Marlins’ first-round pick lost two years to Tommy John surgery, ready to ‘just play ball’
Braxton Garrett felt the nerves as he took the mound in the seventh inning on Wednesday. This was a moment he had been waiting for since he started playing baseball.
Since the Miami Marlins drafted him with the seventh overall pick in 2016.
Since he made his way back from Tommy John surgery four starts into his professional baseball career.
There he stood, with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” playing on the speakers at Jupiter’s Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. Braxton Garrett making his first appearance in major-league spring training.
It’s not as glamorous of a milestone as his eventual MLB debut will be, but it’s a step in the right direction for the 22-year-old left-handed pitcher.
As for those nerves? He got them out of the way quickly as he pitched two innings and earned the win in the Marlins’ 8-7 come-from-behind victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, their fifth consecutive late rally to open spring training.
“A great weight off my shoulders,” Garrett, out of Foley, Alabama, said afterward. “First big-league camp. First appearance. Really glad with how it went.”
Garrett, the Marlins’ No. 7 overall prospect according to MLBPipeline, limited the Cardinals to one run on two hits while striking out two. He primarily threw a four-seam fastball that’s regularly in the low 90s and a 79-82 mph curveball that induces swings and misses. He is also developing his changeup, which sits in the mid-80s.
Of Garrett’s 26 pitches, 21 were strikes.
“You just see composure out there,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “He was poised. He’s got the weapons. ... He’s going to be a guy that can pitch to a game plan because he can pitch to both sides and locates. He’s another good-looking kid and you like what you see out there.”
And, the most important element, he’s healthy.
Garrett sat out essentially his entire first two years of professional baseball after blowing out his left elbow in the second inning of his fourth start in Class A Greensboro (North Carolina) during the 2017 season.
“I don’t have any hobbies. I’m from Alabama, but I don’t hunt and I don’t fish. I just play ball,” Garrett said. “It was tough. The rehab process was very tedious and very monotonous. I’m through that now.
“I’m feeling the best that I have in my entire life, thankfully.”
Garrett’s goal
When Garrett made his 2019 debut with the Jupiter Hammerheads, Miami’s Class A Advanced affiliate, he only paid attention to one stat. Forget wins. Forget ERA. Forget maximizing strikeouts and minimizing walks.
“Make every start,” Garrett said.
He did that and more.
The 6-3, 190-pound up-and-comer dominated the Florida State League, putting up a 3.34 ERA and striking out 118 batters in 105 innings.
After working up his pitch count early in the season, Garrett threw at least five innings in 15 of 20 starts in Jupiter before being called up to Double A Jacksonville for final outing. This included a stretch of 13 in 14 where made it through at least the fifth inning. He held opponents to two or fewer earned runs in 11 of those 13 contests.
“The numbers were pretty good in the end even though, like I said, I wasn’t paying attention to it,” Garrett said. “Now I’m just looking to go into this year and have a good year and try to get to the big leagues as soon as I can.”
A ‘front-row seat’
Garrett knows he will have competition along the way as one piece of the Marlins’ next wave of pitching talent.
He at one point was a rotation member with five of the Marlins’ other six-highest ranked pitching prospects in Sixto Sanchez, the club’s top overall prospect; No. 6 Edward Cabrera; No. 8 Trevor Rogers; No. 16 Jorge Guzman; and No. 18 Jordan Holloway.
“I’ve got a front-row seat last year,” Garrett said. “Competition brings out the best in us. I really believe that. To compete with these guys is incredible.”
Garrett is part of that group, too. He knows it. Mattingly knows it. The franchise’s front office knows it.
But Garrett also knows, having barely scratched the surface at Double A, that he has to make the most of his limited time with the big-league club during spring training.
“Just be the best version of myself,” he said. “I can’t try to be any better than I am. They said the first day that you’re not making the team the first week, but I’m just trying to be myself and learn as much as I can.”
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 6:00 PM.
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