{"id":16455,"date":"2019-01-15T09:07:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/\/?p=16455"},"modified":"2024-12-28T10:56:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T15:56:02","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-avisail-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2019\/01\/15\/tampa-bay-rays-avisail-garcia\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Tampa Bay Rays to Sign Avisail Garcia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/tampa-bay-rays\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> are reportedly close to signing free agent outfielder <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/garciav01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Avisail Garcia<\/a><\/strong>. The contract <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBowdenGM\/status\/1084926244771282944\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is reported to be for one year and will guarantee Garcia $3.5 million<\/a>, plus some potential bonuses.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Avisail Garcia agrees to 1-year deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Rays?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Rays<\/a> for $3.5m base salary with bonuses. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Ken_Rosenthal<\/a> 1st<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jim Bowden\u26be\ufe0f (@JimBowdenGM) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBowdenGM\/status\/1084926244771282944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 14, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1>Tampa Bay Rays to Sign Avisail Garcia<\/h1>\n<p>Garcia debuted for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/detroit-tigers\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Detroit Tigers<\/a> when he was just 21-years-old in 2012, though he&#8217;s spent most of his career with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/chicago-white-sox\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chicago White Sox<\/a> after being acquired in a trade on July 30, 2013. With a lifetime 101 wRC+, he has been almost exactly a league-average hitter in his career. In 638 games, he&#8217;s hit .271\/.321\/.420 with 76 home runs and 302 RBI.<\/p>\n<p>Garcia enjoyed a career year in 2017 when he hit .330\/.380\/.506 with 18 home runs, 50 extra base hits, and 80 RBI in 136 games. That performance was good for a 136 wRC+, 4.2 fWAR, and an All-Star selection. However, his performance fell off significantly in 2018. Garcia slashed just .236\/.281\/.438, posting a 92 wRC+ over 385 plate appearances. He did hit a career-high 19 homers in just 93 games, though. Garcia&#8217;s 2017 line was propped up by a .392 batting average on balls in play. That proved to be unsustainable for him, as his BABIP dropped to .271 in 2018. His strikeout rate also climbed from 19.8% to 26.5%.<\/p>\n<p>After his disappointing 2018, the White Sox opted to non-tender the 27-year-old native of Venezuela. Had they tendered him a contract, Chicago would have owed Garcia a raise from his $6.7 million salary in 2018 through arbitration. Instead, he&#8217;ll join the Rays for what looks to be a pretty big pay cut, though it sounds as though Garcia <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JonHeyman\/status\/1084924810365415430\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">could make as much as $6 million<\/a> this year with incentives.<\/p>\n<p>Garcia may not play every day for the Rays, but he&#8217;ll likely get a lot of at bats against left-handed pitching, spelling either <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/choiji01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ji-Man Choi<\/a><\/strong> at designated hitter or <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/meadoau01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Austin Meadows<\/a><\/strong> in right field. Garcia owns a career line of .304\/.358\/457 against southpaws, so he could prove valuable to Tampa Bay in that role.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"5w4tfdJERZhva6CwOQKi1w\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1040456928\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'5w4tfdJERZhva6CwOQKi1w',sig:'pn6fsCLHFWEJaBEajw38UDQKaiRTXPEImgKRQiWJaq8=',w:'594px',h:'458px',items:'1040456928',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the lookout to add a powerful right-handed bat all offseason, the Tampa Bay Rays have now added outfielder Avisail Garcia to the fold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2046,"featured_media":16462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,1071,35],"tags":[587,68,69,2262,566],"class_list":["post-16455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rays","category-whitesox","category-mlb","category-news","tag-avisail-garcia","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-free-agency","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2046"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}