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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 21, 2021 18:52:40 GMT -5
but his spin control is incredible
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Post by scrappyunderdog on Apr 21, 2021 20:34:32 GMT -5
Awful appearance by Richards. And I think TO helped him a lot. Ill-advised swings:
Grichuck 2-0 Gurriel 2-0 Semien 2-0
At least 4 batters swinging on the first pitch. With as incredibly wild as Richards was, I'd have told all the batters (maybe not Vlad) to wait until Richards threw them a strike.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 2:35:55 GMT -5
richards stinker
4.2/4/4/4/6bb/2k/92-48
and
gas can taylor 1.0/3/2/2/2bb/2k/24-13
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 2:54:13 GMT -5
Richards: ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed’ Red Sox right-hander battles command, cold weather in loss to Jays2:55 AM ADT Ian Browne Ian Browne @ianmbrowne Richards strikes out Palacios BOSTON -- With the wind whipping around Fenway Park on a chilly Wednesday night, Garrett Richards felt a lot like a carpenter who was missing most of his tools. The 4 2/3 inning-performance was quite simply a grind that was exemplified by the stat line that came with it in the Red Sox’s 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays. Richards had six walks (one shy of a career high), hit a batter and uncorked a wild pitch. He pinned his team in a 4-0 hole by the time it came to bat in the bottom of the second inning. “I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night, release point, the elements, kind of a combination of a lot of stuff,” Richards said. “Just tried to get some outs, didn’t really have a whole lot going tonight, obviously not good. We had a chance there at the end to win the ballgame and [we were] fortunate for that. Just doing some work in between before the next start, doing some release point stuff and some delivery stuff [fixes].”
On a classic April New England night -- it was 55 degrees at first pitch and tumbled colder throughout the night -- Richards had a hard time commanding his arsenal. The start of the game was delayed 31 minutes due to rain.
It had an impact, Richards conceded.
“I mean, we had rain tonight, it was cold. You know, there's a lot of things going on. But that's not an excuse. Got to be better. You got to make pitches and you got to get outs,” he said.
The lanky righty also hopes for some warmer weather. The Southern California native who spends his offseasons in Arizona had only pitched for the Angels and Padres before this season.
“I mean, I didn't even pack a jacket for a season until this year. So I'm going on my ninth, almost 10th year [in the Majors],” Richards said. “So, yeah, it's something different, but it's nothing that can’t be dealt with. I’ve just got to make adjustments. I'm not making excuses. I’ve just got to figure out a way to get it done.”
Though Richards is 0-2 with a 6.48 ERA in his first four starts for the Red Sox, he will get the chance to make the necessary adjustments in the next turn through the rotation.
With an off-day coming up on Monday, manager Alex Cora would have the option of skipping Richards so he could work out his mechanical issues and pitch refinement. However, Cora said he isn’t considering that option.
“No, he can work on it in between starts,” Cora said. “He’s an established big leaguer with a track record.”
Per baseball savant, Richards had a fastball-heavy mix on Wednesday, as 66 of his 92 pitches (72 percent) were heaters. The problem was that just 34 were for strikes (52 percent).
Interestingly, Cora thinks the slider is the bigger issue for Richards, though eight of the 14 he threw were strikes against the Blue Jays.
“He's been working on it, but we have to find it, we have to find that pitch,” Cora said. “It's hard to maneuver a big league lineup with one pitch and it seems like it's been that way during the season. If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball, too, we're going to have the guy that we envisioned before the season.”
The curveball has been an effective weapon for Richards in his four starts, but he threw just nine of them against the Blue Jays, getting six strikes and three whiffs.
“I'm throwing a lot more curveballs now so I feel like throwing two breaking balls isn't the easiest thing to do from a pitching standpoint,” Richards said. “So in a way I feel like maybe my curveball has taken a little bit of feel away from my slider. But that's work that needs to be done in between [starts]. So we're going to continue to hammer that and then improve that, and hopefully kind of get to a finished product soon.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Richards is struggling with command at this point of the season. Remember, injuries have robbed him of repetition.
From 2016-20, Richards threw just 198 2/3 innings. It might just take him getting out there every fifth day for a sustained period to get back in rhythm.
“I haven’t really been out there in the last several years. But yeah, it’s not something that I’m super concerned with. Obviously I want to do better and pitch better,” Richards said. “Yeah, it’s a constant grind. Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things. I’ll get [with pitching coach Dave Bush] tomorrow and kind of see what we can improve. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:35:51 GMT -5
Red Sox fall behind early, lose to Blue Jays By Julian Benbow Globe Staff,Updated April 22, 2021, 1:05 a.m.
A 30-minute rain delay on a night where temperatures barely cracked 50 degrees are by no means unusual conditions for baseball in Boston.
But for Garrett Richards, the entire concept was foreign. Up until this season, he had spent the first 10 years of his Major League Baseball career in the parts of California that never rain — Los Angeles and San Diego.
“I mean, I didn’t even pack a jacket for a season until this year,” he said.
It’s another part of pitching for the Red Sox that Richards will have to get adjusted to.
After seeing the 32-year old starter bounce back from an ugly opening-day debut with back-to-back solid outings, Sox manager Alex Cora hoped that Richards would find control over his slider and give the Sox six or seven innings Wednesday against the Toronto Blue Jays on the back end of a snappy two-game series.
The slider, to Cora, was the keystone for Richards. But Richards was still searching for the feel.
“The slider is not where we want it to be or where he wanted to be,” Cora said. “I do believe when the slider starts playing, he’s going to be dominant.”
Richards couldn’t deliver the deep start Cora was looking for. And over his 4.2 innings of work in the Sox 6-3 loss, his slider was still elusive.
Richards fell to 0-2 on the season after giving up four runs on four hits and six walks.
“I just think the delivery was off a little bit the whole night,” Richards said. “And just kind of fighting it the whole night. Then obviously just couldn’t get my release point under control. So just kind of a combination of things. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
He was barely able to get to his slider — throwing it just 15 times, nine for strikes — and when he did, the Jays did damage.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was 2 for 3 with an RBI single off his slider in the first inning.
“I don’t know why he had trouble commanding, but that put him in a bad spot, right,” Cora said. “He finishes out strong, but we’ve got to find a way to throw the slider for strikes. He’s been very inconsistent with it, even in spring training. That’s something that we have to work and try to find it.
Richards had to work himself out of trouble from the start against the Jays.
He started the game by walking Cavan Biggio on four pitches, hitting Bo Bichette on his elbow protector, then giving up an RBI single to Guerrero. But he managed to minimize the damage when he got a double-play ball out of Rowdy Tellez and got out of the inning thanks to a groundout from Randal Grichuk.
But Richards couldn’t find a feel for his fastball and paid for it in a three-run second inning.
He left a four-seamer over the plate to Marcus Semien that Semien slapped to left for a leadoff single. He walked Josh Palacios on five pitches. A wild pitch to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. moved the runners to second and third with no outs and Gurriel scored Semien with a sacrifice fly to right.
With first base open, Richards walked Danny Jansenon four pitches. He got the ground ball he wanted out of Biggio, but couldn’t get the double play to make it worthwhile. Palacios scored from third to give the Jays a 3-0 lead. Then Bichette tacked on with an RBI single to center that stretched the lead to 4.
With no feel for the slider, Richards threw 66 fastballs.
“It’s hard to maneuver a big-league lineup with one pitch,” Cora said. “If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball, too, we’re going to have the guy that we envisioned before the season.”
Richards’ only clean inning was a 1-2-3 third, in which he struck out Grichuk and Palacios.
The Sox cut into the lead when J.D. Martinez gave them a leadoff double and scored two batters later on a ground out from Rafael Devers.
Richards made it to the fifth inning, but after walking Guerrero to lead off then giving a free pass to Semien with two outs, Cora took the ball while the Sox were still in striking distance.
Enrique Hernandez’s RBI double cut the deficit to 4-2.
“The way he finished his outing was a positive,” Cora said. “He gave us a chance actually to stay away from some guys early on and then in the bullpen, we tried to patch it up all the way to the end, but it didn’t happen.”
The Sox made it a one-run game in the eight on Xander Bogaerts’s second homer of a season and threatened to tie it when Christian Vázquez worked a two-out walk and Marwin González reached on an error by Biggio that set up a second-and-third situation. But Bobby Dalbec grounded out to end the inning.
The elements caught Richards off guard.
“We had rain tonight, it was cold, there was a lot of things going on,” he said. “But that’s not an excuse. You’ve got to be better. You’ve got to make pitches and you’ve got to get outs.”
But Richards is still taking the long view with some confidence that he’ll put it together.
“Obviously, I want to do better and pitch better, but it’s a constant grind,” he said. “Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things. I’ll get with [pitching coach Dave] Bush tomorrow to see what we can improve.”
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:44:23 GMT -5
Bill Koch @billkoch25 · 8h Garrett Richards refusing to command here -- 16 of his first 26 pitches have been balls. #RedSox could find themselves in deep early trouble if he can't rescue this.
Far different tone going to the bottom of the 9th now. #RedSox chasing in a 6-3 game.
Damaging inning from Josh Taylor. He's up to a 10.80 ERA. COVID-19 spoiled his 2020 season, but he's yet to find it now in 2021 as well.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:45:06 GMT -5
Bill Koch @billkoch25 · 5h #RedSox are a combined 1-5 when Richards and Houck start. They're 11-2 otherwise.
Boston is 3-0 with both Rodriguez and Pivetta.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:46:03 GMT -5
Bill Koch @billkoch25 · 5h Alex Cora said Garrett Richards needs to find his slider going forward -- 'He can work on it in between starts. He's an established big leaguer with a track record.'
'We have to find that pitch.' #RedSox
Cora said there is no current plan to skip Richards or drop him from the rotation.
'I think he was erratic today. Overall, his three outings, this was the most erratic one.' #RedSox
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:46:51 GMT -5
Bill Koch @billkoch25 · 4h Richards on the elements -- 'I didn't even pack a jacket for a season until this year.'
'It's something different. I have to make an adjustment.'
'We had rain tonight. It was cold. That's not an excuse. You've got to make pitches and get outs.' #RedSox
Richards said he's having a hard time finding some feel for his two breaking balls.
'In a way I kind of feel like my curveball is taking a little bit of feel away from my slider.' #RedSox
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:47:58 GMT -5
Bill Koch @billkoch25 · 4h Replying to @billkoch25 Richards on why he scuffled Wednesday -- 'I don't really know to be honest. Just kind of fighting my delivery, my release point, the elements -- a whole lot of stuff.'
'Didn't have a whole lot going tonight. Obviously not good.' #RedSox
Richards said he's having a hard time finding some feel for his two breaking balls.
'In a way I kind of feel like my curveball is taking a little bit of feel away from my slider.' #RedSox
Richards -- 'It's not something that I'm super-concerned with. Obviously I want to do better and pitch better. It's a constant grind.'
'I just think the delivery was off.'
'I was kind of fighting it the whole night.' #RedSox
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:49:30 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe · 7h Richards is filling up the box score.
He has allowed 4 hits, 4 runs, has 4 walks, 2 strikeouts, 1 wild pitch, 1 hit batter, and has committed an error.
We're a home run and a balk away from some kind of record.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:53:14 GMT -5
Alex Speier @alexspeier · 8h Garrett Richards has no fastball command or control through 2 innings. You rarely see this many misses by this large a margin with a fastball.
Six walks tonight for Garrett Richards, who's done after 4 2/3 innings. Second most walks of his career, surpassed only by a seven-walk outing in 2013.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 3:58:51 GMT -5
Red Sox lose to Blue Jays as the Garrett Richards experiment still isn’t working
By Jason Mastrodonato | jason.mastrodonato@bostonherald.com | Boston Herald PUBLISHED: April 21, 2021 at 11:28 p.m. | UPDATED: April 22, 2021 at 12:13 a.m.
If Garrett Richards could’ve gotten just one of those erratic fastballs in the strike zone, the Red Sox might’ve come away with a different result on Wednesday night.
Unfortunately, Richards looks totally lost on the mound this year.
To say he was erratic would be an understatement. A map of his scattered pitches on the night looks similar to a Georges Seurat painting: dots everywhere.
Richards hit one batter, spiked a fastball about 40 feet in front of him, threw another to the backstop, walked six more and ended the night with 48 strikes on 92 pitches as the Red Sox lost to the Blue Jays, 6-3.
“I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night,” Richards said.
That the Jays somehow managed just four runs off him is a minor miracle in itself. He allowed just four hits in 4-2/3 innings, three of them singles, but the constant foot traffic and seven men he put on base for free are what cost him.
Manager Alex Cora has continued to express confidence in Richards and said he will stay in the starting rotation.
“We’ve got to find a way to throw the slider for strikes,” Cora said. “He’s been very inconsistent with it, even in spring training, that’s something we have to work and try to find it.”
When Richards was signed to a one-year, $10-million contract with an option for 2022, the Red Sox knew they had a bit of a project on their hands. He entered the year with less than 200 innings combined over the previous five seasons. But with his high-90s fastball and sweeping slider, they figured it was a project worth working on.
Through four starts, Richards has been painful to watch. He’s thrown 16 2/3 innings and allowed 14 runs (12 earned) while walking 13 batters and striking out 12.
Of his 321 pitches, only 58% of them have been thrown for strikes, well below the MLB average of 63%.
“I’m throwing a lot more curveballs now so I feel like throwing two breaking balls isn’t the easiest thing to do,” Richards said. “So in a way I feel like maybe my curveball has taken a little bit of feel away from my slider. But that’s work that needs to be done in between starts.”
His stuff is plenty good enough, as evident by a few ridiculous swings generated by Blue Jays batters on pitches that weren’t even close to the strike zone. Several times they had checked swings called strikes on balls in the dirt.
But Richards is so wild that when he does come into the zone, it’s rarely painted on the corners. He hung a few breaking balls, including one to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for an RBI single in the first inning.
Richards’ release point was so off that at one point in the second inning, he threw a fastball into the ground right in front of him.
When runners were on base, Richards looked unsettled. He made three consecutive throws to first to check on Marcus Semien, hitting Semien in the foot on one of them. Then he stood there motionless, looking straight at the catcher while Semien took off and stole second base easily.
“Definitely didn’t get lost behind me,” Richards said. “I was varying my holds, which is one thing I’m good at. I’ve got a good pickoff move and I vary my holds and my timing as part of controlling the running game. Honestly, the stars just kind of aligned right there where he took off at the right moment and I was getting ready to go to the plate.
“I feel like, mentally, I would have balked if I tried to step off at that point. I was getting ready to go. So it just happened to line up perfectly. It doesn’t happen often, but it did that time.”
Later in the inning, all Richards had to do was throw a strike to the Jays’ nine-hitter, Danny Jansen, who was in an 0-for-21 stretch. But Richards walked him on four pitches, and Jansen later came around to score.
All four runs allowed by Richards were scored in the first or second inning. It’s been a common theme this year, as he’s allowed 11 of his 14 runs to score in the first two innings.
He’s constantly putting the Red Sox in a hole, and they’re now 1-3 when he starts and 11-4 with anybody else on the mound.
A few other takeaways:
1. Alex Verdugo had an off-night on defense. With Richards struggling, it looked like Verdugo tried to make something out of nothing on a routine sacrifice fly hit to about normal depth in right field. With the speedy Semien at third base, Verdugo had no shot to get him at home, but fired up a bullet anyways. It allowed the trail runner to take third base easily, and he scored on a groundout two batters later. Then in the ninth inning, Verdugo botched a bouncing single and let it bounce off his leg while the runners advanced. 2. Xander Bogaerts hit a 1-2 breaking ball near his ankles into the Green Monster seats to cut the Jays’ lead to 4-3 in the eighth. He’s liking the ball inside right now. It was his second homer in as many nights after going his first 15 games of the season without one. 3. Josh Taylor blew it in a key spot. With the Sox down just one run entering the ninth, Taylor coughed up two more runs (including one on the Verdugo mistake) to give Toronto a cushion. After missing the entire 2020 season, Taylor has a 10.80 ERA in 6 2/3 innings this year.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 4:00:35 GMT -5
Lou Merloni @loumerloni · 4h You don’t DFA him. You put him in pen like SD did and see if he can help. Long guys are needed
Lou Merloni @loumerloni · 3h Who did you want trailing by a run? Already used Sawamura. Ottavino? Darwin? You chase wins when trailing over a long season and you don’t have guys ready when you have the lead. Taylor needs to be better
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2021 4:01:56 GMT -5
Boston Red Sox won’t move on from Garrett Richards anytime soon, even if he’s erratic and Tanner Houck is knocking | Chris Cotillo Updated 2:00 AM; Today 1:40 AM
By Chris Cotillo | ccotillo@MassLive.com
BOSTON -- No, the Red Sox aren’t considering moving on from Garrett Richards anytime soon, even if Tanner Houck seems to be knocking on the door of a rotation spot.
Though two of Richards’ (0-2, 6.48 ERA) first four starts with the Red Sox have been brutal and Houck has a 1.98 ERA in 27 ⅓ major-league innings dating back to September, Boston isn’t in any rush to make a switch. Simply put, the Red Sox have a lot more to lose if they cut bait with Richards -- one of Chaim Bloom’s most significant off-season additions -- than they do by keep Houck in the minors for the time being.
That leash might shorten a bit with outings like Wednesday’s, as Richards walked six Blue Jays and hit another in 4 ⅔ innings, taking the loss in a 6-3 Red Sox defeat. But considering it’s April 21, expect the club to give Richards a long look in the rotation before putting him in the bullpen or looking for ways to remove him from the roster.
A lot of it comes down to logistics and roster rules. First comes the issue of money, as Richards is guaranteed $10 million -- the highest average annual salary the Sox gave to any free agent this winter -- no matter if the Red Sox cut him before his next start or let him pitch 30 more times. Any player with more than five years of service time can’t be sent to the minors without his consent; Richards has more than eight years under his belt and almost certainly would elect free agency while still collecting his entire salary from the Red Sox.
Houck, on the other hand, can be yo-yoed back and forth between Boston and Worcester exactly the way the Red Sox have done to start the season. It was pretty telling that, despite the righty’s major-league success, the club never really considered putting him in the rotation over Nick Pivetta during spring training. Now, it’s clear club decision-makers view Houck as the team’s sixth-best starter and genuinely feel like -- as a pitcher who is almost entirely reliant on two pitches -- he’s not enough of a finished product to stay in the majors. Bloom and manager Alex Cora have repeatedly lauded the team’s pitching depth as a major strength and having Houck at the ready in case of an injury to a big-league starter is a luxury the Red Sox aren’t taking for granted.
Richards’ erratic outing Wednesday against the Jays will only make the calls for a Houck promotion louder. Though he held Toronto to four runs and kept the Red Sox in the game, Richards had virtually no command and threw 44 of his 92 pitches (47.8%) for balls. The righty relied heavily on his fastball, throwing it 76% of the time, but he couldn’t throw his slider or curveball for strikes, either.
“I just think the delivery was off a little bit tonight,” Richards said. “I was kind of fighting it the whole night. And then obviously, couldn’t get my release point under control. Just kind of a combination of things. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
Richards’ rough debut against the O’s has hung over him for weeks, making it easy to forget he was pretty good in two starts on Boston’s road trip to Baltimore and Minneapolis. At Camden Yards, Richards held the Orioles to two runs on three hits in a 6-4 win, with virtually all of Baltimore’s damage coming on back-to-back homers by Trey Mancini and Anthony Santander in the first inning. Against the Twins, Richards struck out four in five innings, allowing two unearned runs in an eventual 4-3 loss.
That’s two pretty good outings sandwiched in between two rough ones. Also working against Richards is the fact Boston’s other four starters (Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Rodriguez, Martín Pérez and Nick Pivetta) have combined for a 8-2 record and 3.84 ERA in 13 combined outings.
“It’s not something I’m super concerned with,” Richards said. “Obviously, I want to do better and pitch better. It’s a constant grind. Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things.”
For Richards, an Oklahoma native who spent the first 12 years of his professional career with the Angels and Padres, the April weather in Boston is undoubtedly having an impact. Wednesday’s game was delayed 31 minutes due to rain and the temperature dropped into the low 40s during the early innings.
“I didn’t even pack a jacket for a season until this year,” Richards said. “I’m going on my ninth, almost 10th year. It’s something different but it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with. I’ve just got to make adjustments. I’m not making excuses. I’ve got to figure out a way to get it done.”
Richards’ next outing is expected to be Tuesday night at Citi Field against the Mets. Between now and then, he has plenty to work on, with fine-tuning his slider right at the top of the list.
“He can work on it in between starts,” Cora said. “He’s an established big-leaguer with a track record. He has been working on it but we have to find it. We have to find that pitch. It’s hard to maneuver a big-league lineup with one pitch. It seems like it has been that way during the season. If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball good, we’re going to have the guy we envisioned before the season.”
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