Griff McGarry felt a sense of calm early last week when he walked into the Lehigh Valley IronPigs’ clubhouse for the first time in 2025.

McGarry was at ease when he reconnected with his 2024 IronPigs teammates as well as those who earlier this season came up from Double-A Reading where McGarry was since the end of spring training.

The 26-year-old pitcher most importantly kept that chill feeling after he allowed a home run, hit a batter and walked one in a span of nine pitches in the first inning of Thursday’s start for Lehigh Valley.

“I yanked one on the hit batter,” McGarry said. “I threw a decent one on the homer. He just went down and got it. He’s a decent hitter. I just needed to lock back in and finish that inning. From there on, I did a decent job.”

McGarry finished his 2025 season with five strong innings, allowing only that first-inning homer, two walks and a hit batter, and striking out eight.

The Phillies’ 2021 fifth-round pick finished this season with a 3.44 ERA and 1.22 WHIP in 21 starts, 17 for Reading. It came after he posted a 4.70 ERA in 29 relief appearances in 2024 with Lehigh Valley and finished the 2023 season with three Triple-A appearances.

The Virginia native has shuffled from starter to reliever to starter to reliever and back to starter in his professional career. He went from Double-A to Triple-A, back to Double-A and then a return to Triple-A.

McGarry, however, made progress in 2025.

“My path is not as linear as I’d hoped it would be,” McGarry said. “But I still have a lot of fight in me, and I think I’m happy with the way I performed down there in Double-A.”

McGarry did most of his damage last Thursday night with a sweeper, a pitch that he has grown increasingly confident in over the last couple years. He also made a recent adjustment in how he throws it, and the results have been solid.

“It’s something I relied on a lot in Double-A this year,” he said. “It’s something I worked on a lot. It’s one of my better pitches the last few years. I’m definitely confident I can throw it in any count. It’s just where I’m starting it. I’m getting more horizontal movement to shift my sights a little bit. I’m starting it a little more on the inner half of the plate and letting it sweep across.”

The right-hander teamed that with a mid-90s fastball to allow just 5.7 hits and 13.3 strikeouts per nine innings. He also allowed 5.3 walks per nine innings. That’s still too high, but it’s his lowest since 2021, his rookie season when he appeared in only eight games.

It’s been a journey for McGarry since coming out of the University of Virginia. He peaked ahead of the 2023 season as Baseball Prospectus’ No. 51 overall Major League Baseball prospect. He also was among the Phillies’ top five prospects before command struggles increased and the organization shifted him back and forth between starting and relieving.

He had a solid 13-start stint with Double-A Reading that season before a forgettable three-game stint with Triple-A Lehigh Valley where he allowed 20 earned runs on eight hits and 14 walks in 3 1/3 combined innings.

After an unremarkable 2024 season, McGarry bounced back this year. It started last fall in the Arizona Fall League where he produced a 3.75 ERA in five games (four starts). He started strong this spring in Reading by not allowing an earned run in his first four starts.

An injury put him on the shelf for about six weeks, but McGarry eventually found a rhythm again late in the summer. He produced a .140 batting average against, 1.17 ERA and struck out 24 in 15 1/3 innings of his last three starts for Reading.

The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder then retired the last 10 batters he faced in his lone Lehigh Valley outing.

McGarry will take that momentum into the offseason and 2026.

“I’m pretty happy with how I finished the year,” he said. “I saw a lot more swing and miss which was good. It was something I wanted to focus on this year. I want to pick up next season where I left off this season. It’s going to be a lot of hard work. I’m prepared for it, excited for it, ready to get after it this offseason. I’ll look to gain some muscle mass, shed some fat.”

IronPigs’ 2025 swan song

Lehigh Valley finished the season 87-61, a franchise record for victories, after a 9-0 loss to the Syracuse Mets in Sunday’s finale.
Outfield prospect Justin Crawford won the International League batting title with a franchise-best .334 average. He has not played since Sept. 4 after suffering a concussion when he collided with teammate Otto Kemp. Crawford was on pace to set three other team records: hits (147), runs (88) and stolen bases in a season (46) before the injury. His 88 runs also led the league. He was third in stolen bases.
Crawford and Mick Abel were voted by the media and staff as the team’s player and pitcher of the year. Abel was 7-2 with a 2.31 ERA in 13 starts before being traded to the Twins in late July.
Gabriel Rincones walked twice Saturday night to finish with 80 this season, one more than current Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford (79 in 2017) for the franchise record.
Manager Anthony Contreras is 311-277 in his four seasons in charge. He broke the team record for managerial wins held by Dave Brundage (286-289 from 2014-17).
Lehigh Valley led Minor League Baseball (120 teams) in total attendance and average attendance in 2025. The 8,830 on Sunday at Coca-Cola Park brings the total this year to 585,155. It is the third year in a row the IronPigs have led MiLB in attendance. They have drawn at least 500,000 in every year of their existence beginning in 2008 (17 years minus the COVID 2020 season). They averaged 8,241 fans in 74 home dates in 2025.
Kemp was hit by a pitch a franchise-record 19 times in only 343 plate appearances.

Senior writer Tom Housenick can be reached at thousenick@mcall.com.