Garrett Richards, not Hisanori Takahashi, will take over for the struggling Joel Pineiro in the Angels’ rotation, according to Keith Law of ESPN.com.
Reports over the weekend suggested the Angels weren’t all that enthused about any of their potential replacements for Pineiro, pondering various call-ups in addition to moving Takahashi from the bullpen to the rotation, but instead they’ll go with the most talented and inexperienced option.
Selected with the 42nd overall pick in the 2009 draft, Richards will be making the jump from Double-A, where the 23-year-old right-hander had a 3.06 ERA and 100/40 K/BB ratio in 141 innings.
He projects as a future mid-rotation starter and has certainly impressed at Double-A, but his strikeout rate of 6.4 per nine innings showed less dominance than the shiny ERA and 12-2 record would suggest and his control has been merely decent.
Richards almost can’t help but be an improvement over Pineiro’s recent performance, but Pineiro had a 3.88 ERA in 37 starts for the Angels prior to imploding within the past few weeks and it’ll be tough for the rookie to match those numbers right away.