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MINNEAPOLIS – Luis Garcia didn’t even realize it until he got back to the dugout after throwing his final pitch in the bottom of the seventh Friday night.
Someone mentioned to the Nationals reliever the velocity of that final pitch: a fastball to the Twins’ Ryan Jeffers, who grounded out to short: 100.7 mph.
“I wasn’t looking,” he said. “I was just trying to throw strikes.”
Garcia did throw strikes during his 1-2-3 inning at Target Field, with seven of his nine pitches qualifying. But most notable to anyone paying attention were his velocity readings on the stadium radar gun. Eyes opened when he reached 99.9 mph on one offering. Then before that one had time to fully register, he uncorked that 100.7 mph heater to Jeffers.
“It’s the hardest I’ve thrown since ’22, I think,” Garcia said.
The 38-year-old reliever has a good memory. Indeed, the last time he topped 100 mph in a major league game came during the 2022 season, which he spent with the Padres. He achieved that magic number 33 times that year, with his hardest-thrown pitch (also of his career) coming on Aug. 19 of that season. It was 101.2 mph, with crazy down-and-in sinking movement, to strike out none other than Nelson Cruz of the Nationals.
Garcia has been working hard to get back into that kind of form over the last three seasons, and it hasn’t always been a smooth road. He’s on his fourth team since then, having gone from the Padres to the Angels to the Red Sox to the Dodgers to the Nationals. The Dodgers released him this summer after his ERA ballooned to 5.27 due to a nightmare outing in which he gave up hits to four of the five batters he faced, three of them coming around to score.
Garcia knows now what happened: He was tipping his pitches. He doesn’t offer up specific details for fear of giving anything away, but he believes he’s corrected the issue since signing with the Nats earlier this month, and the results suggest that’s accurate.
In eight games so far, the right-hander has allowed just one run on three hits, walking one while striking out six over 7 2/3 innings. In the process, he has quickly become one of Miguel Cairo’s more trusted late-inning arms.
“He’s been a plus in our bullpen,” the interim manager said. “Every time you put him in there, he’s throwing strikes, he’s attacking the strike zone. And that’s 99 with sink, and a good splitter. He’s given us a better chance in the late innings, in high-leverage.”
For Garcia, whose career looked like it might have been teetering on the brink not long ago, this has been a gratifying experience.
“It’s good. You come here every day and work hard, that’s what you expect,” he said. “I know it’s not going to happen every time. But I’m pretty happy, I’m blessed, at the outcomes I’ve had.”
The question now: Does he still have 101 mph in him somewhere?
“I threw 101 yesterday!” Garcia insisted. “If you see on TV, it says 101!”
Yes, they round up on the broadcast. OK, so what about 102?
“I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “I wasn’t trying to do 101 last night. I was just trying to do my job and throw strikes.”
