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River Ave. Blues » Freddy Garcia » Page 8

What Went Right: Freddy Garcia

October 28, 2011 by Joe Pawlikowski 9 Comments

(Frank Franklin II/AP)

To set up the expectations placed on Freddy Garcia this season, I point you to the comments on the post that announced his signing. They weren’t all bad, but it was clear that most fans did not expect much out of Garcia. His spring training performance did not change anyone’s mind, and in fact it might have detracted from his case. The Yankees clearly weren’t too enamored, either, as they continually pushed back Garcia’s first start until they could push no further.

When Garcia did finally get a start, things went well. He shut out Texas through six innings and followed that up with another six shutout frames against Baltimore. In May he ran into some hard times, allowing 17 18 runs in 38.2 innings, but even that didn’t amount to a poor overall performance. Even after Boston knocked him out in the second inning of his start on June 7th, he still held a sub-4.00 ERA. It just so happens that he caught fire right after that.

From his start on June 12th against Cleveland through his start on August 7th against Boston Garcia threw 64 innings in 10 games, allowing just 21 runs, 18 earned, and striking out 39 to 15 walks. The strikeout total was in no way impressive, but the results were undeniably good: 2.53 ERA and a 6-4 record that included a couple of tough-luck losses. That’s when he sliced open his finger and missed three weeks, after which he wasn’t quite the same.

Despite a rough September in which his ERA rose from 3.09 to 3.62, Garcia exceeded expectations for the season. The Yankees signed him for peanuts — a $1.5 million minor league contract with up to $3.6 million in bonuses (he didn’t quite reach the maximum) — and got a guy who, for two months, played a sterling No. 2 to Sabathia’s No. 1. It came at the perfect time, too, since it was right around the time of Bartolo Colon’s injury. When Colon went down Garcia stepped up, and the two of them combined to save the Yankees’ rotation for the first four months of the season.

For their minimal risk investment the Yankees got a 3.62 ERA out of Garcia, which is no small consideration. That’s his lowest ERA since 2001. His 4.12 FIP is also fairly in line with his prime seasons, and is actually a tick below his career numbers. A low HR/FB ratio led to a 4.36 xFIP, which mode bode poorly for next season. But then again he had a 4.41 xFIP last season and it didn’t spell disaster for 2011. Some veterans just figure these things out, and it appears Garcia has done just that.

The only remaining question is of whether they bring him back for 2012. Mike scratched the surface of this question earlier, and we’ll surely dive a bit deeper as the deadline to offer arbitration approaches. If they bring him back he can perhaps provide some value at the back of the rotation. If they let him walk he’ll have produced at a level far above his 2011 salary. Either way the Yankees come out winners. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but the Freddy Garcia signing ended up playing a large role in the 2011 Yankees’ success.

Filed Under: Players Tagged With: Freddy Garcia, What Went Right

The Freddy Garcia Question

October 10, 2011 by Mike 40 Comments

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

The Yankees hit the lottery with Freddy Garcia this season, paying him next to nothing for 146.2 above-average innings. We’ve already had a Freddy Garcia Appreciation Thread and will surely wax poetic about him whenever we get around to covering him during our season review, but for now let’s take a second what the offseason could have a store for the big right-hander. Should the Yankees bring Freddy back?

Garcia’s base salary was just $1.5M this year, but he earned most of his $3.6M in incentives by making 25 starts (he would have had to make 30 starts to earn all of it). The reverse-engineered Elias projections available at MLBTR indicate that Garcia qualifies as a Type-B free agent by the skin of his teeth. He’s the last Type-B with a score of 60.271, just ahead of the unranked Jeremy Guthrie and his score of 59.981. So yeah, Freddy’s a Type-B by less than three-tenths of an Elias point according to the reverse-engineered rankings, which are not official.

The Yankees have to offer Garcia arbitration in order to receive a draft pick if he signs elsewhere, but the risk is that he accepts. An arbitration award would likely put his 2012 salary around $6-7M or so, about a $2M raise. That seems pretty reasonable to me if you’re expecting Freddy to repeat this year’s performance, but that’s hardly a given. There’s always a chance the two sides work out a handshake agreement like the Yankees did with Javy Vazquez last year, ensuring that Garcia will decline arbitration.

No one asked me, but I think Sweaty Freddy would be a fine back of the rotation insurance policy for next season. Not a number three starter you’d count on, just a veteran guy to have for the fifth spot. I can’t see why the Yankees wouldn’t offer him arbitration just to secure the potential draft pick, and if he does accept, then so be it. His 2012 salary figures to be very reasonable, and it’s comforting to know there won’t be a “welcome to New York” adjustment period.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: Freddy Garcia

Garcia to start Game Three of ALDS

September 29, 2011 by Mike 62 Comments

Joe Girardi just announced that Freddy Garcia will start Game Three of the ALDS. A.J.Burnett will pitch out of the bullpen, hence tonight’s tune-up appearance.

Filed Under: Asides, Pitching, Playoffs Tagged With: A.J. Burnett, Freddy Garcia

Pitching plans after the rain out

September 23, 2011 by Mike 26 Comments

Friday night’s rain out against the Red Sox threw a bit of a wrench into the Yankees pitching plans, but nothing major. Let’s recap what Joe Girardi said both before and after the postponement was announced…

  • Freddy Garcia was supposed to start tonight, and he’ll simply be pushed back to Saturday. That means A.J. Burnett and Ivan Nova will start during Sunday’s doubleheader, but your guess on the order is as good as mine.
  • Phil Hughes played catch today and will throw a bullpen session tomorrow. If all goes well, he and his inflamed back will start one of the final three games of the season in Tampa. I’m guessing it would be Tuesday, so they could see how he feels on Wednesday and Thursday before having to make a final decision about the ALDS roster.
  • CC Sabathia will throw a simulated game before Sunday’s doubleheader, his final tune-up before Game One of the ALDS next Friday.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: CC Sabathia, Freddy Garcia, Phil Hughes

Freddy’s homers: long-term problem or just a blip?

September 12, 2011 by Joe Pawlikowski 39 Comments

(Frank Franklin II/AP)

For the first few months of the season it was the one thing that kept Freddy Garcia’s head above water. As summer rolled in, it allowed him to stand behind CC Sabathia as the team’s No. 2 pitcher. But after going 10 straight starts without allowing a home run, Garcia has allowed five in his last three, including four in his last two, which amounts to 7.2 IP. It leaves the Yankees facing a big question heading into the postseason: can Freddy still step up and take the ball in Game 2?

There are two possible scenarios at play here. The first one, popular with the statistics-oriented crowd, is that Garcia is merely experiencing a correction. It’s not normal for a pitcher to go 10 starts without allowing a homer, and so Garcia is just coming back down to earth. His xFIP has suggested such a regression, and the past three games represent just that. The second one is that he found something in his repertoire that allowed him to suppress home runs earlier in the season. His finger injury, and perhaps some dulling of his command due to a long layoff, is reason for his recent failures.

During his homerless streak, Garcia leaned heavily on his changeup. He threw it 30 percent of the time, more than any other pitch in his arsenal. After that he threw the four-seamer and the slider with frequency; in total he threw those three pitches a hair more than 85 percent of the time. The remaining 15 percent was divided almost evenly among the cutter, splitter, and two-seamer. This might seem odd, since the splitter has been, anecdotally, Garcia’s most effective pitch this season. Yet he doesn’t deploy it with frequency. Instead he picks his spots, and it worked. He generated swings on 11.2 percent of his 259 splitters during the streak.

In his last three starts Garcia has started relying on the splitter much more frequently. He has thrown it 39 times out of 250 total pitches, or 15.6 percent. That’s essentially triple the rate at which he threw it during his streak. At the same time he’s backed off the changeup significantly, throwing it only 45 times, or 18 percent. The slider has gained primacy in Garcia’s repertoire; he has thrown it 31.2 percent of the time since coming off the DL. Might the change of pitch selection be reason for Garcia’s failures?

In his start against Baltimore, the one when he allowed two homers and seven runs in 2.2 innings, Garcia leaned on the slider. He threw it 16 times in his 56 pitches, or 28.6 percent. The Orioles hitters demolished it, though — the Brooks Baseball data has the linear weights score on the slider at 3.12, which is simply horrible (negative scores are better). He also got beat up with the fastball, which is unsurprising. In that game he threw the splitter just four time,s and with generally good results: three strikes, one swinging, and a negative linear weights score. He apparently used that performance to justify heavier usage of his splitter yesterday.

That, of course, did not work either. Garcia threw 26 splitters out of 106 pitches, or 24.5 percent. His linear weights score: 2.04. His slider, however, was more effective, generating three swings and misses on 33 pitches and resulting in a -1.04 linear weights score. The changeup also came back into play, accounting for 27 of those 106 pitches and generating five swings and misses. It wasn’t overly effective, just barely on the linear weights scale, but it certainly got the job done moreso than it did against the Orioles. As expected, the results were quite better. But they weren’t necessarily good.

The change in repertoire, then, lends credence to both ends of the argument. While it’s certainly possible that Garcia is just experiencing a correction following his homerless streak, it’s also possible that a change in pitch selection, and a lack of sharpness in command, has led him down a homer-prone path. There’s no real way to tell, of course, which makes the issue that much more frustrating. But it’s good to know that there are tangible changes at play. If everything had been the same as before, the situation might appear a bit more dire.

This leaves some room for optimism. If Garcia gets sharper with each outing, he might be in ideal shape come playoff time. When he’s keeping hitters off-balance with his slider and changeup, while working the splitter into opportune spots, he’s shown that he’s effective. But he hasn’t done that in his last few games. His next few starts, then, will be of great importance in determining the postseason rotation. The No. 2 spot is, in all likelihood, his to lose. A strong finish could set the Yankees up well for a playoff run.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: Freddy Garcia

The Freddy Garcia Appreciation Thread

September 8, 2011 by Mike 28 Comments

The regular season is slowly winding down, and the Yankees are just any combination of 12 wins or Rays losses away from clinching a postseason berth. With 20 games to go, they’re sitting in a pretty great spot, and it’s time to start paying homage to those that helped get them here.

(AP Photo/David Goldman)

It seems kinda silly to praise Freddy Garcia just three days after his worst outing of the season, but that’s exactly what we’re going to do. The big right-hander has been steady and effective for the Yankees since the first day of the season, with a total of maybe three blips on the radar. Of course it wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Garcia wasn’t even Plan B.

Everyone knew the Yankees were going to go hard after Cliff Lee this past winter, and by the time he agreed to return the Phillies, the free agent starter crop had dried up. All that was left was a collection of cast-offs, has-beens, never-wases, and Freddy Garcia. The Yankees waited, and waited, and waited some more until Garcia accepted their offer of a minor league contract on the final day of January. The team wasn’t thrilled about how their rotation was shaping up, and I’m sure Freddy wasn’t thrilled about getting a non-guaranteed contract.

Spring Training came and went, and Garcia was named the fifth starter to open the season. The Yankees did all they could to avoid him for the first few weeks of the season, as a series of rain outs and off days allowed them to skip his turn a number of times. After a one-inning garbage time relief appearance in Fenway Park, Freddy made his first start of the season on April 16th, the 13th game of the season and the third time through the rotation. He came out and held the Orioles to two hits over six scoreless innings, but the Yankees again skipped his turn thanks to some schedule shenanigans. Eight days later, Garcia held another team to just two hits in six scoreless innings, this time the Rangers.

The Yankees didn’t skip the one they call Sweaty Freddy anymore after that. He limited the Blue Jays to three runs in five innings next time out, and then ran off a stretch in which he completed at least six innings in five of his next six starts. His ERA dropped to 3.34 during that time, then came that ugly four-run, 1.2 IP disaster against the Red Sox. Garcia’s ERA skyrocketed to 3.86, but he rebounded with another stretch in which he completed at least six innings in seven of nine starts. Only once during that time did he allowed more than three runs, only thrice more than two runs. The month of August started with a 3.22 ERA, and three starts later it sits at 3.50.

Garcia’s season is now 22 starts (and one relief appearance) old, well beyond the point of being a pleasant surprise. We’re not quite in “lightning in a bottle” territory since he did pitch last year, so I guess this qualifies as a minor miracle. Freddy’s strikeout rate (5.91 K/9) is almost a full whiff better than what he did last year (5.10), and his unintentional walk rate remained the same (2.34 uIBB/9 this year vs. 2.29 last year). His 0.82 HR/9 is half-a-homer better than last season (1.32), and his FIP (3.84) is nearly a full run better than last year as well (4.77). At 2.2 fWAR, he’s been nearly a full win more valuable than last year in 26 fewer innings.

The Yankees settled for Garcia eight months ago, when he was probably their Plan D or E, but they couldn’t be any happier with how he’s performed for them. Aside from a little cut on his index finger (and injury that didn’t really require a DL stint), Freddy has been completely healthy and taken the ball every time he’s been asked to. He’s done more than just keep the Yankees in the game, he’s taken the ball deep into games to give the bullpen a bit of a break, and frankly he’s been about as reliable as preseason question marks could be. Freddy has been steady, no doubt about it.

Filed Under: Players Tagged With: Freddy Garcia

Yankees activate Freddy Garcia, demote Hector Noesi

August 29, 2011 by Mike 32 Comments

In a move that should surprise no one, the Yankees have activated Freddy Garcia off the disabled list in time for tonight’s start against the Orioles. Hector Noesi was sent to Triple-A Scranton to make room on the roster. September call-ups are three days away, but the ten-day rule does apply so Noesi won’t be able to come back until next week. There are some loopholes though, so I wouldn’t be shocked if he was back with the big league team on Thursday. Anyway, tonight will be Sweaty Freddy’s first start in 22 days because of that cut on his right index finger. He’s held the O’s to two runs in a dozen innings this season.

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: Freddy Garcia, Hector Noesi

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