Spit Fumes

When Matt Garza takes the mound tonight against Boston it will be his fourth since a start in Texas where catcher Dioner Navarro and Garza were involved in a mini-confrontation. The event lead to Garza seeing a sports psychologist in order to help him sharpen his focus on pitching and improve his control over his emotions.

In the three starts following the explosion Garza has pitched 22 innings (with a complete game thrown in, so an average of 6.5 innings in the other two starts), allowed 11 hits, one homerun (to Hanley Ramirez), struck out 21, and walked four. Garza has faced 80 batters and thrown 333 pitches, 223 for strikes (~67%), an improvement when compared to his seasonal average of 62%.

Garza has seemingly become more than “potential” and is starting to become a young pitcher changing the equation on the league. No longer is he the one who has to “figure it out” when facing a batter, instead the batter must now figure him out.  Going along with the last three games theme he’s caused 9, 18, and 11 strikes swinging and gotten 11, 14, and 18 strikes looking. His next three highest swinging totals are 9, 8, and 8 while he’s been on positive end of 22, 17, and 16 strikes looking.

Having seen nearly each of his starts I can’t really tell you what’s more fun to watch, Garza’s stuff – absolute top level movement on his fastball and curve – or the amount of times he spits during a game. I know, I know, but some pitchers go to the rosin bag in between pitches, and some to their hat, and even some more to the brow, but Garza’s in between pitch ritual is spitting. I don’t think anyone has called him a camel or the Loogie quite yet, but it’s coming.