For as much concern that exists about Phil Hughes and his missing velocity — and rightfully so — Garcia issued a reminder that succeeding without a big fastball is possible. He used to have one, back when he pitched for Seattle, where Alex Rodriguez loved playing behind him. Eleven years later, Garcia’s style has changed, but Rodriguez’s sentiment has not.
“He understands what the hitters are looking for,” said Rodriguez, who hoped he could play Sunday after a stiff right oblique muscle forced him out after six innings.
“He knows how to run away from the barrel.”
For any pitcher, keeping pitches away from the sweet spot of a bat is critical, but even more so for Garcia. If hitters can square up his mid-80s fastball, it often travels a long way. The key, as Garcia has learned, is to keep them guessing, deploying all five of his pitches to induce awkward swings and weak contact. Of his 84 pitches, Garcia fired only 33 fastballs. Of the 21 hitters he faced, just three reached base, on two singles and a walk.
“He stayed off the inside part of the plate, stayed down and away, elevated — he pitched,” Rangers Manager Ron Washington said. “You’ve got to give him credit. He always had the split, and he always had the breaking stuff. You just don’t see the power fastball. But he’s smart in the way that he uses his fastball. He’ll run it way in on you, he’ll spot it down and away.”
All of this was considered by the Yankees in the off-season, when they signed Garcia to a minor league deal. His experience pitching in the American League — most recently in Chicago, where he went 12-6 last season with a 4.64 earned run average over 157 innings for the White Sox — cast him as a favorite for one of two vacant spots in their rotation, and he seized it simply by staying healthy.
It had been 18 days since Garcia, who had pitched an inning of relief against the Boston Red Sox last Sunday, had started a game (the exhibition finale on March 29), and the miserable forecast Saturday threatened to delay him further. Rain had postponed his starting debut, originally set for April 6, and pushed it back again after Tuesday’s game was postponed. This time, Garcia viewed it as a good omen — or at least not a bad one.
“I knew I had to work quick,” Garcia said.
And that efficiency, in turn, endeared Garcia to his teammates, especially Mark Teixeira, who hit a two-run homer in the first and drove in the Yankees’ first three runs. “I love a pitcher that can go out there and throw strikes, work quickly, keep us on our toes — especially when it’s so cold and miserable out there,” Teixeira said. “By the mid-innings, you can’t feel your hands and feet.”
By the mid-innings, Garcia had fallen into a nice rhythm with his catcher, Gustavo Molina, who had been the last player on the opening day roster to appear in a game. He joked about the circumstances Saturday morning, saying, with a laugh: “You’re still in the big leagues, but, you know, every day you’re thinking, when, when? It’s been two weeks.”
Molina had known for a few days that he would start Saturday, and that Russell Martin would be rested. A bunch of Molina’s relatives were gathering back home in Venezuela to watch him catch the first start for the Yankees by a Venezuela-born pitcher, and he did not want to disappoint.
To prepare he watched videotape, did extra work with the catching instructor, Tony Pena, and caught Garcia in the bullpen. The Rangers put runners on first and second with no outs in the second, but Garcia set down the next three hitters, and six more in a row after that, before David Murphy led off the fifth with a single. Molina kept calling for off-speed pitches — changeups, sliders, slow curves — and Garcia jogged off the mound after six innings, the rain pelting his face, his day done, only because his stamina had diminished after such a long layoff.
In the clubhouse, he inhaled sharply as Adrian Beltre’s long fly with two on in the eighth curled foul, and exhaled when Mariano Rivera sealed Garcia’s first victory in pinstripes. Garcia should be stronger in his next start, though not enough to throw 95 with a devastating splitter, as he did a decade ago. Asked what Garcia’s performance signified, Manager Joe Girardi played the role of apt pupil.
“You have to locate, change speeds, move the ball around and not give up free passes,” Girardi said. “That’s the lesson to be learned.”
INSIDE PITCH
The pitching coach Larry Rothschild said Phil Hughes, who was placed on the disabled list Friday with what the Yankees called a dead arm, will begin a strenuous long-toss program Sunday that is intended to strengthen his arm and restore the velocity missing on his fastball.
