The Anaheim Angels will have to try to hold onto the AL West lead without the services of their best starting pitcher after Garrett Richards suffered a torn patellar tendon in Wednesday night's game.
Top Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher is out for the season and perhaps more with a torn patellar tendon in his left knee. The club reports surgery is tentatively scheduled for next week. Recovery time is estimated at six to nine months, which raises the possibility that Richards won't be ready for spring training 2015. However, Yahoo's Jeff Passan reports that Richards tore his tendon "in [the] best spot possible [and so] should be ready for spring training." The pitcher was placed on the 60-day disabled list.
Richards was injured while covering first base in the second inning of Wednesday's game against the Red Sox. He was running to cover first base on an attempted 3-6-1 double play, but either caught his spike or simply had the knee buckle and never arrived at first base. He was eventually put on a stretcher and carried off the field. After the game, teammate Jared Weaver described him as "tearful."
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The 26-year-old former first-round (supplemental) draft pick had emerged as the Angels' ace this season despite beginning the campaign with a career 4.42 ERA and mediocre peripherals. Richards escaped the yawning maw of the bullpen to which he had frequently been consigned while upping his strikeout rate from about six per nine innings to roughly nine per nine while maintaining the high ground-ball rate he had made part of his arsenal last year. He finishes the season with a 13-4 record and a 2.61 ERA.
The loss of Richards puts the first-place Angels in a very difficult spot in their quest not only to pass the formerly front-running Oakland A's, which they recently did, but to hold them off and avoid a wild-card play-in game. Veteran starters Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson have had mediocre and injury-plagued seasons, respectively, lefty Tyler Skaggs, the club's big offseason pitching acquisition, is gone for the year, if not 2015 as well, after having undergone Tommy John surgery. That means the club is increasingly reliant on unproven pitchers such as screwballer Hector Santiago and control artist Matt Shoemaker, as well as a bullpen that was reconfigured during the course of the season with the addition of veterans Jason Grilli and Huston Street.
In the short term, veteran journeyman Wade LeBlanc, he of the 4.56 ERA (83 ERA+) in 98 career appearances, will get the first crack at taking Richards' spot. LeBlanc, the former Padres left-hander, has made two appearances in the majors this season, one each with the Yankees and Angels. He had compiled a 4.00 ERA in 21 starts at Triple-A Salt Lake City of the Pacific Coast League, striking out 116 and walking 37 in 123 innings. In contrast to Richards, LeBlanc is a fly-ball pitcher, a tendency which should play better in Anaheim than in the PCL, but he'll have a long way to go to replace Richards, who ranks 8th in the American League in earned run average.