MLB Trade rumors: Exploring Avisail Garcia as an Oakland A’s target

Could this be the right-handed outfielder they’re looking for?

The Oakland A’s are in the market for an outfielder who bats right-handed. Earlier in November, John Shea of the S.F. Chronicle reported on the team’s “interest in Avisail Garcia of the White Sox, or at least that type of player.” The next day they traded away righty slugger Ryon Healy, but that didn’t change the fact that they’re still looking for an outfielder, per Joe Stiglich of NBCS. It’s December now and the story remains the same entering the Winter Meetings.

There are plenty of outfield names to talk about, but let’s focus on the one who has already been mentioned in a vague rumor. Avisail Garcia has been in the bigs since 2012, but he debuted young and is just now reaching his prime. After a few seasons of growing pains, he finally broke out in 2017 at age 26. He’s got two more years of team control, with MLBTR estimating his upcoming arbitration payday at $6.7 million.

From 2012-16, Garcia was a replacement-level player at best. His bat was slow to get going and his defense was atrocious, and in ‘14 he missed most of the year to a torn labrum in his shoulder. Once healthy he put in two mostly full seasons for the White Sox, but still couldn’t produce any value. His youth and raw talent rightly earned him plenty of mulligans, though.

The patience paid off in 2017. Garcia exploded at the plate, and he put up slightly positive metrics on defense as well. The whole package added up to a 4-WAR campaign on both scales (4.5 bWAR, 4.2 fWAR).

Garcia, 2017: .330/.380/.506, 137 wRC+, 18 HR, 5.9% BB, 19.8% Ks, .392 BABIP

Let’s take a closer look at that stat line.

• The homers were a career-high, but remember that number came in a bandbox home stadium, during the most prolific dinger season MLB has ever seen. I am unimpressed by the power.
• The walks were right around his norm, if not slightly lower. He has no on-base skills other than hitting for a high batting average.
• And he did hit for a high average, so it all worked out! But wait, what’s that red light flashing on my screen? BABIP alert! He actually has a relatively high career mark in this department (.340) so we can’t completely dismiss it, but .392 is not sustainable long-term in MLB. Hall of Fame table-setters don’t even sustain that.
• On the other hand, he did at least cut his strikeouts substantially. He truly earned some of his extra hits just by putting the ball in play more.
• His career platoon splits are about normal, leaning slightly better against the opposite hand (lefties). Last year it exaggerated to a 200-point difference in OPS, thanks almost entirely to an absurd .509 BABIP (and ensuing .424 average) against southpaws. That is a small-sample fluke.
• He’s not a factor speed-wise and isn’t a threat to steal bases.

Add it all up, and you’ve got a player with no on-base skills and merely midlevel power, who relies on a high BABIP to be productive but can’t sprint his way into extra hits. And that’s before we get to the bad news.

It’s easy to scoff at a high BABIP, but this one is easier than most. Eno Sarris covered this topic already at The Athletic, but it’s been on our radar since November and it bears repeating here. Garcia is a groundball hitter — his 52% grounder rate ranked 11th in baseball and almost exactly matched his career rate. Here’s a breakdown of his batted ball profile the last few years, with the BABIP for each type:

Context: League averages in 2017 were around .240 (ground), .680 (line), .130 (fly).

I’ve highlighted the key number there. Garcia turned grounders into hits at an absurd rate, one which we rarely see and which he hadn’t done in either of his previous two full seasons. It’s not weird for a player of Garcia’s age to improve, but this specific trait is not one he should expect to build on.

Garcia’s BABIP on grounders tied for second among MLB regulars (min. 50 grounders) — he tied with the thunderous bat of Yoenis Cespedes (who missed half the season), and trailed the fleet feet of Delino DeShields. I looked back at the leaderboards for the last four seasons, and here is the full list of players who managed to crack the Top 10 twice: DeShields, Jose Altuve, Yasiel Puig, and Steven Souza. Only Puig and Souza did it in consecutive seasons, and even then neither of them did it in consecutive full seasons (and both returned to pedestrian levels in 2017).

Putting up a huge BABIP on grounders simply is not something that batters do on a consistent long-term basis, and the few who do manage it are getting there partly thanks to good-to-great speed that Garcia doesn’t have. Just hitting the ball hard isn’t enough to make this happen, and his grounders didn’t even stand out for being hit particularly hard.

To Garcia’s credit, he also found more hits on his flyballs. But the improvement was much smaller, it didn’t carry him anywhere near the top of the leaderboards in that department, and it affected his bottom line less since he hits half as many flies as grounders. It’s enough for me to concede that he probably did truly hit the ball harder and better than he used to, but not enough for me to buy into the whole package.

Let’s play with the numbers. Garcia’s career BABIP is .340, which itself is a high number. If we spot him that figure in 2017 (down from actual .392), he loses 20 hits off his total. Now he’s batting .292/.344/.467, and that’s assuming all the lost hits were singles (rather than doubles grounded down the line into the corner). That’s still a good player, perhaps around a 120 wRC+, but a steep drop down from the numbers an acquiring team would be paying for.

My point here is not to completely discount Garcia’s breakout season. He’s always been a threat to improve, and he truly did so right as he entered his prime years. He’s a solid hitter, and the metrics suggest he’s worked his way to being an average corner defender. He’s a legitimately good player. However, he probably did not teach his grounders to permanently have eyeballs, and so the full might of his 2017 stats should be taken with a shaker of salt for now.

Note: Could Garcia break out further by hitting the ball in the air more and playing for power, giving him some buy-low potential? Perhaps, but this wouldn’t be buying low. This would be buying high but then hoping the player totally changes his game, which is not how gambling is supposed to work.

I don’t agree with the A’s mission to add an outfielder, because I think they have enough worthy in-house options and the time to add big external pieces is next winter. This roster has virtually no reliable pitching, and rushing to add one more bat isn’t going to move the needle in 2018. But if they insist on striking now, then Garcia checks precisely zero boxes.

• He isn’t under long-term control, which makes him not worth spending big on for a team not yet ready to contend.
• He’s currently a sell-high, not a buy-low, so he will require an overpay.
• He doesn’t significantly help Oakland’s OBP or defense, which are their overwhelming top needs.

I just don’t see the match, not for Garcia nor even for “that type of player.” Don’t go overspending on a short-term corner man who is merely solid. If the A’s want an outfielder but aren’t willing to make a holy-shit move to add a long-term, elite-defense CF, then they should be out looking to sign the corner outfield version of Rich Hill — a short-term, buy-low free agent with bargain potential. A right-handed Matt Joyce. They should re-Joyce.