What’s wrong with Avisail Garcia?

It’s clear that there’s something wrong with one of the Miami Marlins’ top off-season acquisitions: RF Avisail Garcia. He’s not playing the way he was expected to at all or even close. I thought of some trade ideas involving him. The question is what’s wrong with him and why he’s struggling this season.

The Miami Marlins have a problem called Avisail Garcia.

Avisail Garcia has always been a streaky and inconsistent hitter, but things have been going off the rails this season. Garcia is a career .267/.321/.425 hitter but it gets worse than that…

Avisail Garcia broke out in 2017 with the Chicago White Sox, when he batted .330/.380/.506 with 18 home runs and 80 RBI in 136 games and 518 AB’s. It was impressive and he accumulated a 4.4 WAR for his efforts.

2018 was a follow-up season for Avisail Garcia, and this time he wasn’t as impressive as he batted .236/.281/.438 with 19 home runs and 49 RBI in 93 games and 356 AB’s. This time he was worth only 0.5 WAR.

2019 saw Avisail Garcia move on to the Tampa Bay Rays, as he batted .282/.332/.464 with 20 home runs and 72 RBI in 125 games and 489 AB’s. He was worth 2.2 WAR this time. Avi moved on to the Milwaukee Brewers for his next two seasons…

He batted .238/.333/.326 with 2 home runs and 15 RBI in 53 games and 181 AB’s. He accumulated -0.3 WAR for that terrible production. In 2021 he followed that up with a .262/.330/.490 batting line with 29 home runs and 86 RBI in 135 games and 461 AB’s. That production earned him 2.9 WAR and a contract with The Fish in the off-season.

Whats wrong this season? The inconsistent Avisail Garcia is hitting .227/.263/.335 with 6 home runs and 23 RBI in 61 games and 233 AB’s. He’s currently worth -0.6 WAR.

Garcia’s maximum exit velocity gets a shiny 98 red mark from StatCast. That’s VERY good. They say that he should have a .255 batting average and a .440 xSLG. They do however rate his EV as 88.6, which is lower than last season’s 90.4, but close to his career 89.6 (though lower than that as well).

Avisail Garcia has a .291 BABIP, which is pretty average and indicative that there’s no bad luck going on. He has a 3.2 BB% and a 27.9 K% that indicates that he strikes out too much and walks too little. My guess is that he’s just not trying too hard this year, at least that’s what I notice watching his AB’s.

It’s a sad conclusion, but I believe that the reason that Avisail Garcia is struggling this season is because he just isn’t trying hard enough. He’s swinging at too many bad pitches and isn’t really being patient at the plate. I suspect that he just doesn’t feel as if he needs to try after getting paid. There are even rumors that he never wanted to play for The Fish. Trading him is the best option for us going forward.