2022 Diamondbacks Reviews, #12: Stone Garrett

This review brought to you late due to the writer losing the battle with the Sandman in nearly Rip Van Winkle fashion.

Overview

• Rating: 6.13
• 2022 stats: 27 Games, 84 PA, 4 HR, .276/.309/.539 (.848 OPS) 136 OPS+, 0.5 bWAR
• Date of birth: November 22, 1995 (Age: 27-033d)
• 2022 salary: Pre-arbitration

2022 Review

Drafted by the Marlins in the eighth round of the 2014 draft, Garrett’s long, nearly aborted road to the Majors is one that has been fodder for many long-winded articles. Those articles sum up much of what one might want to say about Garrett in 2022, as his performance was more of the same as it had been since the Diamondbacks signed him to a minor league deal, thanks to a LinkedIn post of all things. In 2021, he tore up AA-Amarillo, not something terribly hard to do, but still important to keep the spotlight focused on him after such a long, stalling process of reaching that level.

In 2022, Garrett opened the season in AAA-Reno. While he didn’t hit for high average, he still hit above league average and did so with significant pop, blasting 28 home runs in 389 at-bats. This sort of became Garrett’s calling card. While his maximum exit velocity ranked in the pedestrian 46th percentile, his hard hit rate was a whopping 52%. Basically, when Garrett swung the bat, he did so with bad intentions and frequently punished baseballs, returning more than half of the pitches with an exit velocity over 95 mph. That leads to some favorable BABIP, which is what Garrett lived and died by, sporting a .370 BABIP in the Majors.

Arizona’s lack of right-handed offense and Garrett’s continued success in Reno caused quite the grassroots movement for him to be promoted much earlier than he actually was. Perhaps it is his subpar (but not atrocious) defense that held him back some. His 83rd percentile speed helped him hide some of those outfield defense deficiencies. Perhaps it was his strikeout to walk rate that held him back for a while. Or, maybe it was just that Mike Hazen’s front office always seems to be very slow to promote a talent for their MLB debut. Garrett never let up. Eventually, the dire need for right-handed offense and Garrett’s continued performance earned him a debut on August 17th.

Garrett did not disappoint in his debut. He went 2-for-3 with two doubles. The next night, he went 2-for-5 with another double. Despite the far superior pitching, Garrett’s ability to hit the ball with bad intent did not seem diminished. Garrett finished out the month of August, holding his own against right-handed pitching and killing left-handers unfortunate enough to toe the mound against him.

The month of September (and the few days of play in October) were not as kind to Garrett. Right-handed pitchers figured out how to keep the ball out of the danger zone against Garrett, cratering his numbers against them to sub-Uecker levels. However, despite these massive same-side struggles, he managed to still hit reasonably well against left-handed pitching.

Thus, after a 15-day debut of a .407/.407/.741 triple-slash, Garrett learned the hard lessons of elite pitching, posting a .204/.259/.429 triple-slash the rest of the way. When he made contact, he still hit the ball hard with authority (as evidenced by the effortless swing in the video below). The problem is, his walk rate cratered and his strikeout ballooned as he began chasing right-handed breaking pitches, posting a strikeout rate over 32%.

2023 Outlook

Despite the positives that Garrett brought to the table, they simply were not enough to keep the Diamondbacks from letting him go this winter. With a stacked outfield of premium defenders that also have pop, Garrett’s playing time (even as the only right-handed hitter) was likely to be limited to a large degree, enough so that the worrisome strikeout and walk rates might not normalize. On November 18, Garrett was let go by the Diamondbacks. Some hoped that he might still return on another minor league deal. That was not to be. On November 29th, Garrett signed a Major League contract with the Washington Nationals, where he is expected to compete for a chance to be an everyday starter in the Washington outfield.

We wish him well and hope he continues to enjoy the fruits of all those years of toiling in the minors.