Pitcher Spotlight: The Amir Garrett Situation

This article isn’t going to blow your mind. It’s actually going to reinforce what you probably already know: Amir Garrett’s command is all over the place and he will continue to labor through outings until it gets addressed. What I will try to do is show you are the two sides of Garrett – the ceiling and the floor – while attempting to illuminate how believable his ceiling is.

So let’s address the elephant in the room right away. Garrett faced the Cardinals yesterday and put up a ghastly line of 4.0 IP, 4 ER, 3 Hits, 5 BBs, 7 Ks. His strikezone plot looked more like a Jackson Pollock than a Giovanni Bellini:

Just look at this. There’s no discernable approach with his Fastball. He tugged plenty of balls into the dirt and glove-side. His Changeup rarely came close to the plate save for two offerings that hung in the middle and one that ended just inside. Roughly the same amount of pitches landed in the middle of the plate than the edges of the plate. This is bad.

But maybe there is more to this. Maybe he’s “effectively wild” where the pitches inside the zone were executed well, with the wild pitches acting as noise in between the good. Or maybe Garrett is lost and we don’t know how deep into the woods he is. Let’s find out.

Fastball

Entering this game, I was a bit excited to watch Garrett. After averaging 91.9 mph with his Fastball in his first 12 starts of the season, Garrett returned to the bigs almost three months later with a 94.9 mph heater. Here I was anxious to see his new velocity for the second straight start and dissect it with his mechanics from early in the season and I was met with this first pitch:

91.9 mph, the exact velocity we saw in the first half. That’s not what I wanted at all. Across this outing, Garrett fluctuated between 89 mph and topped out just over 95 mph, but ultimately averaged just 92.1 mph, which means we’re back to the drawing board. I’m sure you understand that adding three ticks to your Fastball helps mask poor locations, gets more swings out of the zone, and amplifies the effects of secondary pitches. Now with relatively average heat, Garrett is going to have to rely on good ole’ location to get his outs.

So fine, there’s the first pitch of the game, maybe his command is there as he works the at-bat…

So much for that. Garrett walked five in this outing and it stems from his lack of Fastball polish. You could sense that Garrett was wondering how he was going to get ahead of batters each time they stepped up to the plate.

Still, I don’t want to give the impression that he’s incapable of making good pitches. He actually made quite a few, like this one to Randal Grichuk on one of his harder pitches of the afternoon:

This is great! He’s overpowering a right-handed batter with high velocity in a good spot.

Here he climbed back from 3-0 to opposing pitcher Luke Weaver and nailed three straight Fastballs on the outside corner to get the out:

So there is hope, especially in that last at-bat where he mentally adjusted. Getting down 3-0 to the opposing pitcher is the equivalent of having water splashed in your face while waking up. You were going through the motions before, but now we have to get serious and focus. And Garrett did just that to make three perfect pitches in a row. It’s in there. The problem is that it isn’t there often enough.

And it’s a major problem. Here’s a prime example of it not going right as Garrett faced his final batter of the day:

It’s frustrating. In one at-bat Garrett flicks on the light switch and spots his heater flawlessly three times in a row. In another, his Fastball is back to being as wild as ever. I get the bad feeling this is going to be the story of Garrett for a long time.

Slider

Fortunately for Garrett, he isn’t forced to only throw Fastballs. His favorite secondary offering is a Slider that is easily the best pitch in his repertoire with a good amount of movement that misses bats frequently. Just look at how he got two strikeouts in a row with the pitch in the dirt during the first inning:

Even with the top-down camera angle, you can see the depth Garrett gets with the pitch, forcing batters to chase it and head back to the dugout. And there is hope that he can use it to get strikes early in counts too. For example, check out this slide piece that just missed the outside edge:

Considering that he lacks a proper third pitch – we’ll get to his Changeup in a moment – to see Garrett come so close to getting this pitch right gives a bit of optimism that he can turn to his Slider early against right-handers and not get punished.

But like his Fastball, Garrett just can’t control his Slider with consistency. This comes in two forms. First, there is the inability to prevent it from sailing up in the zone:

Then we have Garrett badly missing with his Slider in the dirt on two consecutive full counts, once again to Tommy Pham and Paul DeJong:

This is still Garrett’s best pitch and on the nights that he does well, you will see a ton of Sliders in the highlight reel. But the pitch isn’t good enough to carry him on his own and his command needs to improve across the board first. It’s possible he gets there down the road, but right now it’s a messy situation.

Changeup

You saw the strikezone plot to start this article and you know what’s coming here.

I was awfully tempted to show you one GIF and call it a day. There isn’t a much better summary of Garrett’s current Changeup state than this, failing twice in a row to come close to the plate. (Brief sidenote: Garrett elected to slide-step in the first pitch and quickly eradicated it after. It actually makes it a bit interesting that regardless of what he did with his leg lift, he threw the same ridiculously bad pitch.)

It’s not a surprise that Garrett recognizes that Changeups need to be the weapon against right-handers, but it just isn’t there right now. The philosophy is that batters have an easier time with pitches moving into their bats, making Changeups falling away a better option than Sliders curling toward the plate.

With this in mind, let’s look at the three Changeups that managed to find their way into the zone:

This pitch was supposed to fall off the down-and-away corner and it ended up elevated and inside, but it worked to earn a foul ball for strike two. Can’t say I’m thrilled about this.

That was a 2-1 pitch that lands in the middle of the plate and Garrett is rewarded for strike two. This doesn’t seem all too sharp.

And lastly we have Molina looking for a Fastball and being fed a Changeup right in the middle of the plate. Garrett was able to throw a Changeup for a strike – good – but it’s hard not to feel that Molina should have crushed this pitch instead of slapping the bat at it for a groundout.

These three pitches were the best Changeups he threw in this game. They were also pitches that missed their spots and arguably got results they didn’t deserve. We can’t brush this under the rug because Garrett is going to need this pitch.

Let’s say he figures out his Fastball and Slider. It’s possible that he can go full-on two-pitch pitcher but that’s a rarity and the hefty majority of pitchers in this league need that third option in their arsenal not just to show something new during the third time through the order, but also to survive the first two turns.

Conclusion

I understand the appeal of Garrett. He has a decent amount of deception with his Fastball and when he can locate his heater and set up his Slider, it will be a difficult time for batters. His Slider has the swing-and-miss movement that will keep strikeouts in play each time he starts and don’t forget, he hinted at mid 90s velocity.

However, the lack of depth in his repertoire mixed with the rawness of his 1-2 pitches makes him an arm that I just can’t trust on a daily basis. There will be flashes of brilliance that could last across an entire evening, but his current state dictates a rough road ahead. I wouldn’t be investing heavily on Garrett making the necessary adjustments in the 2018 season.