VMI Baseball alum Reed Garrett. Photo: VMI Athletics
Reed Garrett’s pro baseball tenure began in 2014, and that career has taken him around North America and the world, with stops as diverse as Spokane in Washington State to Round Rock in Texas and two seasons in Japan. He has played with 12 North American minor league teams plus a stint in a Mexican winter league.
And throughout his first 11 years in the minors and majors, the former VMI Baseball pitcher from Mills Godwin in Henrico County has changed teams at least once every season.
Until now.
“It is special; it is also the first year in a long time I have been in the same organization in Spring Training two years in a row,” said Garrett, standing by his locker in the New York Mets clubhouse before Wednesday’s game with the host Washington Nationals. “It is nice to have a sense of normalcy and comfort around the same group of people.”
And another plus – the right-handed reliever is producing for a club aiming for the playoffs.
Garrett set a career Major League high by appearing in 53 games in 2024 for the Mets, going 8-5 with an ERA of 4.40 with four saves while also appearing in three minor league contests.
He has been even better this season, posting a mark of 3-5 with an ERA of 3.40 in 52 outings with a WHIP of 1.192 and three saves through Tuesday with just one team – the Mets.
Before the past two seasons with the Mets, Garrett had appeared in only 31 games in the Majors. Now he has pitched in 105 contests in the last two seasons after seeing action in the special Major League game at the home of Little League Baseball in Williamsport, Pa., on Sunday. He gave up the 47th homer of the season to Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh, who was born in Harrisonburg in the fall of 1996 when his father, Todd, was in his first academic year as an assistant baseball coach at JMU.
“It is an unbelievable facility they have for 12-year-olds,” Garrett said of playing in Williamsport.
Garrett, who wife was a swimmer at JMU, was not highly recruited while in high school. But before his senior year, former VMI head coach Marlin Ikenberry saw him pitch in the Commonwealth Games in Salem.
“He was an 85- to 87-mile-per-hour right-hander, very athletic,” Ikenberry said in a 2022 interview. “He threw a lot of strikes; at the time he threw three pitches for strikes. After the Commonwealth Games, he committed pretty quickly to VMI.”
“I used him as a wedge guy as a freshman,” added Ikenberry, now the coach at JMU. “He really developed a second breaking ball; earlier in his career, he was more of a fastball-changeup guy. He threw the first no-hitter I was a part of, against Lafayette in 2014 in his junior year. He was in the upper 80s and low 90s when he pitched for us at VMI. He is one of those guys where I thought he would develop after college more than in college. I thought his ceiling was very high, with his development. I told people that when he was getting drafted.”
“He gave me a shot,” Garrett said of Ikenberry. “I did not have many offers coming out of high school.”
Garrett said he pitched well as a freshman out of the bullpen (2.17 ERA), but struggled as a starter as a sophomore in 2013, with a mark of 5.56 in 18 games, with nine starts.
“I had not yet developed as a starter,” he said of his time in Lexington.
That summer he pitched for New Market in the Valley Baseball League and posted an ERA of 5.26 in six games, with four starts. “It was great. The Valley League, it’s a lot of fun,” Garrett said. “It’s a lot of small towns, and it is fun to travel around and see them.”
He turned things around as a VMI junior, going 6-6 with an ERA of 2.23 in 13 starts.
After three years at VMI, Garrett was drafted by the Texas Rangers in the 16th round in 2014. He made his Major League debut with the Detroit Tigers in 2019.
With an 8.80 ERA in 13 games with the Tigers, Garrett headed to Japan and played there during the pandemic in 2020 and then the next season. “It is a high level of baseball in Japan, where they play more small ball,” he said.
Garrett returned to North America and wanted to be closer to his roots, so he signed with the Nationals. He appeared in seven games with Washington in 2022, and spent time in the minors with Single-A Fredericksburg and Triple-A Rochester. He signed with the Baltimore Orioles prior to the 2023 season and appeared in two games with the Orioles that season while going 5-1, 1.59 in 19 games out of the bullpen for Triple-A Norfolk before he was claimed off waivers by the Mets on June 25, 2023.
The right-hander made nine appearances for New York that season – setting the stage for the next two years in Queens. “I feel great right now. I am thankful for the opportunity I have had to pitch in high leverage games,” said Garrett, 32.
Notes
Through Aug. 19, Gavin Cross was hitting .224 with 11 homers and an OPS of .640 at Double A in the Kansas City system. He was a first-round pick of the Royals out of Virginia Tech in 2022.
Another first-rounder that year was JMU’s Chase DeLauter, the Rockingham County Baseball League Player of the Year in 2020 with Broadway. The lefty slugger has been at the Triple-A level with Cleveland this year and was on the IL as of Aug. 20. He was hitting .264 with seven homers in 146 at-bats with Columbus. The Guardians provided an injury update about DeLauter on Aug. 17, according to an Akron newspaper. “Chase is currently three weeks post-operative following a surgery to remove the hook of his hamate bone in his right hand, performed by Dr. Thomas Graham. He is responding well to his rehab program and has resumed baseball activity. Typical return to play time frames following similar cases is 45-60 days,” said the statement. He had surgery July 23.
Kevin Kelly was 0-3 with an ERA of 5.93 in his first 29 games out of the bullpen this season for Tampa Bay and was sent to Triple-A Durham in early August. The right-hander from JMU – who was on the IL earlier this year – had an ERA of 2.67 in 68 games last season for Tampa Bay. He was one of four pitchers drafted out of JMU in 2019 under pitching coach Jimmy Jackson, who now has the same job at the University of Maryland.
JMU product Nick Robertson, from Franklin County, has been with Triple-A Omaha in the Kansas City system this year. He has pitched in the majors for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox. St. Louis Cardinals and Toronto Blue Jays.
David Driver is a Harrisonburg native who played baseball at Turner Ashby, Harrisonburg Legion Post 27, EMU (one light-hitting season) and for Clover Hill in the RCBL. He is the co-author of “From Tidewater to the Shenandoah: Snapshots from Virginia’s Rich Baseball Legacy,” which is available on the websites of Amazon and Barnes and Noble and at daytondavid.com. He was the sports editor of the Daily News-Record from 2019-21 and worked for the paper in the 1980s.