Veteran left-hander Amir Garrett has signed a minor league contract with the Angels, according to the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. The Beverly Hills Sports Council client has been assigned to the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees.
Garrett spent spring training with the Giants as a non-roster invitee. After an up-and-down 2023 season, he was going to need to impress this spring to earn a spot on the Opening Day roster. Instead, he gave up nine runs in 6 1/3 innings of work, allowing 13 hits, seven walks, and two home runs while striking out only three of the 38 batters he faced. He was released last week.
The 31-year-old Garrett spent the 2022-23 seasons in Kansas City, working to a combined 4.39 ERA in 69 2/3 innings of work. The hard-throwing southpaw fanned exactly a quarter of his opponents in each of his two seasons as a Royal, but his longstanding command issues escalated to new heights. He walked 16.9% of his opponents with the Royals — including a sky-high 17.9% mark in 2023. Garrett routinely managed to navigate that highwire act, logging a 3.33 ERA in last year’s 24 1/3 innings, but he was released over the summer and didn’t make it back to the big leagues after signing minor league deals with both the Guardians and the Giants (who re-signed him just before camp opened).
Prior to his time in K.C., Garrett was a mainstay in the Reds’ bullpen. From 2018-20, he notched a 3.60 ERA with 49 holds, a save, a huge 30.2% strikeout rate and a bloated 11.6% walk rate. There’s little doubting Garrett’s raw ability to miss bats. His career 12.6% swinging-strike rate is well above average, and his 15.1% mark during his peak run with Cincinnati borders on elite. At this point, there are 325 1/3 innings of big league work showing his command to be well below average, however. It’s unlikely he’ll ever get to the point where he has plus command, but if he can even get back to the levels he had with the Reds, as opposed to the alarming walk issues he displayed in Kansas City, he could reemerge as a quality setup man.
For the time being, Garrett will serve as depth for an Angels club that dedicated the bulk of its offseason to remaking the bullpen. The Halos signed Robert Stephenson, Matt Moore, Luis Garcia, Jose Cisnero, Adam Cimber and Adam Kolarek to big league deals over the winter (though Kolarek was later outrighted to Triple-A). Anaheim also acquired righty Guillermo Zuñiga from the Cardinals and inked veteran Hunter Strickland to a minor league deal.
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