The Brewers and right-hander Deivi García have agreed to a minor league deal, per Jeff Passan of ESPN on X. The Rep 1 Baseball client will receive an invite to spring training, per Adam McCalvy of MLB.com on X.
García, 26 in May, will be a reclamation project for the Brewers as he is a former top prospect who hasn’t lived up to the hype yet. To this point in his career, he has thrown 71 2/3 innings in the majors, allowing 5.02 earned runs per nine. His 20.4% strikeout rate, 10.3% walk rate and 34.1% ground ball are all a bit worse than average. The White Sox passed him through waivers unclaimed in May, which allowed him to elect free agency earlier this month.
The recent minor league results haven’t been nice either. He has thrown 260 2/3 innings on the farm over the past four years with a 6.35 ERA. His 24.4% strikeout rate in that stretch hasn’t been bad but his 13.6% walk rate is quite rough. That time frame includes 51 Triple-A innings in 2024 with a 6.18 ERA. He did strike out 27.4% of hitters at that level this year but also walked 11.9%.
The Brewers will be tasked with getting the proverbial train back on the tracks. From 2016 to 2019, as García was a prospect with the Yankees, he threw 293 2/3 minor league innings while climbing the ladder towards the majors. In that time, he had a 3.37 ERA, 34.5% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate. Baseball America considered him one of the top 100 prospects in the league in both 2020 and 2021, before his poor results at the major league level lowered his stock. He burned his final option year in 2023 and went to the White Sox via waivers towards the end of that season.
Milwaukee has had some good results lately in terms of helping wayward pitchers. Tobias Myers went into 2024 as a faded prospect with no major league experience but went on to toss 138 innings this past year with an ERA of 3.00. Colin Rea just had a couple of solid seasons with the Crew after spending a few years abroad. Frankie Montas had a 19% strikeout rate with the Reds before being traded to the Brewers and then went on to punch out 28.7% of opponents after the deal.
Garcia has undoubtedly struggled in recent years but he is still fairly young and was a hyped-up prospect a few years back. If the Brewers can find a way to get him right, he is out of options but has less than a year of service time, meaning he can be cheaply retained well into the future.