Why Yimi Garcia is good actually

Yimi Garcia got called in the 6th inning to relieve Hyun-Jin Ryu after 2 brutal errors turned 2 potential double plays into a bases loaded no outs situation. Despite the fact that Ryu was pitching great, giving up only a few hard hit balls and displaying great command, Schneider decided to go with Garcia, much to the chagrin of the majority of /r/Torontobluejays.

[The thing is, Yimi Garcia is good actually?](https://media.tenor.com/9W5amjCMCHwAAAAd/yimi-garcia.gif)

Let’s take a look at his stats to see how good he is:

**Standard Numbers**

Garcia has a 3.86 ERA in 53.2 IP with a 3-4 W-L ratio along with 14 Holds and 3 Blown Saves. He also has a 1.29 WHIP. That’s not that good? Maybe Yimi Garcia is average actually, or potentially even mediocre?! Maybe we need to dive a little bit deeper.

**ERA predictors**

Yimi Garcia’s ERA is an uninspiring 3.86 as a reliever, which many people expect to be significantly better than average as they can go full tilt in only 1 inning. However, ERA is very volatile for relievers, as data can be extremely skewed by a couple of blow up innings. The way that most people like to evaluate future performance for relievers is by using ERA predictors (As of Aug 25, 2023).

Player| ERA| FIP| xERA| xFIP| ERA-| FIP-| SIERA|
—|—|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-
Yimi Garcia| 3.98| 3.48| 3.76| 3.31| 93| 80| 3.18|

Wow, every single one of Yimi Garcia’s ERA predictors are better than his current ERA. That’s weird. Maybe his current ERA isn’t actually illustrative of Yimi’s current talent/skill. Maybe *gasp* Yimi Garcia is actually an above average reliever? His ERA only has him at 7% better than the average pitcher, but his FIP has him as 20% better than average.

(I like using ERA- and FIP- because, ERA and FIP is better when the number is lower rather than higher, so the lower the ERA- and FIP- number, the better a pitcher is)

—-

Basically, Yimi Garcia is good at getting Strikeouts, with a 10.08 K/9 (26.1 K%), good at limiting walks with a 2.05 BB/9 (5.3 BB%), and decent at limiting the long ball, with a 1.02 HR/9. If you, as a pitcher, is good at those 3 things, you should be an above average player. His average fastball velo is 96 mph which is the 2nd best in his career! But, Yimi has had his struggles with a finicky term called BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play). Essentially, whenever a hitter hits one of Yimi’s pitches in play, they have an absurd .347 batting average whenever they do so! That’s .050 points higher than the league average, and .082 points higher than his career BABIP! What that means, is that Yimi Garcia has gotten unlucky with all of the balls put into play, and that’s what’s giving him a career high 9.6 H/9. However, that doesn’t really display the full picture. Yes, Garcia is getting unlucky with his BABIP numbers, but there’s one more layer that you can dig into to really understand why he’s giving up so much more hits.

**Batted Ball Data and Statcast**

[Look at all of those red bubbles!](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/yimi-garcia-554340?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb)

Red bubbles are good, the darker red and the higher the number in the bubble, the better a player is relative to the rest of the league. So, Yimi Garcia has above average numbers in every statcast percentile ranking except for Extension (which is very useful as it can make velo play up, *hello 100th percentile Jordan Romano*), and xBA (Expected Batting Average). This means that although Garcia is good at everything a pitcher should be good at (limiting walks and homeruns, whilst also getting strikeouts), he is actually giving up below average quality of contact. His xWOBAcon is a .377 compared to his xWOBA and WOBA being .301 and .317 respectively. My theory is that Yimi is more in the zone this year with a good walk and strikeout rate, but it does let him become more susceptible to hard contact/line drives because of that. That being said, I still think he’s very unlucky, because a .347 BABIP is unsustainable, and his HR/FB ratio is worse than his career average despite his Barrel% being better than last years.

**Context and Why I wrote this**

Yimi has earned his fair share of criticism on this subreddit, and then some. He’s constantly derided for getting put into a game, and Schneider gets shit on for putting in Garcia every single time.

Early on in the season, Garcia struggled a lot with a 4.66 ERA in the first half. However, in the 2nd half of the season, he’s been lights out with a 2.25 ERA. Everyone who was paying attention to his underlying numbers knew that his true talent was better than his crappy 1st half of the season, and Garcia was also being overworked which led to some terrible outings.

Yimi Garcia is not going to be an elite 8th or 9th inning reliever, but we need some good relievers to get us to those situations, and Garcia is perfectly suited as a great middle reliever who can fill in a little bit in high leverage spots. Despite coming in with the bases loaded with no outs and hitting a batter, he then struck out the next 3 batters!

But the main reason I wrote this post is because some dude argued with me after Garcia was put into the game, because they said this and I tried to correct him

>So they put in our lowest swing and miss rate bullpen member? Interesting

**Well Yimi Garcia isn’t our so-called lowest swing and miss bullpen member, he’s just good, actually.**

*I’m petty like that*

Edit: LMAO, the guy is still going at it with me. Apparently since he saw a graphic on Sportsnet with Garcia having a lower whiff rate than *checks notes* Trevor Fucking Richards, he’s the worst on our team lol.

Why Yimi Garcia is good actually
by u/sackydude in Torontobluejays