>And he featured a bit of a new look, as he’s reverted some of his mechanics back to where they were in 2020.
>Garcia and pitching coach Matt Blake said the 22-year-old is using a more overhand delivery than he did a year ago, when the Yankees adjusted his arm slot — with disastrous results.
>Last year, believing Garcia was too “rotational” in his delivery — meaning he turned too much — the Yankees adjusted his pitching form and his control issues worsened. He walked 68 batters, had a WHIP of 1.875 and allowed 21 homers in just 90 ²/₃ innings with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and finished the season with a 7.25 ERA.
[NL Scout on Garcia back in 2021:](https://www.nj.com/yankees/2021/06/why-does-deivi-garcia-have-880-era-in-triple-a-mlb-scout-yankees-weigh-in.html)
[Link](https://nypost.com/2022/03/23/how-deivi-garcia-is-trying-to-get-yankees-career-back-on-track/)
>A National League scout also noticed delivery issues when recently witnessing one of Garcia’s outings. He’s down on Garcia, whom he gave high grades in past seasons.
>“Deivi Garcia has gone so far backwards that it’s sad to watch,” the scout told NJ Advance Media with a request to remain anonymous so that he could speak freely. “The Yankees changed his delivery and they’re trying to teach him this flat sweeping slider that’s not effective. He had a plus curveball that he’s not throwing it as much. Honestly, I don’t know what the Yankees are doing.
If the slider stuff sounds familiar it’s because the Yankees tried something similar with Sonny Gray in 2019: [Link](https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/03/05/sonny-gray-yankees-2018-season-sliders-curveballs-struggles)
>“They love sliders,” Gray said of his former team. “Sliders are a great pitch. The numbers say slider is a good pitch, but you might not realize how many s—– counts you’re getting in while throwing all those sliders. They wanted me to be Tanaka and I’m way different from him.”
>I don’t know how people throw sliders for strikes that are still tight, good pitches. I’m at 2–0 and I’m throwing a slider, and either I’m throwing a s—-y slider in the zone, or I’m yanking it into the dirt and it’s 3-0 and I’m screwed either way.”
Rodon’s injury and the Yankees current sad state of affairs has really helped hide that this one of the bigger organizational failures in recent memory.
21 comments
I’ll miss him.
So, the organization still hasn’t learned a damned thing after the Sonny Gray debacle is what I’m reading.
From an article like this, its easy to see why we cant ever develop young star pitchers while the Rays and Astros churn them out like butter. Player development people here have no idea what theyre doing with these poor kids.
Kid will go elsewhere and be a stud
He could have netted some decent MLB-level talent in a trade, or become one himself with competent development. Instead he’s just more grist for the Brian Cashman ego mill.
Didnt he also have a nerve injury in his throwing arm after changing his mechanics?
Also his delivery was the same as pedros…
>Honestly, I don’t know what the Yankees are doing.
Me too NL scout….me too
If Matt Blake can’t fix him then likely he’s broken. There was always question marks about the pure stuff getting batters out as he moved up.
To be clear: Deivi’s mechanics had always been a concern. The issue was that he was throwing too much of his body into his pitches and that he was going to be an injury-prone player through his career. Now, whether you think we should’ve kept him until he blew his elbow out, that’s another question. But he needed tweaks to his mechanics if he was going to have a long career.
The Yankees minor league pitching development has improved drastically in recent years, so I’m not gonna hold one players failure against them. Starting Pitching prospects are just extremely volatile. It’s why the Yankees sold high on Waldichuk and Wesneski last season. Spencer Howard, who the Yankees got for basically nothing last week, was the #42 ranked prospect as recently as 2021. Luis Patino, ranked as high as #19 in 2021 was let go by the Rays. These guys can drop off so quickly due to injuries and mechanical issues.
I think it’s disingenuous to compare the current staff’s work with Garcia to Rothschild’s work with Gray.
Blake & Co have earned some benefit of the doubt that the previous regime did not.
The real lesson here is losing your minds over a “top 50” prospect or whatever is rarely worth it. From pre-2019 rankings (I think 2021 is weird with the pandemic season especially):
2 is looking like a bust (Jo Adell)
6 is out of MLB
7 never made MLB
16 is out of MLB
21, 23, 29 are out of MLB
36 & 37 are out of MLB
42, 44, 46, 50 are out of MLB
And that’s just the front side of the top 100, where people are crediting the Mets for grabbing a bunch of dudes.
And if you actually go through the list a ton of these guys are duds, backups, up and down dudes like Taylor Trammell (#11 in all of baseball in 2019!)
Most of these dudes need to be moved and never make it, but the Yankees get a guy at #73 and he becomes untouchable.
>Honestly, I don’t know what the Yankees are doing
If there was ever a slogan for the last few years here…
This further shows that are problems are not just v personnel it’s philosophy. Even changing to Blake having a one size fits all attitude does not help development it creates the flaws we see now. When other scouts put in the press they have no idea what you are doing that is a red flag
> Honestly, I don’t know what the Yankees are doing.
Us neither, anonymous scout. Us neither.
I thought the one thing we had was Matt Blake lol. I’m not about to criticize our pitching development team. Other than drafting Aaron Judge, the best thing Cashman has done during the last decade is hiring Matt Blake and Sam Briend to overhaul our pitching. If it wasn’t for those guys, I think we’d be looking at much uglier 2021-2023 seasons because our hitting has sucked (sans that magical first half during 2022), but our pitching kept getting us to 90+ wins a year.
He actually had an okay start to the majors in 2020 and then just didn’t develop an inch from there. Disappointing but not surprising.
Why would this be a shock – do we find and develope middle relivers – yes, pretty well.
Starters – NEVER – I think Any Pettitte is still that last home grown legit all star level starer we developed.
Will devi go somewhere else and thrive – maybe, probably not. But there is NOTHING going on with big time pitching and the Yankees, unless you count trading for hurt pitchers like Montas – it’s just another pass that the Cashman regime manages to get from the media
Midas touch in reverse.
This organization is becoming too rigid. They say you do it our way or no way at all. The Sonny Gray situation was such a joke.
I think they need to rebuild the whole organizational staff.
I watched him play a bunch in the minors. He wasn’t that great nor impressive
This is such bad coaching. Why would you take away anyones greatest strength and try to make them do something completely different? Your job as a coach is to figure out how to build an approach around their strengths. We seem to do a decent job bringing in talented players. Then the development/analytics department decide they should be something they are not because it is “better” if everyone offers the same look.