Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Clayton Richard

Clayton Richard is a 35-year-old, left-handed pitcher. He has pitched 10 seasons in the majors (8 of them with the Padres). In total he has a 68-79 record, a 4.46 ERA in 265 games, 200 starts.

Over the past two years he’s thrown 356 innings, with a 5.03 ERA. Being a lefty, he has a better time with LHB. Lefties hit .242/.319/.344 against him while right-handers hit .269/.343/.456 last year.

The last two seasons his FIP has been much better than his ERA. In 2017 he had a 4.79 ERA and a 4.23 FIP and in 2018 he has a 5.33 ERA and a 4.68 FIP.

The Blue Jays picked up Richard for Connor Panas on December 30th. Panas was a 26-year-old minor leaguer who played in Double A last year.

Right now he has a spot in the starting rotation. I’m not sure how long he’ll hold onto it. I wouldn’t mind having him as a second lefty in the pen/long reliever. Our radio broadcast team referred to him as an inning eater, which is basically an insult, you never hear someone talk about a good pitcher as an inning eater. Last year he averaged 5.9 innings a start.

PECOTA figures him to pitch 95 innings in 18 starts (just over 5 innings a start) and have a 4.63 ERA. I have no idea what to expect.

Clayton gets a lot of ground balls, 56.8% last year, 59.2% the year before, so we’ll have to play good defense on the infield behind him if he’s going to have any success. Last year he as basically a sinker (54.9% of the time)/slider (27.6% of the time) pitcher. The slider was a new pitch, he hadn’t thrown it before last season.

He’s having a pretty good spring. He has a 3.38 ERA in 10.2 innings, allowing 8 hits, 1 homer, 3 walks and 9 strikeouts.