12 plays of 2018: Richards' roll continues
Richards records sixth straight Triple-A quality start
Before the calendar flips to 2019, we celebrate the holidays by looking back at 12 moments from the New Orleans Baby Cakes' 2018 season.June 1Trevor Richards rose from relative obscurity over the course of two years to reach the majors, and his six-game stint with the New Orleans Baby Cakes
Before the calendar flips to 2019, we celebrate the holidays by looking back at 12 moments from the New Orleans Baby Cakes' 2018 season.
June 1
Trevor Richards rose from relative obscurity over the course of two years to reach the majors, and his six-game stint with the New Orleans Baby Cakes showed why.
Signed from the independent Frontier League in the summer of 2016, Richards was honored as the Marlins' Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2017 before making his big league debut with Miami in the opening week of 2018. Despite a 10-strikeout performance at Dodger Stadium on April 25, a roster space crunch sent Richards to New Orleans for his Triple-A debut on May 1.
He carried a shutout into the eighth inning against Round Rock in his first Baby Cakes start and struck out nine but was left without a decision. Five days later, Richards picked up his first win with seven innings of two-run ball against Omaha, then blanked the Storm Chasers for six innings on three hits to earn another victory on May 12. Back-to-back defeats masked another nine-strikeout outing on May 26 at Iowa, and Richards ended May having led all Pacific Coast League starters with a 33-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 0.87 WHIP.
The run seemingly was going to come to an end on June 1 when Memphis strung together five hits through Richards' first five outs, but the right-hander settled in to hold the Redbirds without a hit over his final four innings while retiring 13 of the last 14 batters he faced. Eric Campbell laced a three-run double to snap a fifth-inning tie, and former Redbird Magneuris Sierra helped put the game away with his first home run in the eighth inning to give the Baby Cakes a 6-3 victory.
Richards became the first New Orleans hurler to notch six consecutive quality starts since Brian Flynn in 2013, but was summoned to the Marlins before getting the opportunity for seven in a row. Richards ended his rookie season with a 4.42 ERA in 25 starts and struck out more than one batter per inning pitched, tying Jose Urena for the team lead with 130 punchouts.