Blue Jays to sign reliever Yimi Garcia

The Blue Jays have agreed to a deal with right-hander Yimi Garcia, as per former player Carlos Baerga via Instagram (hat tip to MLB Network’s Jon Morosi).

Garcia comes to Toronto after something of a tough end to his 2021 season. After the Marlins dealt Garcia to the Astros at the trade deadline, Garcia posted a 5.48 ERA over 21 1/3 innings with Houston. While his strikeout and walk rates improved following the trade, he had some bad luck in the form of a very low 42.6% strand rate. With a 2.98 SIERA for his time as an Astro, the argument can certainly be made that Garcia deserved better, and things didn’t really improve thanks to a couple of rough outings in the playoffs.

On the whole, Garcia had a 4.21 ERA/3.61 ERA over 57 2/3 combined innings in 2021, with a 25.3% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate that were both better than the league average. Garcia allowed quite a bit of hard contact, but he continued to boast one of baseball’s very best fastball spin rates. Perhaps most promisingly, Garcia’s home run rate was a manageable 14.5%, after the long ball led to a lot of issues when he pitched for the Dodgers in 2018-19.

Those home run concerns notwithstanding, Garcia has been a pretty solid bullpen arm for much of his career, posting a 3.60 ERA over 232 1/3 career major-league innings. Garcia has rebounded nicely from a 2016-18 stretch that was essentially a wash due to injuries, as he tossed only 30 2/3 combined frames in those three years due to knee problems, biceps problems and Tommy John surgery. Los Angeles elected to non-tender Garcia after the 2019 season, and he was quite effective with the Marlins after signing with Miami that winter.

A two-year deal is a nice score for Garcia in the wake of this career history, and also a reasonable price for Toronto to pay for a veteran relief arm with postseason experience. The Jays have generally not spent much on relief pitching during Ross Atkins’ tenure as general manager, with the partial exception of their one-year, $5.5 million deal with Kirby Yates last offseason that immediately went south when the right-hander needed TJ surgery of his own. Garcia’s health history contains some obvious red flags, although he hasn’t had any true injury problems since the start of the 2019 campaign, apart from a month missed in 2020 during the Marlins’ COVID-19 outbreak.

A swath of bullpen injuries badly hampered the Jays for the first few months of the 2021 season, and while the numbers began to generally improve, the Blue Jays lacked depth beyond their top quartet of closer Jordan Romano, Trevor Richards, Adam Cimber and Tim Mayza. That group is all back next season, and with Garcia added to the mix along with other pitchers (i.e. Julian Merryweather, Ryan Borucki) who will hopefully be healthier, the Blue Jays are aiming to turn their relief corps from a weakness into a strength.