Garret Richards is becoming a pitcher. 10 years into his professional pitching career.
I have been very hard on this guy since he got to Boston. The first impressions were less than stellar. You show up to Boston with a haggard caterpillar on your lip and no jacket you better have some thick skin. Until recently it seemed as though this was not the case for Heim Bloom’s $10 Million Dollar man.
The Sticky Icky Ohh Wee - Gate scandal that swept MLB this past month affected Richards on what felt like an emotional level. The man sounded like he was having a nervous break down. Like the game had betrayed him. Stabbed him in the back like a scorned lover.
However with some of of his more recent comments he may be redeeming himself.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” he said. “I never was a Spider Tack guy. I’ve never even seen a jar of Spider Tack, I’ve never seen a Pelican Grip jar or anything. When I got to the big leagues in 2011 and I was having trouble gripping the ball, this is what was shown to me. To be honest with you, I don’t know a lot of people over the years that didn’t at least use rosin and sunscreen. The Spider Tack stuff came around the last couple years but like I said I’ve never even seen that stuff. I feel like the people using that stuff were not talking about it. So it is what it is, some people might have taken it a little too far.”
This article in The Athletic chronicles Richards’ struggle with the crack down on the Sticky and developing a changeup to help him survive on planet Earth. To be honest the way he talked about this still annoyed me. Baseball players are just such mental head cases. They need to be so comfortable to perform it drives me insane.
“It’s the confidence part of it,” he said. “To take a new pitch into a game and throw it as much as I did, it’s a big step. I’d been working on it in catch-play here and there after the Tampa start. I’m glad it came as naturally as it did. I’ve been able to slow things down and wrap my brain around how to throw it and along with my other pitches, things are moving in the right direction.”
“I didn’t walk anybody, I gave up a bunch of hits,” he said. “But for the most part I located the ball pretty well. In the first inning I just didn’t put guys away with two strikes, I was still kind of finding my release point with the slider and that came as the game went on. There was a lot of good that came out of the other night.”
You literally have to create a new pitch because they won’t let you wear sunscreen? Sure man. To each their own though. It’s taken you 10 years to learn how to actually pitch and not throw. At least he can admit it now.
Nevertheless, he admits now the sunscreen and rosin probably did help with more than just grip and that he does have some conflicting feelings about being a part of it all.
“It kind of opened my eyes now,” he said. “Do I feel a little bit like, ‘Damn we were doing something wrong the whole time?’ Yeah, I do feel that way. But in all fairness, I don’t think we knew we were doing something wrong. So we’re just a product of an era, just like any other era, there was the steroid era, now we’re the sticky era so we’re working through it.”
After allowing 10 runs — nine earned — in 7 ⅓ innings over his last two starts, Richards has understandably been frustrated and admitted he might have been a bit dramatic in his post-game media sessions.
“I’m not really reinventing myself, maybe the other day I misspoke when I said I’m trying to learn how to pitch again,” he said. “Just trying to make what I have right now the best it can be and having to do it in the middle of the season kind of sucks. But I’m not giving up. I’m never going to quit. I’ve been in this game for a while and this isn’t the first bump in the road the game has thrown at me or anybody else.”
So, he’s just a big sensitive dumb dumb? I get it. Cheating is in the fiber of baseball. Who’s to say what’s legal? Richard’s says he wasn’t a spider tack guy but had a mental breakdown when they took sunscreen away? No problem. I’ll buy it. I just appreciate that he admitted to overreacting initially because, ummm ya think? Hopefully we’re seeing the “never quit” attitude from his teammates is rubbing off. Baby steps with captain cold sleeves.
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