Rico Garcia was an early addition to the Mets minor league roster this year, signing with the Mets in early November. Garcia was drafted by the Rockies in 2016 and made his major league debut with the Rockies in 2019, allowing seven runs over six innings spread over two games.
Since making his major league debut, Garcia has bounced around organizations going to the Giants, Orioles, Athletics and most recently the Nationals. He really has not seen a lot of time in the majors. His career high in games and innings came in 2023 where he pitched in 10 games (11 2/3 innings) between the Athletics and the Nationals allowing 12 runs from 19 hits and five walks. He also struck out 10 batters.
The Mets are hoping Garcia can build off of his 2024. The Nationals never called Garcia up last season and he ended up pitching 61 2/3 innings in Rochester with a 3.94 ERA, 1.294 WHIP and a 13 K/9. If you want to put stock in AAA saves, Garcia recorded 20 of them last season!
Since Garcia didn’t pitch in the majors last year, the publicly available pitch tracking data for him comes from 2023. In a small smattering of innings, he tossed his fastball 55.4% of the time (mid-90’s, good for the 71st percentile in 2023) and mixed in a mid-80’s changeup and a low-80’s curveball.
Similar to other pitchers we have looked at so far in the NRI preview series, Garcia is quite far down the depth chart and has a lot of competition to just get onto the 40-man roster, let alone the active roster. I can’t stop thinking about his K/9 in 2024 though. On it’s own it is enough to give Garcia a chance this spring. Here’s what we are watching for:
- How often will Garcia pitch this spring? Will he continue to get a look in mid-march when starters are going deep and bullpen locks start getting their work ramped up?
- Do we see the 2024 Garcia who kept H/9 at 6.9 in the minors? Or do we see the 2023 Garcia who had a 14.7 H/9 in the majors?
- Is he still striking out players at an impressive clip? How is he striking out players?
