Yimi Garcia Is a Great Signing for the Blue Jays
Deep Analysis into Yimi García's Arsenal.
Opening
Despite the presence of big names such as Soto, Snell, and Sasaki in free agency, many quality players aren't receiving the attention they deserve. For example, in my most recent blog, I wrote about Keynan Middleton and how he was an under-the-radar free agent. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend giving it a look; I dive deep into why Middleton is a quality arm that a team could sign for a relatively cheap price tag. But that's beside the point; in this blog, I'm going to continue the trend of writing about under-the-radar free agents, specifically Yimi Garcia.
Garcia recently signed with the Toronto Blue Jays on a 2-year, 15 million dollar deal, which, to me, is great value for the Blue Jays. Garcia is 34 with over 10 years of MLB service time, with effective results in practically every season to show for it. What intrigues me the most about Garcia is his ability to produce a deep arsenal with unpredictable movement profiles on almost all his pitches. I'll get into this in more depth later, but first, let's look at his delivery characteristics.
Delivery Characteristics
Garcia is a very unique pitcher with the ability to produce an effective East-to-West arsenal. Due to this, he is mostly used as a righty specialist because of his inability to generate depth on his pitches. The reason Garcia is unable to generate depth on his pitches is because of his low slot delivery, which doesn’t allow him to effectively get on top of the ball.
To produce this low slot delivery, Garcia throws from a 29-degree arm angle and minimal extension of 5.9’, which allows him to get down to an effective vRel of 5.1’. This ability to go from a 6.1’ frame to a 5.1’ release height is extremely deceptive and is a major factor in why I believe he is a valuable pickup in this year's offseason.
4 Seam Fastball
To start off with Garcia's arsenal, let's take a look at his most effective pitch, the 4-seam fastball. Garcia is able to produce an effective shape of 15.0 iVB and 10.4 iHB while being thrown at 96.5 MPH. This pitch was able to produce exceptional results of .143 AVG, .247 wOBA, and .257 xwOBA. To go along with these results, he is also able to create an elite Whiff% of 31.7% and 38.3% O-Sw%. What makes this pitch so effective is Garcia's ability to produce an unexpected amount of ride, as well as his capability to produce an extremely low VAA.
When looking at the image below, we are able to see that Garica is able to produce over 2” of unexpected ride as well as 0.9” relative to his arm angle. This ability to produce this unexpected ride allows for this increased swing and miss under the ball, which, as a result, leads to the increased Whiff% and O-Sw%.
To pair with this unexpected shape, Garcia is also able to produce an efficient VAA of -3.6. This combination is truly a match made in heaven. Not only is Garcia able to produce more rides than expected, but he’s also able to throw this pitch on a flat trajectory to the plate. Understanding this, Garcia's fastball is practically unhittable at the top of the zone. Thankfully, he threw this pitch at the top ⅓ of the zone 66.1% of the time, which allowed him to produce the great results that I explained at the beginning of this excerpt. I would continue pounding the top of the zone with this pitch because of how dominant it is.
Curveball
The next pitch in Garcia’s deep arsenal is his curveball. Garcia's curveball has a sweeper-like shape of -1.3 iVB and -11.0 iHB while being thrown at 84.3 MPH. In 2024, this pitch generated average results of .235 AVG, .299 wOBA, and .309 xwOBA with a 28.3 Whiff% and 28.8 O-Sw%.
What I would like to see Garcia do with this pitch is to revert it back to his 2023 shape with slightly more depth of -2.4 iVB and -12.2 iHB. This shape was able to produce much better results with a .189 AVG, .245 wOBA, and .247 xwOBA with a 34.0% Whiff% and 25.2 O-Sw%. The main reason why I prefer the 2023 shape as opposed to his current shape is the ability to be effective vs. lefties.
As I said before, Garcia's lower arm angle prevents him from getting on top of the ball, which, as a result, limits his effectiveness vs lefties. What this 2023 shape allows for is the ability to have increased depth on this curveball, which, as a result, produced a .188 AVG, .219 SLG, .196 wOBA, and a 44.2 Whiff% against lefties. Although Garcia is a righty specialist, having an effective pitch to go to, like his 2023 curve against lefties, is necessary to his continued success.
Sinker
To continue with Garcia's arsenal, his next pitch is a sinker. Garcia threw this pitch strictly to righties and has a shape of 6.9 iVB and 18.1 iHB while being thrown at 95.8 MPH. This offering overperformed its expected results in 2024, generating a .238 AVG and .319 wOBA as opposed to its .340 xAVG and .384 xwOBA.
Despite this, it effectively generated a 19.6 Whiff% and an absurd 48.3 O-Sw%, which are both well above the average sinker results. This pitch is able to produce these exceptional swing-and-miss results due to Garcia's ability to produce over 3.9” of unexpected run and .8” of ride. This unexpected run is why I believe that this pitch can continue to produce productive results.
To improve this pitch further, I would like to change the catcher's positioning to arm side strictly. The reason I want to see this positioning change is to play into his great, unexpected movement. Pounding inside to righties would allow for that exceptional O-Sw% to stay, as well as decrease the amount of mistakes pitches leaking back over the plate when trying to backdoor.
Sweeper
The next pitch that Garcia throws is his riding sweeper. This pitch, like many of Garcia's other offerings, has a unique shape of 8.5 iVB and -11.9 iHB while being thrown at 86.3 MPH. This pitch produced some of the best results in all of baseball with a .071 AVG, .090 wOBA, and .086 xwOBA with a 30.0 Whiff% and 30.6 O-Sw%. Garcia introduced this pitch in 2024, and it adds a whole new level to his arsenal.
What's great about this pitch is it allows his curveball to have a pitch to effectively tunnel off of versus both-handedness. As you can see below, his sweeper is able to mirror the curveball's horizontal movement, but since it generates more ride, the curveball effectively drops below. Due to this tunnel effect, I would be inclined to see what the introduction of this sweeper to lefties does to the effectiveness of his curveball against opposite-handedness. To add onto this, I would like to see a slight increase in usage of this pitch to allow for him to throw this very effective pitch more often, as well as allow for his curveball to prosper off its tunnel.
Changeup
The next pitch within Garcia's arsenal is his changeup, which he predominantly throws to lefties. This pitch has a relatively effective shape of 4.6 iVB and 18.1 iHB while being thrown at 88.7 MPH. This changeup generated effective results of .154 AVG, .254 wOBA, and .232 xwOBA with an absurd 42.9 Whiff% and 30.0 O-Sw%. What makes this pitch so effective is Garcia's ability to produce unexpected arm-side runs and effective velocity.
Like his sinker, Garcia’s changeup has the ability to effectively generate arm-side run, which can be extremely effective to lefties if located low and outside (arm-side for Garcia). The only problem is that Garcia doesn't have the most effective command of this pitch. Garcia has a large variance of misses on the arm side and high. To correct this, I believe Garcia should play into his expected misses by implementing a catcher positioning change. I think that repositioning to the middle third of the plate and low would allow for Garcia to play into his natural movement/misses, which would allow his pitches to become borderline balls/strikes as opposed to automatic takes.
The following reason why this pitch is so effective is its ability to generate effective velocity. Once a changeup reaches 86-87 MPH, it begins to increase Whiff% and decrease wOBA. Knowing this, we see how the combination of the unexpected arm-side movement and Garcia's ability to generate considerable velocity allows this pitch to be extremely effective.
Slider
Now it's time to take a look at arguably the most important pitch in Garcia's entire arsenal: his slider. Garcia's slider has a cutter-like shape of 8.5 iVB and -2.8 iHB while being thrown at 88.4 MPH. This pitch was able to generate a .200 AVG, .257 wOBA, and .151 xwOBA with a below-average 16.7 Whiff% and 26.1 O-Sw%. The reason I view this pitch as arguably Garcia's most important pitch is because of its ability to tie together his entire arsenal. Without this pitch, hitters would be easily able to identify his curve/sweeper due to his extreme East-to-West profile.
To further improve Garcia's arsenal, I would like to see an increased usage of this pitch, specifically to lefties. The reason I would like to see this is that, in Garcia's current arsenal, he has no pitch that he's able to effectively go inside on lefties. Consequently, this allows hitters to pick up on their curveball/changeup more effectively. The implementation of this pitch to lefties would allow for his curve to play off its tunnel while also making his changeup more effective low and away. This pitch ties his abundant arsenal together and is extremely important to his success.
Conclusion
All in all, I love this signing for the Blue Jays. They get him back after trading him away in 2024 for a relatively cheap price tag for his production. Garcia is an extremely effective East-to-West pitcher with the ability to produce multiple unexpected movement profiles relative to his arm angle. Some adjustments I would like to see to further improve his effectiveness are reverting back to his 2023 curveball shape, having the catcher position strictly arm side on his sinker, possibly incorporating his sweeper to lefties to allow for his curveball to excel, positioning the catcher in the middle third of the plate on his changeup, and incorporating his slider more to lefties.
Thank you for reading.
If you haven't already, please subscribe below.