7 years agoLos Angeles Angels starting pitcher Garrett Richards is one of the more frustrating pitchers in baseball, as he has dealt with injuries, but has been so good when healthy. Richards was 13-4 with a 2.61 ERA in 2014 before going down with injury and then backed that up with a 15-12 season in 2015, posting a 3.65 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 207 1/3 season. Since 2015, Richards has a 2.31 ERA and 1.14 WHIP, but has only started 12 games (62 1/3 innings), dealing with arm injuries in each season. Given his injury track record, there is no way that Richards can be trusted. That being said, he showed in 2014 and 2015 that he is a very solid pitcher and his performances in short stints of 2016 and 2017 have done nothing to disprove this fact. In albeit short stints, Richards has maintained a K rate of at least 23% in each of the last two seasons and walked just seven batters in 27 2/3 innings last season. He also was throwing hard off of arm injuries in 2017 (95.8mph average on his four seam fastball) and also saw an uptick in speed and usage on his slider in 2017 (89.1mph average is the highest of his career and 33.3% usage is the second-highest). Injuries are difficult to predict, but unfortunately have become a yearly rite for Richards. If healthy, Richards has SP2 upside along with Shohei Ohtani at the top of the Angels' rotation, but that is a big if as of now.--Chris Zolli