Houston Astros: What to watch from Luis Garcia in 2022

A pleasant surprise for the Houston Astros last year was the emergence of starting pitcher Luis Garcia. The right-handed pitcher is the most recent Astros player discovery and development success story, who climbed from Low-A to make his initial debut with the Astros in 2020.

Garcia followed that up with a terrific 2021. In his first full year starting, the Venezuelan finished second in American League Rookie of the Year voting, while posting an 11-8 record with a 3.48 ERA, 9.7 strikeout per nine rate and a 1.15 WHIP — pretty impressive for an obscure prospect no one saw coming at the age of 24.

Garcia is an interesting pitcher in that he doesn’t have overwhelming velocity or unhittable specialty pitches. His success is predicated on pitch repertoire and deception. Garcia typically throws his 94-mph fastball 42% of the time with a good mix of a cutter (22%), a slider (12%), a change up (12%) and a curveball (9%).

Garcia perhaps doesn’t look imposing on the mound and his pre-pitch motion is very peculiar, but he generates a ton of success. His fastball is in the 90th percentile for spin rates by Baseball Savant and his secondary pitches also get a fair amount of movement and each generate a Whiff rate above 35%.

However, the big question coming into the Astros’ 2022 season is can Luis Garcia improve from being exposed in the playoffs last year?

Garcia went 1-4 during the postseason and truly got exposed against the elite lineups. If you exclude his ALCS Game 6 gem that he threw, Garcia gave up 14 earned runs, 12 hits and 11 walks in 12 innings in those other four games.

Game 6 of the World Series was particularly rough where he gave up that huge Jorge Soler bomb that put the nail in the coffin for the Astros’ championship hopes.

So what should we expect from Garcia in 2022?  At age 25, it’s fair to assume he’s going to only improve, but the “sophomore slump” is very real for MLB ballplayers. Here are a few things that Garcia needs to improve upon for a successful 2022 season.

Garcia needs control early in the count

We’ve already seen good Garcia and bad Garcia so far this season. He struggled to find the plate against the Diamondbacks, especially early in the count, and benefitted by some good defense to bail him out. It was a completely different story, and in his home start against the Angels, he threw 68% strikes and had some dominating innings.

Early in the count was a real bellwether for Garcia last year. While he was above average with even counts or leading the count, Garcia gave up 134 tOPS when he was behind on the count in the 31st percentile.

When Garcia got behind in those counts, he couldn’t paint the corners as well as he needed to. He tried climbing back in and good hitters teed off on balls I knew were coming down the middle. The better Garcia can get at both starting counts and keeping the ball out of the middle-third of the plate, then we will see more success out of him.

Can Garcia fool teams multiple times?

Garcia came into the season last year relatively unknown and un-scouted, and he fooled a ton of batters. However, when you look in the numbers, you can see teams that faced him more often did better against them.

The team that he struggled the most last year with was the Angels, a team he had six starts against, giving up a tOPS 145 and a .278 BA. The Seattle Mariners, a team Garcia faced three times last year, generated a tOPS of 114.

Garcia had starts against the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox in the regular season, and both those lineups found success against him in the postseason. And lest we forget the on-fire Atlanta Braves that learned all his tricks by Game 6 of the World Series, and he gave up damage.

Not many pitchers have the ability to win against good lineups they face multiple times — that’s what makes guys like Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom so great. Garcia isn’t at that level, but if he can keep familiar lineups off-balanced at the plate, he could make a significant jump this season.

He’ll have an early test coming up soon as he’s scheduled to face the Toronto Blue Jays, a projected top-five offense, twice in the same week. It’s still in the early days of Garcia’s career, and he’s shown some early season improvements already.

His fastball velocity touched 96 mph, and he put forward roughly six solid innings against the Angels in the home opener. If he can make these small incremental improvements, I could see Garcia being an impressive No. 2-3 starter on a contender.

And hey, if he wants to make a huge leap to an All-Star level starter this year, I wouldn’t be opposed to that either.