Better Know Your Blue Jays 40-Man: Trevor Richards

After a week of rapid test negatives, since I had a ‘close contact,’ I was feeling crappy Wednesday. Crappy in the ‘bring round your dead’ way (sure, Tom, start with a joke from 1975). Tested in the morning, still negative, but did another just before bed, which was positive.

I felt much better yesterday, and so far this morning, feeling almost back to normal. Just tired, concentration is gone, and a bit of a runny nose.

I had a busy weekend planned and a bunch of tennis today and tomorrow. So now, all I will do is watch baseball in my bedroom. Ready doesn’t sound all that bad.

Anyway, I still have roughly a dozen of these to get through, so let’s get going.

In July, Trevor Richards came to us in trade from the Brewers and Bowden Francis for Rowdy Tellez. Usually, I’m not a fan of every day (ish) player being traded for a reliever and a lottery ticket. But our pen was going through a rough patch (guys who looked good early suddenly couldn’t find home plate with both hands and a compass).

Most of us liked the trade:

And most of us were right. Richards appeared in 32 games, with the Jays putting up a 3.31 ERA in 32.2 innings, with 37 strikeouts and 10 walks. He had 4 wins, and 5 holds. He held batters to a .143/.213/.339 batting line, and was equally as good vs. lefties as righties.

Not that Rowdy wasn’t good for the Brewers, hitting .272/.333/.481 with 7 home runs in 56 games and 2 home runs in their NLDS loss to the Braves.

It was Trevor’s second trade of the season. He started the season with the Rays. Playing for threes in a season might be enough to turn a guy prematurely gray (Trevor turns 29 in May). I can relate. I’m prematurely gray.

Richards struck out 31.1% of batters he faced, a bit step up from the 21.9% in 2019, but he was a starter that year.

Last year he threw a fastball 57% of the time, averaging 92.8 MPH, a couple of MPH faster than he had before last year. And a change and a slider.

PECOTA sees Richards throwing in 56 games (a career-high), with a 3.81 ERA, in 48.1 innings. I want to think he could average more than an inning per outing. He went more than an inning 7 times for us and 2 innings twice for us last year.

We are at least navel deep in relievers who will be looking for setup man innings. Likely the guys who start hot will get a lot of that work.