Luis Garcia Feeling Healthy as Astros Look to Advance

Gordon Liang

10/21/2021

Astros rookie of the year candidate Luis Garcia has not had a good October. In fact, his October has been both a physical and statistical nightmare. Garcia in two postseason outings this year gave up ten earned runs and failed to go past three innings in both outings. He left his latest outing after walking one in the second inning and it was discovered that he’s been dealing with a knee issue.

Many fans, most of whom were rooting for the Red Sox, were left skeptical of Garcia’s injury. Some believed that Garcia faked the injury to throw Red Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi off his rhythm. Eovaldi only pitched one inning at the point of the injury delay, so if any rhythm was established, it was brief regardless. Then again, Eovaldi failed to get through one inning in his relief appearance in game four of the American League Championship Series (ALCS). It also didn’t help that Jake Odorizzi, who replaced Garcia after he left with right knee discomfort, was given (and used) as much time as he needed. Odorizzi’s warmup routine led to a 15 minute delay and the Red Sox fandom was not thrilled to say the least.

Twitter warrior Lisa Holm tweeted, “Funny how they only get ‘injured’ AFTER giving up the runs he did off a GRAND SLAM in the first inning. Pride and embarrassment, damn injury pitchers suffer from the most. Suck it up and play like the rest have to.”

At the point of the injury, the Astros bullpen had been carrying a heavy load. Other than Lance McCullers Jr, no Astro starter went deep enough to qualify for a win. The bullpen had to cover nearly half of each game to the point so faking an injury and forcing the bullpen to cover eight innings would yield no strategic benefits. In fact, Garcia’s injury exit proved to be extra detrimental as no Astro starting pitcher passed three innings in the ALCS until game five when Framber Valdez dominated the Red Sox for eight innings.

Astros manager Dusty Baker later revealed that Garcia had dealt with a bad knee and didn’t disclose it with the team. Fortunately for the Astros, the injury wasn’t severe and Garcia was playing catch the next day in Boston. The Astros bullpen was running out of gas in Boston and no one was sure if there was enough in the tank to drive back to Houston. One would assume that removing Garcia from the roster to bring in Peter Solomon or Brandon Bielak must’ve been considered at the very least. Instead, Baker chose to stick with Garcia in the ALCS roster and in doing so kept Garcia available for a potential World Series appearance.

With baseball being as poetic as it always is, Garcia will get the nod for tomorrow as the Astros seek to clinch an appearance in the World Series that Garcia was ever so close to being crossed out for. He will look to follow suit with Valdez’s heroic performance in game five.

“I feel really good. Thank God that the knee feels good. The treatment has been very helpful for me. The adjustments are just about going out and trying to do the best job that I can,” Garcia said via a translator.

Garica will face Eovaldi who is scheduled to throw on short rest. Eovaldi’s last start featured five and one third innings of three run baseball. Had the score been closer, Eovaldi’s outing would be considered subpar but because the Red Sox were blowing out the Astros, Eovadi was praised for holding the league leader in wRC+ to three runs. Eovaldi failed to get through one inning in a short-rest relief appearance. He gave up four controversial runs that many pinned to umpire Laz Diaz’s fault.