The long-rumored, yet once-thought-perhaps-dead trade for Jaime Garcia has come to fruition, as the Atlanta Braves announced on Twitter Monday afternoon that the team had moved the left-handed starter, along with catcher Anthony Recker and cash for minor-league pitcher Huascar Ynoa.
According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Twins are taking on the remaining $4.55 million owed to Garcia, 31, as well as all but $100k of the $300k still owed to Recker, who is making $800k this season. What’s unclear is if Recker was involved in the originally proposed deal, which was scuttled by the Braves but was reportedly sending injured relief prospect Nick Burdi to the Braves instead.
Ynoa, who turned 19 at the end of May, was signed by the Twins for as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic for $800k. He’s the younger brother of Michael Ynoa, the ballyhooed pitching international prospect signed by the Oakland A’s in 2008 for a then-record $4.25 million. Ynoa got hurt, had Tommy John surgery and never played in the big leagues with the A’s, but was traded as part of the deal after 2014 that sent Jeff Samardzija to the Chicago White Sox and Marcus Semien, among others, to the A’s. Ynoa has pitched in the big leagues in each of the last two seasons with the White Sox, compiling a 4.42 ERA with 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings, but also 5.9 walks per nine and a WHIP of 1.48.
The right-handed Ynoa is much smaller than his older brother — 6-foot-3, 175 pounds compared to 6-foot-7, 210 pounds — and is probably at least three or four years away from pitching in the big leagues. He’s thrown just 133.1 innings as a professional, and after putting together a really strong year with the GCL Twins last season — 3.18 ERA, 9.0 K/9, 1.10 WHIP — has struggled a bit with the jump to the Appalachian League, posting a 5.26 ERA in 25.2 innings at Elizabethton with 8.1 K/9, 4.9 BB/9 and a WHIP of 1.64.
Ynoa was the No. 27 prospect of the Minnesota Twins via Baseball America after the 2014 season, and has stayed about in that range more or less the last two offseasons. He was 25th the next year and 29th after last season. The latest report on Ynoa they filed says he doesn’t have much physical projection left — they also list him at 221 pounds — but he sits 92-93 mph with his fastball, touching 95, with a three-pitch arsenal that includes a slurvy breaking ball and a changeup. They suggest if he continues to work on his command, he could emerge as a mid-rotation starter. Still, at the age of 19 with a pitcher still in the Appalachian League, the Braves are assuming a considerable amount of risk there for marginal financial flexibility.
Garcia immediately slots in as the Twins’ third-best starter, and he’s put together a fairly decent season for the Braves through 18 starts. In a lot of ways, he’s done what the Twins would have liked to have seen from Kyle Gibson this season. Garcia has a 4.30 ERA (4.14 FIP), 6.8 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 and a WHIP of 1.32. The other similarity is that Garcia has induced grounders at a 55.4 percent rate this season and 56.4 percent for his career.
The only real difference is that he’s left-handed.
Gone are the days where Garcia was a fairly well-regarded prospect for the St. Louis Cardinals and even his early-career days where he’d post in the mid-3.00s, but he’s done a fairly nice job coming back from severe arm issues which had waylaid some of the more important years for a pitcher. Between 2013-14 — ages 26-27 for Garcia — the lefty pitched just 99 innings with a 3.82 ERA and 1.19 WHIP. Garcia’s first season back was solid, as he posted a 2.43 ERA over 129.2 innings, but his last two years have been a bit more mediocre, as he posted a 4.67 ERA with the Cardinals in 2016 before being shipped to the Braves for Luke Dykstra, Chris Ellis and John Gant.
Injury-wise, Garcia has undergone Tommy John surgery nearly a decade ago as well as battled shoulder issues — including bursitis and the dreaded thoracic outlet syndrome. Garcia has bounced back to throw more innings in each season since, starting with the 129.2-inning stretch in 2015 followed by 171.2 last season with the Cardinals. He’s thrown 113 so far this season in 18 starts. If he can repeat last year’s 30 starts, that’s 188.1 innings this year — nearly a 20-inning increase.
In short, he’s never been terribly durable, but he’s thrown 180 innings just once — back in 2011. This could be his second straight season of 170, which is not insignificant.
Garcia has never been a high-end pitcher in terms of velocity, but the shoulder and arm issues have not sapped his velocity in any way. In fact, he splits his fastballs about evenly between two- and four-seam varieties, and both are at least a full mile-per-hour higher than his career rates, according to Fangraphs PITCHf/x classifications. Garcia also throws a slider/cutter hybrid — Fangraphs’ Pitch Type classification has called it a cutter every year until this year — as well as a curve and a changeup. He favors the changeup most of his secondary pitches, throwing it a bit over 18 percent of the time.
Garcia has never been an extraordinary strikeout pitcher, but has at times flirted with a strikeout rate in the high-7.0/low-8.0 per nine innings range. That, coupled with usually tremendous command and his penchant for grounders makes him a really nice back-end starter, which adds up with his career ERA of 3.65 (3.63 FIP, 3.56 xFIP).
Like most pitchers, Garcia gets virtually no swinging strikes from either of his fastballs, but each of his secondary pitches have a whiff rate in excess of 12 percent. The changeup is 19.1 percent so far this season, the slider 23 percent (fairly elite) and the curveball 12.7 percent. Those are in descending order based on how often he throws them, but even the curve has been thrown 110 times this season. In other words, he’s not an absurdly low sample size. These are all in lines with his career whiff rates as well.
The upshot is this: this trade shows that Thad Levine and Derek Falvey have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with this Twins team
Essentially, Garcia looks like a solid lefty who lives and dies with staying ahead in counts. That’s certainly true of virtually any pitcher, but when he can work ahead in counts and mix in his secondary stuff, his numbers really take off. The saving grace, and what makes him a fairly safe bet for the Twins, is that each of his fastballs play fairly heavily in the zone. The four-seamer less so — as one might expect — with a 45.1 percent groundball rate induced this season. The sinker is hyper elite in that respect at 68.1 percent, and don’t sleep on the changeup at 68.6 percent either.
In short, it appears the changeup is his best pitch — and he’s aware of it, as he throws it more than any of his secondaries.
Recker has only appeared in six games with the big club in Atlanta this season. The solid play of a former Twin has something to do with that, as Kurt Suzuki has formed an excellent time share with Tyler Flowers behind the plate this year for Atlanta. The 33-year-old Suzuki is hitting .257/.342/.471 through 44 games for the Braves, though he’s still only thrown out 26 percent of attempted base thieves this season. That’s below the league average of 28 percent, but above the sub-20 percent marks he posted his final two years in Minnesota.
Most likely, Recker will head to Rochester, leading to one of Mitch Garver or John Ryan Murphy being displaced in some form or fashion. Recker is hitting just .223/.301/.381 in 41 games for Triple-A Gwinnett this season — a team that is very, very familiar with Rochester from frequent matchups in the International League. Don’t sleep on the Twins promoting Garver to the big leagues at some point, as he’s absolutely scored the baseball this season to the tune of a .286/.392/.540 batting line while playing some first base and left field to improve his versatility.
The upshot is this: this trade shows that Thad Levine and Derek Falvey have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with this Twins team. Sure, they’re playing above their heads in terms of pythagorean record and a lot of secondary stats, but once the wins are written on the left side of the standings, they can’t be subtracted. As Paul Molitor said repeatedly over the last homestand, he’s still waiting for the team to take off or fall back, rather than just hanging in there. He told Cory Provus on Sunday that he thinks the team has a run in it.
By trading for Garcia, the Twins have a 1-2-3 punch with Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios that can at least survive in a postseason series. But if the Twins don’t make it to the postseason, they didn’t trade any future assets they’ll be kicking themselves over in the next two or three seasons by taking a misguided stab at a postseason run. In short, the Twins are staying in their lane, and it’s a good look. If they can add another reliever, they’ve put themselves into a good spot.
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