Dermis Garcia's Path to Playing Time in 2023
This past season, guys like Dermis Garcia were a breath of fresh air that provided some hope for the future at the end of a pretty awful season in Oakland A's franchise history.
Prior to making his big-league debut with the A's, Garcia hit .264 with a .349 OBP and 13 home runs in 68 games with Las Vegas. Through his first 30 ABs with the A's, he was hitting .333 with a pair of homers, so he got more playing time in the final month plus of the season. He went 14-for-86 (.162) with three home runs the rest of the way.
Heading into the off-season, it still felt as though Garcia had done enough to earn himself a roster spot as the team's first baseman come Opening Day, especially with the power potential he put on display.
The A's ranked 27th as a team in home runs hit in 2022 with 137, one ahead of Washington, and one behind Kansas City. With Garcia's power, the A's could have some thump in their lineup--and they still can--but his route to playing time has become a little more murky.
As the season was winding down, the A's started bringing in guys off waivers that were more contact-oriented bats, seemingly following the Cleveland Guardians' model. Conner Capel, a September waiver claim from the Cardinals, is a guy that makes a good amount of contact, striking out just 16.9% of the time last season between his 25 combined games with St. Louis and Oakland.
Ernie Clement, a late September waiver claim from Cleveland, has struck out under 15% of the time in both trips to the majors the past two seasons, spanning 110 games. New additions Jace Peterson and Aledmys Díaz both don't strike out a ton either.
That is one of the reasons that Dermis Garcia's route to playing time is a little hazy at the moment. Last season in 125 big league plate appearances he struck out 44% of the time. Joey Gallo hit .160 with a .280 OBP while clobbering 19 homers, and even he "only" struck out 39.8% of the time last season. The 44% mark for Garcia isn't sustainable.
The highest strikeout percentage former A's slugger Khris Davis had in a season when he was still hitting homers and batting .247 was 29.9% back in 2017. That's actually the highest his strikeout rate ever had, even when he stopped hitting as many home runs. 29.9% has to be the goal for Dermis Garcia this season, because there's another reason his playing time could be cut, and that's Ryan Noda.
The A's selected Ryan Noda with the second overall pick in this month's Rule 5 Draft. Noda is a left-handed first baseman that can also roam the outfield, and the fact that the A's have tried to acquire him in past trades with the Dodgers added to the Rule 5 stipulation that selected players must remain on the 26-man roster for the entirety of the regular season means he has a pretty good shot at being the A's Opening Day first baseman.
Noda has been well above league average at every stop in the minors and hit .259 with a .395 on-base in Triple-A last season, slugging 25 homers and walking 16% of the time. He did also strike out 28.2% of the time in the PCL, and Dermis Garcia struck out a magical 29.9% in the same league, so Noda isn't quite a slam dunk, but he has a pretty enticing tool set.
That isn't to say that Garcia is destined to start the season in Triple-A (he has three options remaining). He was also a solid defender at first base according to Outs Above Average. He produced 4 OAA in just 249 innings at the position, which was good for second-best among all first baseman in 2022.
The A's don't have a clear answer at DH, other than a revolving door of using it to get guys a day off from playing the field. Garcia still has tons of power that could be useful to an A's team that is trying to win a few more games in 2023.
The key to securing that roster spot would be cutting down on the K's, which it appears he's attempting to do.
Garcia posted this to his Instagram story a couple of days ago, and it appears that his leg kick is now operating at only 60%. After performing an eyeball test with some of his swings from this past season, this does look to be a lessened version of the leg kick he'd been using.
This may not seem like a big deal, but if he is able to successfully implement this change, it would allow him to get to balls more often, and should improve his timing at the plate.
Looking over his Baseball Savant page, it looks as though off-speed pitches, particularly curveballs and change-ups, had his number. He whiffed at two-thirds of the curves he saw, and 69.6% of the changes. He also whiffed at 60% of the four-seamers he swung at, so it looks like pitchers kept him off-balance by mixing things up.
If he is indeed working on reducing his leg kick, he should be able to get to more of those pitches. From there, it will be about either guessing correctly, or seeing the ball more clearly.
The leg kick would also help him to cover the outer lower corner, where he had an exit velocity of 73.41 miles per hour. He was also swinging at pitches just out of the zone outside, and outside and down, and that is where pitch recognition could go a long way.
If he can work on making some better contact in that one spot, and laying off those close pitches around the plate, then there isn't a spot in the strike zone that he can't make at least good contact, if not loud contact.
Ryan Noda is probably the favorite to land the first base job to begin the season, but Dermis Garcia can still hit his way onto this roster when spring rolls around.