Workhorse Garcia Hoping to Pile on Innings

According to baseball people, the most noticeable item about Freddy Garcia’s pitching was just how much his velocity dropped during the final month of the season. What made it especially noticeable was that Garcia has always leaned heavily on his fastball. For the White Sox in 2006, the right-hander threw it 51 percent of the time and more than 60 percent of the time when he was either behind in the count or for his first pitch.

So when that bread-and-butter pitch is coming in at a rather pedestrian 85-m.p.h., well, people have a tendency to notice.

There’s a good explanation for all of that, Garcia says. The heat dissipating from the fastball could have been from a touch of tendonitis.

“We played in the World Series [in 2005 with the White Sox] and the World Cup [before the 2006 season for Venezuela]. I threw a lot,” Garcia explained. “Right now I feel pretty good and I have gotten a lot of rest.”

The wear and tear may have taken its toll on Garcia’s fastball, but it didn’t do anything to help the hitters. Though he struggled a bit after the All-Star Break with an ERA well over 5 through the dog days of July and August, Garcia regrouped to go 4-1 with a 2.49 ERA in September where he held opponents to a .190 batting average and notched 29 strikeouts in 43 1/3 innings.

Add in the fact that Garcia has been incredibly consistent during his eight-year career by pitching more than 200 innings in seven seasons even though his strikeouts per nine innings continues to decline.

Maybe Garcia has leaned how to be a pitcher instead of merely a thrower.

“I concentrate more,” said Garcia, noting that he has four pitches in his repertoire with a newly added split-finger pitch. “I know how to pitch. I go out there with whatever I have that day and try and figure it out from there. If I can throw hard, I’ll throw hard.”

Either way, Garcia will be pitching at the top of the Phillies’ rotation in 2007.

But whether he pitches for the Phillies beyond 2007 remains to be seen. Garcia is in the final year of a three-year deal in which he’ll earn $10 million this season. That’s a relative bargain for a pitcher of Garcia’s capabilities given the state of the current market, and he’s sure to command a significant raise if he hits the open market. However, Garcia and starting pitcher Jon Lieber are both in the final seasons of three-year deals, but whether or not that’s the case when spring training starts remains to be seen.

Lieber, of course, is rumored to be dealt away for bullpen help and likely won’t have his contract extended in Philadelphia. Garcia, on the other hand, is just taking it as it comes. If the Phillies want to talk about adding a couple of years to his contract, he’ll listen.

One thing he’s not concerned about, though, is Philadelphia’s reputation as a hitter’s haven. After all, Garcia spent the past few seasons working for the White Sox in the ballpark formerly known as new Comiskey, where more home runs (1.3 per game) were hit than at cozy Citizens Bank Park (1.2). Considering that Garcia allowed 32 homers last season, and more than 30 in three of the past five seasons, the dimensions at the Bank might provide a bit of a break.

“When you play in Chicago, it’s worse,” Garcia said. “I don’t get concerned. If you pitch you’re going to give up home runs. I don’t worry about it – you move on and make a better pitch. If you make a better pitch, you won’t give up home runs.”

And Garcia pitches… a lot. In 2006, no Phillie pitched 200 innings so to add a guy who has pitched that many innings in six seasons in a row is significant. The only pitcher in the big leagues with a longer streak is Livan Hernandez with seven season, but even more telling is that only Steve Carlton and Robin Roberts have equaled Garcia’s streak of 200-plus innings in the modern era.

Count on 200 more innings in 2007.

“I feel good,” said Garcia who is resting in Venezuela. “The end of the season I felt pretty good. I started pitching the way I know how to pitch. Hopefully, I can show that to everybody the way I did it last year.”

In the meantime, he’s excited to have landed in Philadelphia after all of the trade talk from the White Sox and hopes to repeat the 2005 season.

“I’m happy because I didn’t know where I was going,” Garcia said. “We have a really good chance to make it to the playoffs. We have a really good, young team.”