A Bullpen Lesson with RHP Christian Garcia

When I was at Spring Training earlier this month, one of the first things I did was head to Field 5 at the very back of the complex. This is where most of the younger, more recent additions to the Astros were plying their trade. And one of the first things I witnessed was Rick Aponte, one of the Astros minor league pitching coaches discussing run vs. sink with RHP Christian Garcia during Garcia's bullpen session.

I talked with Garcia, a 29th round 2012 pick out of Florence-Darlington Technical College in South Carolina, briefly about that conversation with Aponte, "[Aponte's] point of view is that run is pretty much pointless because [if] the ball runs sideways without any drop on it, it's still going to hit the bat. The bat being a long object as it is, it will just run sideways and connect with the bat at a different point which does make a lot of sense. Which versus sink, [if] the ball's sinking, it's sinking toward the bottom of the bat, thus producing ground balls and perhaps even missing the bat itself."

Immediately following Garcia's exchange with Aponte, I caught this moment in which Garcia immediately illustrated Aponte's point:



When I talked to Garcia on Saturday, he had just seen his first game action pitching two innings, "six up, six down" with two strikeouts, two ground outs and two fly outs. While I had Garcia on the phone, I asked him about his pitch repertoire, "So far in Spring Training, it's been the fastball, sinking fastball, the slider and the changeup. [During Saturday's game], fastball was probably 88 to 91 or 92, sinker was coming in about 88. That's a nice little pitch, kind of has some sinking downward [movement], breaks a lot of bats, lot of ground balls which I like a lot. Then I have my slider which is really more of a slurve. You can imagine throwing it at the right hip of a righty, it will break down into the zone. And finally I have the changeup which likes to fall off arm side, little bit of sink to it. [It] comes in anywhere from 6 to 9 mph slower than my fastball."

I sincerely enjoyed talking with Christian who is extremely intelligent and thoughtful, and I hope to catch up with him again during the season to learn more about him.

Thank you for your time, Christian, and best of luck in the 2013 season!