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Matt Garza pumps wicked heat in debut loss with Brewers
April 3, 2014 by 0 Comments
In his debut with the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday, Matt Garza erased at least some of the concern placed upon him after a porous spring training (8.80 ERA over 15.1 innings), holding the Atlanta Braves to one earned run over eight complete innings of two-hit baseball, albeit in a losing effort.
The four-year, $50 million January free-agency pickup for manager Ron Roenicke at one point struck out four consecutive Atlanta batters early in the outing and took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing a solo home run to Chris Johnson — marking just the fifth time since 2008 that a Brewers starter maintained a no-no through six full frames.
“I just came in telling myself, ‘I’m going to attack,’” Garza told MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy after the game. “I know they’re great hitters and they’ve got a nice lineup, but I just had a lot more confidence in my stuff than in them.”
And attack Garza did.
The former first-round draft pick from 2005 pounded the strike zone Wednesday afternoon, posting a 57.8% zone rate that was well above his 51% mark from a season ago. Opponents were aggressive against his pitches in consequence, offering at a whopping 63.3% of his offerings (markedly increased from their 47.5% swing rate last season) and swung through Garza’s stuff at a 26.3% rate compared to 22.5% last season.
How Garza garnered these impressive rates may surprise you.
Instead of concentrating on his traditionally above-average slider and curveball to break down Atlanta’s discipline at the dish, he focused on pounding the zone with his fastball that generated a 63.2% zone rate and clocked in at a 93.9 MPH average velocity — nearly a mile per hour faster (on average) than his 93.0 MPH fastball velocity throughout last season.
Correspondingly, Braves hitters had immense trouble putting bat on ball against it, posting a 22.4% miss rate (increased from 12.7% in ’13), and 42.3% chase rate, a stark increase from the 26.3% chase rate it produced last season.
Not only did Garza’s fastball clock in at a higher velocity than in all but two of his starts in 2013, but it had much nastier movement to it. Brooks Baseball notes that Garza’s four-seamer generated a -3.93 inches of horizontal movement (explanation on pitch movement here) and his two-seam fastball (a.k.a. ‘sinker’) -7.79 inches of movement — compared to the -3.76 and -6.90 inches of movement those offerings produced last season, respectively.
Something tells me this probably contributed to his 52.6% ground ball rate Wednesday, which was nearly 20% higher than his 38.2% grounder rate in 2013.
Matt Garza isn’t getting any younger, which almost assuredly means he can’t expect to see his fastball velocity increase or stay steady for the long-haul. But for this season? I wouldn’t put it out of the question. Couple that with his wicked-improved fastball movement, and Garza could very well transform from fly-ball pitcher to ground-ball hoarder with Milwaukee in 2014.
The four-year, $50 million January free-agency pickup for manager Ron Roenicke at one point struck out four consecutive Atlanta batters early in the outing and took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing a solo home run to Chris Johnson — marking just the fifth time since 2008 that a Brewers starter maintained a no-no through six full frames.
“I just came in telling myself, ‘I’m going to attack,’” Garza told MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy after the game. “I know they’re great hitters and they’ve got a nice lineup, but I just had a lot more confidence in my stuff than in them.”
And attack Garza did.
The former first-round draft pick from 2005 pounded the strike zone Wednesday afternoon, posting a 57.8% zone rate that was well above his 51% mark from a season ago. Opponents were aggressive against his pitches in consequence, offering at a whopping 63.3% of his offerings (markedly increased from their 47.5% swing rate last season) and swung through Garza’s stuff at a 26.3% rate compared to 22.5% last season.
How Garza garnered these impressive rates may surprise you.
Matt Garza pitch frequencies
| Fast% | Slid% | Curv% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. 2014 | 78.9% | 17.8% | 3.3% |
| 2. 2013 | 64.0% | 24.5% | 8.3% |
Created by BaseballAnalytics.org on 4/3/2014
Correspondingly, Braves hitters had immense trouble putting bat on ball against it, posting a 22.4% miss rate (increased from 12.7% in ’13), and 42.3% chase rate, a stark increase from the 26.3% chase rate it produced last season.
Garza didn’t have to expand the zone to generate his lofty fastball miss% Wednesday afternoon.
Something tells me this probably contributed to his 52.6% ground ball rate Wednesday, which was nearly 20% higher than his 38.2% grounder rate in 2013.
Matt Garza isn’t getting any younger, which almost assuredly means he can’t expect to see his fastball velocity increase or stay steady for the long-haul. But for this season? I wouldn’t put it out of the question. Couple that with his wicked-improved fastball movement, and Garza could very well transform from fly-ball pitcher to ground-ball hoarder with Milwaukee in 2014.
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