Matt Garza: A Fit For Seattle?

Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

The Seattle Mariners are being smart by allowing the pitching market to thin out a bit before they make a big decision on trading or paying for a player.

It is clear that they do not want to take risks on guys that have been dealing with the injury bug such as Tim Hudson and Josh Johnson. What is not clear is if they are looking for a bargain work horse, such as Bartolo Colon, or a big name free agent, such as Matt Garza.

It is no secret that Jack Zduriencik is willing to pull out the checkbook to bring in players that put fans in the seats (see Josh Hamilton offer), but would Garza be worth it? Here is a closer look at how his last season played out with the Chicago Cubs and the Texas Rangers.

Cubs:

6-1/3.17ERA/62SO/20BB

Rangers:

4-5/4.38ERA/74SO/22BB

If you take a closer look at Garza’s numbers from this year, after making the switch from the NL to the AL he struggled a bit, mainly versus right handed hitters.

He is a reverse platoon split kind of guy who relies a lot on his slider, especially versus left handed hitters (weird). I think that his numbers with the Cubs to start off last year were a bit inflated, mainly because of the competition he faced.

The truth is, Garza is a good pitcher, not great, but definitely not worth the money a team is going to pay him this off-season.

‘IF’ the Mariners do go after him, I would hope they would shoot to keep the numbers under or around 4 years, $60 million.

Anything more than that is not worth it. Lets try to keep in mind that he would be a HUGE upgrade over “Safeco Joe”(Saunders).