Cincinnati Reds’ ace Amir Garrett learns from his lone bad start

As the new ace of the Cincinnati Reds, Amir Garrett learned from his first bad outing of his MLB career.

The Cincinnati Reds had to wonder whether major league hitters had solved the Garrett puzzle when he suddenly allowed 10 runs in his fourth start of the season to the Milwaukee Brewers.  The Reds have had trouble stopping with the Brewers offense all season long, so Garrett having trouble wasn’t too shocking.  What was shocking was how bad the outing was against the Brew Crew.

Garrett has given up 6 home runs all season long.  Three of them were in his April 24 start at Milwaukee.  In that start he allowed 10 of the 16 runs that he allowed in his first five starts of his MLB career.

There is more than just this one bad outing going on, though.  In his last two starts he has walked a combined 7 batters, four against the Brewers and three in his second start against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  In his first three starts, he had walked only three total batters.

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This is Garrett’s biggest weakness.  He has intermittent control issues.  While he figured out how to work around the walks in his last time out, the walks are still there.

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Amir Garrett has learned how to be the ace for the Cincinnati Reds by working through bad control to get the win.

In his fifth start of 2017 Garrett had some of the same issues that he had in his fourth, but he negotiated his way to a Reds’ extra-innings win.  He surrendered multiple home runs and the second highest number of walks that he had all season, but he kept the Reds in the game.  Then the offense just had to support his pitching for the win.

Garrett made sure that the home runs were solo shots and didn’t let the batters he walked score.  He also didn’t surrender any hits besides the two home runs.  That is how he survived while walking three over seven innings.

Going forward Garrett is going to need to be able to work around his own short-comings.  That is the difference between being in the Reds’ rotation and being Robert Stephenson.  Garrett has figured out how to work around his control issues, but Stephenson has not.  Garrett has appeared more polished than Stephenson dating all the way back to 2015.

Next: Is it time for the Reds' next Mr. Perfect, Tyler Mahle?

Garrett is the undisputed ace of the Reds’ rotation right now.  He is one inning and one strikeout off of the pace set by Scott Feldman, but Garrett has pitched one less start.  The good news is that it appears that stats like those aren’t important to the quickly maturing starter.