Chicago White Sox: Avisail Garcia trade window is closing fast
After a white-hot start to 2017, the White Sox should look to trade Avisail Garcia, who is quickly cooling off.
Chicago White Sox outfielder Avisail Garcia began the season with a bang. A series of bangs, actually. After never slugging more than .400 in a full season for the White Sox after being acquired from the Detroit Tigers, while playing a premium power-hitting position in right field, Garcia leaped out to a .376/.418/.635 slash line in his first 22 games of 2017.
White Sox fans were thrilled. The rest of Major League Baseball was stunned. What had happened to the middling 26-year-old prospect? Could this be the “real” Avisail Garcia play-by-play man Ken “Hawk” Harrelson had been telling us about the last three years? Will this performance excuse every time Garcia butchers a routine fly ball in cozy Guaranteed Rate Field?
Of course, to the discerning baseball fan, more data was required. Sure, it would be nice if Garcia could OPS more than 1.000 for the rest of his career, but such a result is extremely unlikely, and runs directly contrary to three seasons’ worth of observation.
Since that observational period, Garcia has had an additional 112 PA to show the first 22 games weren’t an aberration. After careful consideration of his .295/.339/.476 line during that subsequent run, it can be safely assumed that Avisail Garcia has not morphed into Babe Ruth. He is, for all intents and purposes, the same Avisail Garcia seen hacking away, poorly, on Chicago’s South Side for the last few seasons.
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General Manager Rick Hahn, in the midst of orchestrating a rebuild of the White Sox organization, must be paying close attention. The time to trade Garcia, if there ever was a time to fool rival GMs, is waning.
Indeed, Garcia’s return to Earth, as well as the reason for his stratospheric launch in the first place, had more to do with luck than a sharp uptick in skill. Garcia’s Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) during the first 22 games of the season was an unsustainable .450. Sustain it he did not, because in the following 28 games Garcia had a BABIP 100 points lower, at .350.
Sadly, it appears even that run of good luck (a .350 BABIP is still solidly above-average) has come to an end, considering that in his last 10 games, Garcia has a line of .222/.263/.278 on a BABIP of .320, near the upper limit of league-average.
Avisail Garcia has reentered the atmosphere and descended safely back to Earth.
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Truly, Garcia’s 2017 batting line is still respectable, as are his power-hitting figures of late. Now is the time for General Manager Rick Hahn to capitalize on what little heat Avisail Garcia still has in MLB circles. If this is a true, honest rebuild by the White Sox – and there are rumblings it is not – Hahn needs to be working the phones to find a suitor for Garcia, because this is likely as good as the outfielder will get.