Rave Reviews of Christian Garcia

Written by Sean P | 25 March 2010

Christian Garcia earned rave reviews during his last outing from noted MLB Fanhouse scout Frankie Piliere:

"Consider the arsenal Garcia showed off on Wednesday. His plus fastball with good movement produces a huge amount of groundballs and broken bats. His curveball is an elite, swing-and-miss type pitch. And, he has a changeup he can locate with excellent consistency with a 10-14 mph differential from his fastball. The main complaint about the Yankees farm system from a pitching perspective is that they lack a hurler with frontline upside in the upper levels of their system. If Garcia is on the field and throwing like he did on Wednesday, that won't be the case for long."

Well then. That's certainly high praise for Mr. Garcia but it's consistent with other reports we've heard. Injuries have really hindered his development and emergence as a legitimate pitching prospect. Piliere goes on and on about him, and the full article is one of the more glowing reports you'll hear about any Yankee prospect.

I've written about Garcia before and have always been hoping that he can put the injuries behind him and really breakout. Although this all took place in an AA spring training game, Piliere noted that Garcia struck out Jayson Werth twice with his "AJ Burnett like curveball".

It's all great to hear but until Garcia can remain healthy for an extended period of time, I'm pumping the breaks on this one.