Guardians Sign Amir Garrett To Minor League Deal

The Guardians have signed left-hander Amir Garrett to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He’s been assigned to Triple-A Columbus.

Garrett, 31, began the year with the Royals, tossing 24 1/3 innings. He allowed 3.33 earned runs per nine innings in that time, striking out 25% of the batters he faced while keeping the ball on the ground at a 47.5% clip. While those numbers are quite solid, he also walked 17.9% of opponents, more than double this year’s 8.6% league average. His 85.2% strand rate probably helped him keep that ERA down, with his 5.59 FIP and 5.08 SIERA being far less enthusiastic.

The Royals designated him for assignment a couple of weeks ago and later released him. Garrett has over five years of major league service time, meaning he would have had the right to reject an outright assignment while retaining what’s left of his $2.65MM salary. The club just skipped that formality and sent him to the open market.

He’ll now try to work his way back to the majors with the Guardians, who will likely try to help him with his control. His career has seen roughly the same split, as the southpaw has always had big strikeout numbers but also huge amounts of walks. In 322 career appearances with the Reds and Royals to this point, he’s punched out 26.4% of batters faced while walking 13.2%. His career ERA is 4.95, but he’s had wild fluctuations in that department. He got that figure as low as 2.45 in the shortened 2020 season but it shot up to 6.04 the year after.

The Guardians have a couple of lefties in their big league bullpen right now in Sam Hentges and Daniel Norris, though the latter might be more of a long-relief option. He was working as a starter in the minors before getting his contract selected yesterday, then tossed two innings last night in the club’s loss to the Royals. Tim Herrin is also on the 40-man but currently with Columbus on optional assignment.

Garrett will give them some non-roster depth to potentially call upon if he has some good results in the coming weeks, though he’ll be a free agent at season’s end whether he’s on the 40-man roster or not since he passed six years of service time with the Royals before getting cut from their roster.