Just this morning while writing the daily Game Picks post, the Fan faced the quandary of Matt Garza when picking his game against Detroit. The guy is 11-5 so that sounds like an outstanding season, right? Not exactly. His ERA+ going into Monday night's game was 98 or lower than league average. Garza is certainly a puzzle. He has averaged 7.1 K/9 and only 3.2 BB/9 for his career and even with this year's 11-5 record, he is 38-39 in his career. Before this year, he was 19-21 between 2008 and 2009. And now he's thrown a no-hitter.
On Monday night, Garza came only one walk away from a perfect game. He faced the minimum 27 batters while striking out six. This grand feat comes just five days after he gave up seven earned runs in just 6.1 innings including ten hits and four homers against the lowly Orioles. That, friends, is the essence of the Garza dilemma.
This is Garza's game log this season:
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Gem, Gem, Gem, Clank, Gem, Gem, Decent, Gem, Gem, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Decent, Decent, Clank, Save!, Gem, Clank, No-hitter.
That isn't the picture of consistency. But he is 11-5 and that counts for something. Meanwhile, Garza's no-hitter underscores the wall the Tigers have hit lately. They are losing at a regular pace now and have lost Ordonez to injury. This just might be a deep enough hole the Tigers are digging where it will be nearly impossible to turn it around.
1 comment:
It's gotten to the point where I'm not even surprised anymore when someone throws a no-no.
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