Adonis Garcia Raked This Winter: Will That Translate to the Majors?

It is a fair thing to say that the Atlanta Braves are concerned about third base. After all, they have spent much of the Fall and Winter assembling a small army of players who at least know where to find it on the diamond.

I actually wish I was being as facetious as that line sounded, but here’s the list:

Going in, I expect that Peterson and Beckham will form a platoon around second base, Olivera will be stationed in left field, and Garcia will start out getting most of the innings at third base. That leaves Johnson and Bonifacio… to pretty much back up everyone.

I’ve been hunting for rays of hope here – that perhaps Olivera will be okay running down balls in left field and that Garcia won’t be a total butcher at the hot corner… and specifically, my concerns today are with Garcia. For that, I turned to his Winter League numbers.

Venezuela, it is

Garcia played for Navegantes del Magallanes (the ‘Navigators’) in Venezuela’s 8 team league. They finished in second place (21-17) during their Fall season and were also second in hitting… but last in pitching.

Adonis had a superb batting season for Magallanes during their Fall season. In 36 games (136 AB), Adonis…

Would have been second in the league in hitting (.370), had he qualified

Would have been third in OBP (.430)

Hit 3 homers

2 triples

7 doubles

OPS’d .948 (ranked 4th in league)

Just 11 strikeouts vs. 10 walks… and the 30-year-old even stole 7 bases, which led his team.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that his fielding was mostly limited. DH, LF, and a bit of third base.

He still managed to commit 8 errors in 36 games. Or maybe only three errors (in 8 games). The numbers depend on who compiled what stats over which session of the Venezulan league, which is continuing.

Curiously enough, the Magallanes club seemed to have trouble around third base regardless of who manned the position: Ronny Cedeno (listed as a 3B) made a team-high 13 errors. Abel Nieves made 5. Of those on their roster at the position, Mario Lisson got away with less: 1 error recorded.

But Wait, There’s More

As suggested, the stats are a bit confusing as Venezuela isn’t actually done playing, though the relevant MLB site thinks they finished up at the end of December. So I went through the box scores and tabulated the numbers for their 2016 contests:

11 games, with Garcia playing in all of them… and at third base.

12-37 hitting (.324).

There was one monster game in which he went 3-5 with 2 homers and 7 RBI.

2 errors… both in the same game; both in the first inning (fielding, throwing errors on separate plays)

But that’s been it: only those 2 errors over a couple of weeks (roughly 100 innings). Sure, it’s a small sample size, but for what it’s worth, it does appear that his team is confident enough to trot him out there every day (and they do have a DH position available).