"Yesterday, our prayers were finally answered when Poochie the Dog made his howlingly unfunny debut."
I don't know why, but Garrett Richards debut yesterday afternoon reminded me of that quote from The Simpsons. If you read the headlines this morning, you probably see that Halo Nation is disappointed with the way the double-A callup performed in New York last night. 5 innings, 6 earned runs, 6 hits, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, 2 jacks allowed. After one outing, the Riverside, CA native is 0-1 with an inflated 10.80 ERA. Joel Piñeiro then came in an went 3 innings of 3 run ball, showing that maybe Garrett wasn't all that bad.
If we look a little closer, though, maybe the debut of Garrett Richards was better than we thought. First off, let's point out what this 23 year old was faced with. Richards went from pitching in the Texas League for the Arkansas Travelers, to standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium, throwing the rock against guys like Jeter, Granderson, Teixeira, Cano, Chavez, et al. This was an epic task to ask such a youngster, who hasn't even tried throwing against AAA level talent. When you take that into consideration, it helps put the numbers into perspective.
The nerves were obvious, as the usually steady Richards threw two wild pitches in the start. However, he was throwing strikes, and I think that needs to be appreciated. Over 91 pitches, GR nailed down 59 strikes. That's 65% of his pitches being in the zone, and while that may have gotten him into a little bit of trouble, it is also nice to see, because there is nothing worse than a young pitcher handing out free passes all day. His ground ball to fly ball ratio was also impressive, getting 8 outs on the ground and only 1 in the air. While that might be because everything that went in the air went over the fence, the 8-1 ratio also shows that Garrett was keeping the ball down in the zone more often than not, and that's a great quality.
Finally, I'd like to point out how his debut only looks bad because of two mistake pitches. They both came to Curtis Granderson, and they both resulted in jacks. Granderson hit a three run bomb in the first, and launched a solo in the fifth. If you take those two away, and Richards gets the homerun hitter out in those situations, you're talking about a whole different story. How would we consider his debut if he would have gone 5+ innings of 2 run ball? Much different story, right? Plus, that first homer by Granderson, the one that put a three spot on the board in Richards' first career inning? That's a hard one to bounce back from as a rookie. You never want to give up runs early, and once that happened, it became that much more difficult to get things back on track.
It won't get any easier for Garrett, as his next start will be against the Rangers, if he's still up with the big boys in 5 days. But, at least he'll have the home crowd behind him.
At 64-53, the Halos are 1.5 games back of Texas in the AL West title chase. The Thursday morning special (it actually starts at 10:05 am our time) against the Yankees today should be a fun one. Rookie Tyler Chatwood (6-8, 4.10) goes against former Halo and current fatty, Bartolo Colon (8-6, 3.33). I think this will be a fun one for us Halo fans.
Go Angels Go!
-- Sent from my Palm Prē
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