Today I wanted to look at 20-year-old Venezuelan outfielder Kevin Garcia as well as pass on a note about Seth Mejias-Brean.
A little more than a month ago word came out that the Reds were going to try Seth Mejias-Brean out at catcher during instructional league. The move to catcher will not be happening for Mejias-Brean, so expect him to continue to man third base in the system.
Kevin Garcia came stateside in 2013 after playing for the Reds in the Dominican Summer League in 2012 where he hit .264/.378/.397. Statistically, he performed well for the Arizona League Reds in 223 plate appearances where he hit .328/.399/.477 before heading to Billings where he played in 6 games.
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Offensively he has a good plate approach, which you can see by his 23 walks and 28 strikeouts in 248 plate appearances this season. Scouts noted that he wasn’t afraid to work a count if there wasn’t a quality pitch thrown. He was noted as a good base runner and stole 8 of 11 bases attempted.
Defensively he has enough speed to stick in center where he is viewed as a solid defender at the position with a solid arm.
Let’s look at his batted ball profile.
Garcia spreads the ball around pretty well and goes up the middle often and doesn’t show heavy pull tendencies. To add something here that isn’t shown is his bunting tendencies. Garcia bunted 10 times, with 5 sacrifice bunts and 4 hits.
Here is how often he had hits to each part of the field.
Garcia actually hit well on the infield, though to the pitcher and first baseman there were only 12 plays total, so the averages there are very much a small sample size.
Let’s finally take a look at his power output during the season.
Garcia showed solid pull power as well as solid power to the opposite field, but to the big part of the ballpark he struggled to show much power.
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