest,� he wrote, ranking him seventh in the system with the upside of a fourth-starter. Goldstein was right. Richards's fastball had, by far, the best whiff rate among Angels starters, but it wasn�t enough to keep him in the rotation, or guarantee him a turn in this year�s. His walk rate in the minors was 2.4 per nine going into the season; it was 4.2 between Salt Lake and Anaheim. Nobody ever said the higher levels weren�t harder.
2012		Richards threw strikes with impunity in the generous pitching environment of Arkansas' Dickey-Stephens Park, averaging just 13 pitches per inning and earning the start in the Texas League All-Star game. The Angels rewarded him by letting him skip the Pacific Coast League to make his big league debut, which is sort of like the DMV letting you skip parallel parking and giving you a license. Fate jumped in to mess with his head, first assigning him the Yankees in his first start, then making his groin go sproing in the first inning of his home debut. Both of his fastballs are plus pitches, all three off-speed pitches have improved steadily since he was drafted in 2009, and he's got excellent control for a young pitcher. He's ready to eat innings this year.
2011		Richards� control regressed from otherworldly to merely superior in his follow-up to an impressive small-sample post-draft performance in �09, but his prospect status didn�t suffer from his first exposure to full-season leagues, and his peripherals only improved after his late-July promotion to High-A. The righty rides a low-to-mid-90s fastball and a plus curve to above-average strikeout and ground-ball stats, without accumulating the high walk totals that often threaten to derail pitchers with otherwise positive attributes. The former supplemental first-rounder has the highest ceiling in the Angels� system, and could be knocking on the door to the majors before his 24th birthday.
2010		Power college arm Garrett Richards often had trouble finding the plate with his mid-90s heat at Oklahoma; taken with the 42nd pick in the 2009 supplemental phase, he ironed out his mechanics, and is now considered to have frontline potential.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Garrett Richards threw 16,423 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2010 and 2022, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2022, he relied primarily on his Slider (89mph), Change (90mph) and Fourseam Fastball (94mph). He also rarely threw a Curve (77mph) and Sinker (96mph).