2018 hasn't been an easy season to watch for St. Louis Cardinals fans. The team has teetered on the edge of contention for months, failing to go away or properly ascend into serious playoff contention.
In order to counter that meandering style of play, the team has given six young players a chance to debut their skills with the big league club. Adolis Garcia is the seventh Cardinal to make his Major League debut tonight, and here is why you should be excited.
HE LOOKS LIKE A SPARTAN WARRIOR
Garcia is a freak of nature and could have played Gerald Butler's role in Zack Snyder's 300. All you have to do is take one look at him playing catch in Miami this week in order to be jealous. It would be odd but realistic for a writer to ask the Cuban prospect about his baseball abilities as well as his diet planning and workout regimen. As Birds on the Black columnist Kyle Reis puts it, Garcia is the peak male when it comes to look. "If a person could decide their body type, 'The Jag' would be the option that every male would pick," Reis wrote in his Dirty Thirty-Five Prospects series article.
THE BAT PLAYS
Outside of looking like a guy who works out in his sleep, Garcia has a powerful bat that can punish a pitcher for making even half of a mistake on the mound. In 350 at-bats this season for the Memphis Redbirds, Garcia cranked 21 home runs, slashed .269/.296/.531, adding 23 doubles and three triples. The 86 strikeouts are high and the 14 walks are extremely low, but Garcia won't be cheated. Like Tyler O'Neill, he will get all of it or none of it.
One thing about Garcia is that he is consistent. 2018 isn't the first glimpse of his power. In 2017, he split time between Springfield and Memphis after the Cardinals acquired him, and he put together an .820 OPS with 16 extra-base hits in only 40 games at the Triple-A level. He got off to a slow start this season, but he has heated up lately, winning player of the month honors from the Cardinals for his July performance. According to Reis, Garcia slashed .309/.320/.569/.888 from June 1 to July 22 after a brutal start to the season at the plate.
BIG TIME ARM IN FIELD
According to Reis, Garcia has the best arm in the organization, and once he shows it off in Miami tonight, the muscle limb should gain Yadier Molina like reverence in the league. He has speed to cover ground and can play all three outfield positions. Tonight, he will be in center field, so the hand cannon and ability will be put to the test. If Marcell Ozuna and Jose Martinez knew what was right, they would let Garcia have the fly balls hit near him and underhand toss potential game-changing throws to him. Ozuna and Martinez are basically Jon Jay to Garcia's 2013 Carlos Beltran.
SPEED DEMON
Did I mention the guy is fast? Thinking about a future outfield of O'Neill, Harrison Bader and Garcia should make you drool. These guys can throw, run and are reckless with their bodies. Hopefully, when O'Neill comes back from his mysterious groin injury, the three can get a few starts in the field together. Garcia can run it down, fire it like a missile, and look like a bodybuilder with grace when doing all of it.
In the end, expect a good time when Garcia plays. He is still a young man, stepping onto the field tonight at the ambitious age of 25, so he will get better. He may strike out and drop to a knee in doing so, but just know that the baseball was warned in the process of that Herculean swing and miss. Garcia also runs a little, stealing 10 bases for Memphis this year in 12 attempts.
SUMMARY
The Cardinals have a lot of outfield prospects, but few are more exciting than Garcia. He is the youth movement in full force, bringing a lot of tools to the garden as the team tries to figure out what 2018 is. The Cards may be a mixed bag, but their prospects are definitely not.
Cancel tonight's plans and watch Adolis "JAG" Garcia do his thing. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between fans and player.
