Garrett Richards

Having scored a 10-year, $300MM contract, Manny Machado was easily the Padres’ biggest free-agent signing last winter. Long before that addition, though, the Padres made headlines by awarding right-hander Garrett Richards a two-year, $15.5MM guarantee.

The Padres handed Richards his deal knowing they likely wouldn’t get much from the former Angel this season after he underwent Tommy John surgery in July 2018. Indeed, with little time left this year, Richards hasn’t yet made his Padres debut. It appears to be on the way, however. Richards will throw a bullpen session Saturday, and if he gets through that unscathed, he’ll likely take the hill during San Diego’s series in Milwaukee next week, Dennis Lin of The Athletic reports.

At 67-77, the Padres have sewn up their 13th consecutive season without a playoff berth. But if they’re going to make a long-awaited return to contention a year from now, a healthy Richards could be a key factor. The problem is that good health has been hard to come by for Richards, whom arm injuries have consistently dogged over the past few seasons. The 31-year-old hasn’t logged a full season since 2015, and has only amassed 138 2/3 innings dating back to the 2016 campaign. When he has been able to take the ball, though, Richards has served as a more-than-respectable big league starter, evidenced by his 3.54 ERA/3.62 FIP with 7.8 K/9, 3.24 BB/9 and a 52.5 percent groundball rate across 744 2/3 innings.

Going forward, the Padres could certainly use the type of production that Richards has typically offered. On paper, he’d fit nicely into a group that has gotten solid numbers this year from Chris Paddack, Joey Lucchesi, Eric Lauer and Dinelson Lamet. San Diego hasn’t found a quality option to fill out its starting staff, however, as Cal Quantrill, Matt Strahm and Nick Margevicius have each failed to truly seize hold of a rotation spot. If the team has its way, Richards won’t encounter that type of difficulty when he’s finally ready to join its staff – a unit that could also include elite prospect MacKenzie Gore in the near future.

Last winter, the Padres placed a limited but still-significant bet on the still-healing right arm of Garrett Richards. The expectation was that the Tommy John rehabber would be at full strength for the 2020 campaign and might even be ready in time to make a late contribution in 2019.

As of early July, it seemed things were proceeding well. Richards was ultimately sent out to begin a rehab assignment in mid-July, starting a thirty-day clock for potential MLB activation. That wasn’t a hard timeline — MLB rules allow the commissioner to grant up to three, ten-day rehab extensions for pitchers returning from TJS — but the 31-year-old would not have been put in a competitive pitching environment had he not been deemed ready to begin his march back to the MLB mound in earnest.

Richards started off gingerly, making two brief appearances with the Friars’ rookie ball Arizona League affiliate. His rehab work was placed in a higher gear in late July, when he joined the San Diego High-A outfit at Lake Elsinore. Richards didn’t exactly dominate in his first start: he allowed two earned runs on five hits and two walks, while generating just one strikeout, over 57 pitches in 2 1/3 innings.

It was encouraging, then, to see Richards come out of the gates in better form yesterday. He ran up five strikeouts against two walks and two base hits over 2 2/3 innings. Richards had only thrown 51 pitches to that point, thirty of them for strikes, so he surely was slated to remain on the hill at least to record his ninth out — if not also to begin the fourth inning.

Unfortunately, Richards ended up departing the mound at that point. The official word (Twitter link) is that the veteran righty was pulled with “apparent discomfort in his right shoulder.” The Mad Friars Twitter account indicates that trainers were looking at Richards’s shoulder rather than his recently repaired (and long problematic) elbow. While that’s not necessarily comforting in and of itself, it’s good to hear that the decision to pull him from the mound was deemed precautionary and that there’s no current expectation that Richards will miss a start.

Even if this proves to be a blip, it seems we’re still at least a few weeks away from potentially seeing Richards in the majors. Given its place in the standings, the San Diego club has no reason to proceed with anything but the utmost caution with the hard-throwing right-hander. He’ll still need to build his pitch count up and also spend some time fine-tuning against higher-level competition. And the organization will ultimately need to clear 40-man roster space to accommodate Richards (as will be required regardless once the season ends and the 60-day injured list goes dormant).

Although the Padres sit below .500 (42-43) as the season nears the All-Star break, they’re still just two games back of a wild-card spot in the National League. If the team hangs in the race until late in the year, it could get back a key reinforcement in right-hander Garrett Richards. The Padres are hopeful the recovering Tommy John surgery patient will join their staff in September, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Richards went under the knife last July, effectively ending his Angels tenure, but that didn’t stop the Padres from making a strong commitment to him in free agency. The club guaranteed $15.5MM over two years to Richards, thus making him their second-biggest offseason signing behind Manny Machado.

The 31-year-old Richards earned his deal as a result of a promising stint with the Angels, a 744 2/3-inning stretch from 2011-18 in which he logged a 3.54 ERA/3.62 FIP with 7.8 K/9, 3.24 BB/9 and a 52.5 percent groundball rate. However, injuries – not just Richards’ damaged ulnar collateral ligament – undermined him toward the end of his Angels tenure. Richards concluded his run in Los Angeles with 76 1/3 or fewer innings in each of his final three seasons with the franchise.

When Richards has been healthy enough to take the mound, he has produced like someone capable of slotting in near the top of a team’s rotation. That explains why the starter-needy Padres took a gamble on him for a somewhat expensive amount of money. The team’s current rotation could certainly use a recovered Richards, having managed only mediocre numbers overall. Chris Paddack, Joey Lucchesi and Eric Lauer have been good or better, as has Logan Allen across a mere three appearances. But no one from a trio consisting of Matt Strahm, Nick Margevicius and Cal Quantrill has offered a solution over a combined 33 starts.

As they continue to wait for Richards, the Padres will welcome righty Dinelson Lamet back to their rotation Thursday. The 26-year-old Lamet, like Richards, has recently seen Tommy John surgery stall his career. Lamet impressed as a rookie in 2017 before hitting the operating table in April 2018.