Garrett Richards continues to impress for Angels

It was only the Phillies, but Garrett Richards impressed again on Wednesday, He fired off seven strong innings, giving up five hits and notching eight strikeouts to go with zero walks. The big day brought Richards' ERA down to 2.42 on the season, and maintained his stellar strikeout rate at a batter per inning, part of what's fueling this impressive breakout.

One of the bright spots in Los Angeles of Anaheim, Richards has picked up the slack for a rotation that was rebuilt over the winter, giving manager Mike Scioscia a steady option where there was previously only a void. Major acquisition Tyler Skaggs has been serviceable, posting a 4.14 ERA, with his major flaw being a lack of strikeouts -- only 28 in 45⅔ innings. Hector Santiago, the other arm acquired to address gaps in the rotation was aggressively ineffective and has since been banished to the bullpen. Meanwhile, it appears at least one of the answers to their woes was in-house all along. Richards broke camp in the rotation, so it's not as if he's been slighted, but they didn't appear ready to count on him, not after starting him in only 17 of 47 games last season.

Richards' hot start is backed up by great peripheral stats, as his 2.74 FIP will attest. He's jumped his strikeout rate from 16.3 percent last year to 25.3 percent this year, which is an astronomical change. His walk rate has jumped as well, and is above league-average at 11 percent but is manageable as long as he can miss bats like this. Aside from going from below average to well above average in the strikeouts department, Richards has been extremely effective a limiting hits, going from averaging over one per inning over the course of his career to the six hits per nine innings he's currently allowing. Part of that can be explained by the Angels jumping from 22nd in team defensive efficiency rating -- a team's ability to convert balls in play into outs -- last year (.699) up to third in 2014 (.725), but that wouldn't completely explain the dramatic drop in hits allowed.

Big heat is the name of Richards' game. He attacks hitters with the third fastest fastball in the league, trailing only Yordano Ventura and fellow breakout pitcher Nathan Eovaldi. He's always been able to throw hard, though, so that's not the key to his newfound success, though it surely doesn't hurt. There has been a change in his pitch mix, according to Brooks Baseball, as Richards is relying more on his sinker and curve and less so on his four-seam fastball and slider. This hasn't resulted in more ground balls compared to last year, though he's still getting over 50 percent of balls in play on the ground. Richards is generating more swings and misses on his four-seam, sinker, slider and curveball to varying degrees, but it's not clear why that is at this time. He's actually decreased the use of his slider, the pitch that generates the most swings-and-misses, though he's compensated for that by generating more whiffs on his other pitches. One last, key component of Richards' success is his ability to limit the longball. he's allowed one home run in 52 innings this season, a marked improvement over his career HR/FB percentage of 10.6.