Yankees: Could top prospect Deivi Garcia pitch in the big leagues this season?

Sunday night in Cleveland Yankees pitching prospect Deivi Garcia impressed at the All-Star Futures Game by throwing a scoreless 1-2-3 inning. Following the game, the Yankees promoted him to Triple-A Scranton. At just 20 years old Garcia is clearly on the fast track to the big leagues and before the end of the season, there’s a chance we could see him in the Bronx.

Many Yankees fans got there first televised look at Garcia Sunday night and he certainly didn’t disappoint on the national stage. The right-hander started the game for the AL squad and showcased exactly why he’s considered one of the fastest rising pitching prospects in the game today.

It only took Garcia 14 pitches to get through the top of the first, as he struck out one and forced two infield pop-ups.

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Even though some scouts have concerns about Garcia’s size at only 5’9 and 163 lbs he possesses power stuff and a repertoire of pitches that will definitely play at the major league level. In his one inning of work, he featured a fastball that topped out at 97 mph with late life, a nasty curveball with 12 to 6 break and a sharp breaking slider at 87 mph.

Garcia was very deserving of his selection to the Futures Game and his promotion to Triple-A after he dominated the opposition playing with A-Advanced Tampa and Double-A Trenton. In 14 combined starts (10 at AA) Garcia had an ERA of 3.01 in 68.2 IP with a whopping 114 K’s and a .198 OPP BA.

He has an incredible K’s per 9 rate of 15.0 so far this season and he’s had four starts with at least 10 K’s and seven with at least 9. His best start came on June 18th when he struck out 15 batters over six scoreless innings while only allowing one hit and one walk so it’s easy to see why there’s so much buzz surrounding him.

Garcia will now look to carry over his success to Scranton and the final step on the minor league ladder to the big leagues. If his transition to Triple-A goes as well as it did at Double-A earlier this season his stay at Scranton might be even shorter and we could see him make his debut later this summer.

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Obviously, that’s a lot easier said than done and we’ll have to wait and see how things play out but it looks like Garcia is on a similar track as Luis Severino was back in 2015. That year the Yankees were desperate for starting pitching help and instead of making a big trade they called up the 21-year-old Sevy shortly after the deadline and he provided a huge boost to their rotation.

This year the I’m sure GM Brian Cashman would love to trade for someone like Trevor Bauer or Marcus Stroman before considering a call up of Garcia but if he can’t pull that off we could see the youngster get his shot.

It will also be interesting to see if Garcia is deemed untouchable when it comes to trade talks because you can bet teams will be asking for him. Based on his rapid rise this season all the way up to Triple-A Garcia is probably now the top prospect in the entire Yankees system so they’ll likely be very hesitant to include him in any offer.

It’s tricky because even though I think now is the time to go all in and do whatever it takes to acquire a big arm like Bauer if the cost includes Garcia I wouldn’t blame them for saying no. His numbers this season are no joke and Sunday night he sure looked like the real deal so I’d much rather see them offer a package with Clint Frazier as the centerpiece instead.

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