Yankees: Deivi Garcia’s Triple-A Jekyll and Hyde act is confusing

Bad news: Deivi Garcia has been unable to make “The Leap” towards consistency this season, whether at Triple-A, during spring training, or in a brief cameo in the big leagues.

Good news: It hasn’t much mattered, surprisingly, as the Yankees boast a league-leading rotation since mid-April.

Garcia’s got plenty of time left to find his sea legs, but thus far, all we have to work off of are alternating good and terrible outings, leaving us largely disoriented.

You never know which version of the nearly-22-year-old you’ll see in 2021. Luckily, he still very much has that age going in his favor.

On Tuesday night, we got the Good Deivi in a Triple-A start against the Phillies’ Lehigh Valley IronPigs, allowing optimism to run freely while the big-league Yankees were also winning.

If his previous starts are any indication, though, a bad one’s coming next.

Young Yankees ace Deivi Garcia has been maddeningly inconsistent.

Before Garcia was brought to the majors in 2020, we deemed him too green during his work in summer camp — and that was OK! After all, he was freshly 21 years old! Who needed him to be the Yankees’ top option? Such an idea was ludicrous.

Well, until about a month later when the Yankees really needed him to save their season, and he rolled up to the MLB mound and immediately started lulling batters to sleep. It was strange! He was so poised! Where did this leap come from? A month at the Alternate Site had really smoothed out all the wrinkles in his delivery?

When examined objectively, the inconsistent Deivi we’re seeing this year actually makes a lot more sense than the magician we watched in 2020. He’s supposed to be adjusting to Triple-A. He’s supposed to have a full year or more to approach the big leagues without pushing past the threshold. He’s not supposed to be able to control an MLB-caliber lineup (or Triple-A caliber, even) every time he takes the mound.

Thus far in 2021, he’s mixed outright brilliance with starts where he can’t find the corners, the edges or the middle of the plate; in other words, Night and Deivi.

The performance isn’t terribly important right now for Garcia. The walks, though, are an issue, and remain the only truly worrisome element of this two-start roller coaster.

His Triple-A return last week netted seven walks in 3.1 innings pitched. His second start? One additional walk in five brilliant innings.

Remember, though, when you worry about Garcia: these were just his seventh and eighth starts at the Triple-A level ever. When he joined the Yankees last summer, that was unexpected. When he starred in the Bronx, that was even more unexpected.

These things take time — and thanks to the luxury of the Yanks’ rotation so far, he has even more of it to work with than we probably anticipated.

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