The San Diego Padres have signed right-hander\u00a0Garrett Richards\u00a0to a two-year\u00a0contract through the 2020 season, executive vice president\/general manager\u00a0A.J. Preller\u00a0recently announced. To make room for Richards on the 40-man roster, the Padres designated infielder\u00a0Carlos Asuaje\u00a0for assignment.
\nRichards, 30, went 5-4 with a 3.66 ERA (31 ER, 76.1 IP), .222 opponents average and 10.26 SO\/9.0 IP ratio (87 strikeouts) in 16 starts for the Los Angeles Angels last season. He allowed three earned runs-or-less in 14 of his 16 starts, including each of his last 10, before undergoing Tommy John surgery in July (Dr. Neal ElAttrache).
\nAmong Major League starters who threw at least 1,250 total pitches in 2018, Richards ranked first in curveball spin rate (3,252 RPM) and second in fastball spin rate (2,580 RPM) behind Houston\u2019s Justin Verlander (2,618 RPM). He also finished tied for third among American League starters in average fastball velocity (95.8 mph) with Tampa Bay\u2019s Blake Snell, trailing only New York\u2019s Luis Severino (97.6) and Houston\u2019s Gerrit Cole (96.5).
\nOriginally selected by the Angels in the first round (42nd\u00a0overall) of the 2009 First-Year Player Draft out of the University of Oklahoma, Richards has a 45-38 career record with a 3.54 ERA (293 ER, 744.2 IP), 11.1 WAR (FanGraphs), 1.25 WHIP and 645 strikeouts in 170 games (115 starts).\u00a0 In 19 career games against National League opponents (12 starts), the Riverside native owns a 1.52 ERA (15 ER, 88.2 IP).
\nFrom 2014 through 2018, Richards posted the third-lowest ERA (3.15) among all qualifying AL starters behind Corey Kluber (2.85) and Chris Sale (2.85).\u00a0 He also ranked third in opponents average (.220) over that time frame, trailing Sale (.213) and Snell (.218).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The San Diego Padres have signed right-hander\u00a0Garrett Richards\u00a0to a two-year\u00a0contract through the 2020 season, executive vice president\/general manager\u00a0A.J. Preller\u00a0recently announced. To make room for Richards on the 40-man roster, the Padres designated infielder\u00a0Carlos Asuaje\u00a0for assignment. Richards, 30, went 5-4 with a 3.66 ERA (31 ER, 76.1 IP), .222 opponents average and 10.26 SO\/9.0 IP ratio […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":265246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Padres sign RHP Garrett Richards to two-year\u00a0contract","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}