The Brewers Have the Pitching Infrastructure Deivi García Desperately Needs

[Jack Stern]

The Brewers' new minor-league signee is still a young pitcher with limited big-league experience. His new organization offers the proper guidance for him to blossom, something he did not get at his previous stops.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

The Brewers snagged their latest pitching reclamation project on Monday, signing former New York Yankees prospect Deivi García to a minor-league deal with an invitation to big-league spring training.

Brewer Fanatic’s Matthew Trueblood provided a snapshot of the 25-year-old’s current standing as a pitcher and some basic tweaks the Brewers could be planning to help him implement. Here’s the CliffsNotes summary: García is nowhere close to a good big-leaguer in his current form, but his stuff can dominate hitters if he learns how to harness and sequence it.

The Brewers are García’s third organization, and the third time could be the charm for the talented right-hander. That’s because he’s finally landed with a club that offers what he’s lacked for much of his professional career: consistent messaging from a coaching staff that advances his development instead of hindering it.

García’s mix has long been headlined by a mid-to-upper-90s four-seamer that induces ample whiffs at the top of the strike zone. His secondary pitches have been in constant flux, marred by inconsistent and sometimes unproductive messaging from his first two teams.

Going into 2023, García and the Yankees lowered his arm angle and tweaked his sequencing by eliminating his curveball – a big 12-6 breaker he can only throw from a higher release point than the rest of his arsenal – and shorter gyro slider. The goal was to optimize García’s mechanics and pitch mix.

The Chicago White Sox claimed him off waivers in August and immediately undid those changes. García’s curveball returned as his go-to secondary pitch. The slider was also back, and the cutter was scrapped. He did not throw another sweeper until the final weekend of the regular season.

Within one season, García underwent two overhauls to his plan of attack, and the second was nearly the exact opposite of the first. That continued into 2024, during which repeated tinkering was the only constant throughout his season.

García returned with a reinstated sweeper, and the slider was seemingly gone for good. He began the year in the big leagues with a fastball, sweeper, curveball, and changeup mix, but it would again change repeatedly throughout the season.

After a rough 14-game stint in the major leagues, the White Sox designated García for assignment and outrighted him to Triple-A. When he reported to his new affiliate, they immediately brought back his cutter, but it was not the same pitch it was the year before.

As a Yankee, the characteristics of García’s cutter fell somewhere between a cutting fastball and a hard slider, but it was slightly closer to the former. When he and the White Sox reimplemented in Triple-A, its shape shifted toward slider territory. Its induced vertical break decreased from 10.1 to 7.1 inches, and its glove-side movement increased from 3.8 to 4.8 inches.

These changes didn’t just make the cutter look more like a breaking ball to hitters; they also separated it more from García’s four-seamer. Notice how there’s more space between the blue and orange clusters in García’s White Sox movement plot.

That added space is not necessarily a good thing. Cutters and four-seamers are supposed to look similar from release through their early trajectories, before moving in opposite directions as they approach the plate. The four-seamer rides through the zone with some arm-side run. The cutter has less ride, but does not drop like a breaking ball and moves late to the glove side. The greater the movement separation between the pitches, the easier it can get for a hitter to discern them after release and make a better swing decision.

The new cutter induced whiffs at a 30.4% rate, but the Brewers may prefer the previous iteration because of how it interacts with García’s four-seamer. They’ve utilized both kinds of cutter shapes, but the goal is usually to make fastball variants look as similar as possible out of hand for maximum deception. Look at how much wider the movement gap is between García’s four-seamer and cutter, compared to other notable Brewers who threw both pitches in 2024.

García will never close that gap as fully as the others, because his four-seamer has more run than most. Still, it’s plausible to predict that when it comes to the cutter, Chris Hook and company may focus on later, more subtle cut and more carry to make both fastballs more deceptive.

When García and the White Sox restored his cutter after his demotion, they also abolished his sweeper from game action for nearly three months.

García’s sweeper returned at the end of July, and like the cutter, it came back in a different form. It was harder, with less break.

The pitch had significant movement at the beginning of the year, breaking an average of 16.9 inches horizontally and often surpassing 20 inches. Later in the season, it averaged 13.8 inches and never exceeded 17.4 inches. Its average induced vertical break also changed from -4.3 to -1.9 inches, meaning the pitch dropped less as it approached the plate. Finally, its average velocity ticked from 80.2 to 81.6 mph.

There may have been a method to the madness. García struggled to control the sweeper early in the year, throwing just 33.3% of them in the strike zone in the majors, and opponents only chased 16.7% of sweepers he threw outside the zone.

Breaking balls with big movement can be tougher to land for strikes, and dramatic movement early in a pitch’s trajectory can make it easier for hitters to identify its trajectory and take it for a ball. When the Brewers acquired Aaron Civale, they cautioned him against making his curveball and sweeper too big, partially for these reasons.

Slashing a few inches of movement can alleviate both issues. In a small sample, García threw his new sweeper in the zone 42.3% of the time, and it produced a 36.4% chase rate. Keeping a pitch off-limits in games for half of the season is still unusual, even if the thought is to fine-tune it in the background instead, but this could be an adjustment that the Brewers carry into 2025.

The pitching development brass has its work cut out for it. García pitched to a 7.07 ERA in the big leagues in 2024 and a 6.18 mark in Triple-A. He’s a mess right now, but given his career trajectory, that is not surprising. Young pitchers take time to mature. They must grow comfortable with their arsenal and mechanics and learn to use them productively against the best hitters in the world. García has not received that runway because teams have modified his repertoire every few months for multiple years.

Enter the Brewers, who have successfully maximized various pitching profiles in recent years. Milwaukee’s staff has been lauded for its communication skills and ability to help pitchers implement productive adjustments natural to how each individual’s body moves and how the ball leaves their hand.

The exact tweaks they have waiting for García remain to be seen. They might tweak his cutter shape and alter how he sequences it off his four-seamer. Perhaps they’ll scrap or minimize his curveball and increase the usage of his tighter sweeper. Maybe a mechanical tweak will make his delivery more consistent and reduce his alarming walk rate.

Whatever the message, it will be concise, consistent, and realistic, and the Brewers will put García in a position to grow as a pitcher. Those are the things he needs most.

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