Garza Rising

by R.J. Anderson on Jun 21, 2008 11:42 AM EDT

- With nine more innings Matt Garza will top his previous career high workload in the majors, although it means virtually nothing, given he pitched more than 90 innings in the minors, it will be interesting to see if Garza can reach the 180 innings mark.

- His strikeout totals aren't exactly what we expected, and combine his eight strikeouts from last night with the 10 from May 28th game against Texas and they make up 40% of his total strikeouts. Something that could be encouraging, Garza's pitches got 18 whiffs last night, a season high, the next highest is now nine from his previous start against the Marlins.

- Garza has had a pretty good run as of late, four of his last five starts he's thrown more than 60% strikes, and over those 30.3 innings Garza has upped his strikeout per nine ratio to 7.72, his season average remains at 5.42 keeping his walk ratio at 2.38, season average is at 3.38.

- One other thing that is encouraging, his HR rate has dropped from 1.16 to 0.96 over the past two starts.

Whatever the hell Ken Ravizza told Garza, it's seemingly playng some role in his mini-breakout.

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Comments

Not sure what is Garza's best strengths are

It is almost that he is 2 different pitchers. Some games he is a high GB low K pitcher (northwest quad) and some games like last night he is a Low GB high K pitcher (southeast quad). He can certainly be very effective either way. It would be nice if he could move to a NE quad pitcher but I am not sure that he can get to that point. And as I said, he does not need to to reach his projection.

RJ is not an elitist douchebag who hates scouting

by ttnorm on Jun 21, 2008 12:03 PM EDT reply actions

And a reference for those who may not know what you're talking about

Regarding pitcher quadrants.

by R.J. Anderson on Jun 21, 2008 12:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks

SW quadrant = BAD

RJ is not an elitist douchebag who hates scouting

by ttnorm on Jun 21, 2008 12:37 PM EDT up reply actions

Back to the point

While I’d love to see Garza manage to morph into a NE Quad guy like say oh maybe Roy Oswalt (their repetoire is similar), I have a feeling that his personality is a high K guy but his better game might be relying on his heavy 2 seamer and getting boring outs with his defense. To 2 seam or to 4 seam, that is the question.

RJ is not an elitist douchebag who hates scouting

by ttnorm on Jun 21, 2008 12:43 PM EDT up reply actions

I don't mind him going either route

But if he’s going to be a groundball pitcher with a low k rate, he needs to limit his walks. His K:BB ratio when he has been pitching in that mold has been just unacceptable, and his success won’t sustain itself.

by Patrick L. Kennedy on Jun 22, 2008 3:04 AM EDT up reply actions