Braxton Garrett earns International League Pitcher of the Week after no-hit outing

Braxton Garrett turned one dominant night into a bigger message for Jacksonville. His 6.0 no-hit innings against Norfolk on April 12 earned him International League Pitcher of the Week for April 7-13, and the honor only underscored how much his start changed the conversation around the Jumbo Shrimp’s rotation.

Jacksonville announced the award on April 13 after Garrett carved through the Norfolk Tides at Harbor Park in a 2-0 win. The left-hander allowed one walk, struck out six and needed only 66 pitches to work through six spotless innings. Kemp Alderman did the rest, breaking a scoreless tie with a two-run home run in the ninth to seal the series win.

The numbers through Garrett’s first three starts were even more eye-catching than the award itself. Over 15.1 innings, he allowed one earned run, four hits and five walks while striking out 17. That left him with a 0.59 ERA and a microscopic .082 batting average against, marks that made him one of the most efficient arms in the International League. At the time of the award, his 15.1 innings ranked seventh in the league, and his 17 strikeouts were tied for 14th.

For Jacksonville, the significance went beyond one weekly trophy. Garrett was the first Jumbo Shrimp pitcher to earn a weekly honor in the 2026 campaign, and the outing looked like the kind of performance a club leans on when it wants length, strike throwing and control from a high-upside starter. He gave Jacksonville exactly that, and he did it while looking fully in command after missing the entire 2025 season following left elbow UCL revision surgery with an internal brace performed by Dr. Keith Meister on Dec. 16, 2024, in Arlington, Texas.

That return matters to more than just Jacksonville’s early-season push. Garrett was the seventh overall pick in the 2016 MLB Draft by the Miami Marlins out of Florence High School in Alabama, and his early work in Triple-A offered a clear reminder of why the organization has valued him for years. For Peter Bendix and the Marlins, it was more than a good week in the minors. It was a healthy, efficient, major-league-caliber arm showing he could still miss bats, control traffic and carry a game with no margin for error.