Garrett Richards and Being Right for Wrong Reasons

I had Garrett Richards on more than a few teams going into the season. I enjoyed his work. I liked him for the wrong reasons, though.

You see, I thought his changeup had promise. Among young pitchers that didn’t throw their changeup much (late 2013, 25 years old, <10% change usage), Richards’ change showed up as having a good velocity differential (8.6 mph). With an excellent breaker and all that velocity, and a good history of command, I thought the changeup would really tie the room together.

I thought I noticed that he was throwing the change more in late 2014, too. I mean, it really looks like if you look at his Brooks Baseball chart back then:

His change had 16% whiffs that year! He was throwing it more! Go get him!

Nope. Well, yes, but nope. He threw three changeups this year and the pitch was bad — it got zero whiffs. And really I should have known that the pitch was no good. First, the 37-pitch sample in 2013 was not enough to base a dream upon. Second, the changeup had less horizontal movement and less drop than his two-seamer even then. The only thing it had going for it was an eight mile per hour difference in velocity, which isn’t quite the ten you’d like from an excellent change.

So Richards succeeded even though I was wrong about the reasons why. Is there something we can learn from his success?

Of course. You don’t need a changeup to succeed. Many curveballs have reverse platoon splits, so a big curve paired with a sharp slider can be enough to get batters of both handedness. Particularly if paired with big velocity, it seems.

When he debuted, Richards threw nearly six percent changeups and didn’t throw a curveball. Last season, he basically flipped that and threw six percent curves and didn’t throw a change. The curve got 13% whiffs and was above average, and he threw it four times as often against lefties as he did against righties. Something about that big curve ball (6 PFx_x, -12 PFx_z) baffled lefties, too — they hit .094 off the pitch.

Upping his slider usage while keeping its deadliness (17.4% whiffs), plus expanded use of the curve against lefties, plus perhaps a little park-aided homer luck (3.9% home runs per fly ball, the league average is 10%), plus a little bump in velocity (he averaged 96 on the fastball last season), and that’s all that Richards needed. Let’s call it the Richards Plan.

There are not going to be a lot of pitchers that can follow the Richards Plan, but there have to be some out there that can learn from this model. What we are looking for is velocity, a bad changeup, two breaking balls, and a decent park situation. Good control would be a plus.

Wily Peralta
Welp, too late for this one. But maybe we should have realized that Peralta had enough to succeed when we saw that he throws two breaking pitches, and that one of his sliders was actually big and more curve-like. Then again, despite the 96 mph fastball, Peralta still maintains a representative usage of the change, and that probably helps offset his iffy command and bad home park. He’s not necessarily going to fall apart this coming year.

Shelby Miller
Miller has the velocity (94) and the big curve (6.6 Pfx_x, -5.5 PFx_z) and the bad change. With the cutter, he has what he needs already. It’s an above-average pitch that can get righties out, and he just needs to throw it more. Atlanta isn’t as homer-suppressing as Anaheim, but it’s also the National League. Miller can absolutely follow the Richards Plan.

Nathan Eovaldi
We’re going to run out of rope with Eovaldi soon, but let’s not make it all about the changeup. In the slider (17% whiff rate) and curve (11% whiff rate, 7 PFx_x, -7 Pfx_z), he has the tools to succeed. He showed great command last year and has the best homer-suppressing park in the big leagues. He threw about 100 changes to lefties last year, but the curve got more whiffs and more grounders. Maybe all he needs to do is concentrate on the breaking pitches and sequence them better. Even with a little velocity up and down, he averaged 96 on the fastball and cannot be forgotten in 2015.

Zack Wheeler
They’re moving the fences in, and Wheeler might have the worst command on this list, but he’s still a decent fit for this plan. He threw the change more than any of the candidates, but it still only got 9% whiffs. If he focused on the slider (14% whiffs) and curve (14% whiffs), he might have more success. After all, the change had the worst ball rate of any pitch last year (48%) and he’s obviously having trouble with the balls and strikes.

Trevor Bauer
This dude has eight pitches on his Brooks Baseball page. Eight! Only the cutter and the curveball have above-average whiff rates (or double-digit whiff rates at all). With a split finger that got 6% whiffs, a screwball that got nine percent whiffs, and a change that did the same, he could maybe pare down his arsenal. He has a nice home park and 94 mph velocity. Command is still an issue, though, so like Wheeler, he’s not a perfect fit. We could put Jarred Cosart on here, too, but the command is the worst of these three.

There you have it. It’s not a list of no-names, but it is a list of pitchers that may not cost a lot in 2015. And they’ve all got velocity and two breakers, and — if Garrett Richards can be believed — might be all you need.