After Sunday's game, Avisail Garcia has the same number of plate appearances in the major leagues with the White Sox as he did last season. So, how do they compare?
Year | PA | H | HR | BB | K | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | wRC+ |
2013 | 168 | 49 | 5 | 5 | 38 | .304 | .327 | .447 | .775 | 97 |
2014 | 168 | 40 | 7 | 14 | 40 | .267 | .333 | .460 | .793 | 119 |
Although these numbers are similar enough for the number of plate appearances, things look a lot different if you take a look at the splits per month.
Month | PA | HR | OPS | BB% | K% | BB/K | wRC+ |
March/April | 30 | 2 | .820 | 8.8% | 20.6% | 0.43 | 132 |
August | 55 | 2 | .685 | 5.0% | 33.3% | 0.15 | 86 |
September | 65 | 3 | .871 | 10.8% | 17.6% | 0.62 | 141 |
After sitting from early April to August 1, the Sox described his minor league rehab as a second spring training. After returning from the DL in mid-August, his numbers look like he continued some of that work in Chicago. While his power was there, his hitting wasn't.
A few weeks ago, while listening to part of a game on the radio, Darrin Jackson mentioned that Garcia had been working with hitting coach Todd Steverson on his approach. Part of this was to work on pulling the ball more, but it looks like part of it was work on taking some balls. Garcia's eight walks so far in September is one less than the nine walks he had last season. As an added bonus to walking 5% more than he has through his career, he's also striking out 5% less.
Before making everything sound rosy, there are some problems here. Even with some good offensive numbers, his fWAR and bWAR are both 0.1 after yesterday's two home run game. This is all on his defense. His UZR is currently -6.3 and his DRS is -8. Using the season long versions, that's -28.3 and -27. That's almost three wins given up on his defense.
Looking at the broken up UZR numbers, he's given up all the runs on his range. His speed certainly isn't an issue so jumps and routes would seem to be the problem. This is also one of the harder things to see if you aren't watching an outfielder at a game, so, for now, I'll have to take UZR's word on this.
What we're seeing in September with Avisail Garcia is a maturing hitter. He's walking more and striking out less. He's seeing more pitches to hit and he's doing just fine with that. If he can take this approach into next season, Rick Hahn will be a very, very happy man.