As viewed by the naked eye, most Cardinal fans agree that Jaime Garcia has the mental and emotional toughness of lukewarm Jell-O. We’ve seen it too many times: a call goes against him, he pouts, and subsequently gives up runs. His OCD breakdowns are already legend; imperceptible fluctuations in the barometer could send Garcia into a death spiral of self-doubt and concern. Starts are missed because Garcia slept in sheets with a low thread count. Garcia considers suicide whenever the hotel serves him orange juice with fewer than 97 fragments of pulp. 

In a recent article at Viva El Birdos, capitalization-rebel tom s. looked at whether Garcia’s rate of unearned runs (runs scored based on an error) was higher than the rest of the staff. This would theoretically provide a glimpse into how often errors rattle Garcia. His conclusion, based on his investigation, was that Kyle Lohse was actually the worst at controlling the damage done by errors, although Garcia was a close second.

I do have a slight problem with tom’s approach, though. Tom merely looked at innings in which an error occurred, thereby leading to an unearned run. Not only does that method fail to capture Garcia’s reaction to misplays behind him (some unearned runs score BECAUSE of the error, not because Garcia failed to control it), but it also doesn’t include walks. Garcia often comes unglued following walks, particularly when he doesn’t get calls he believes he deserves.

So I went through all of Garcia’s starts since the beginning of 2010 (yes, I have no life) and recorded every inning in which Garcia allowed one or more runs. Since the start of the 2010 season (his first full season), Garcia has thrown 402 innings. Opponents scored one or more runs in 101 innings. Out of the runs charged during Garcia’s 402 innings, 79% of those run were earned (146 ER out of 185 total runs).

That doesn’t sound too bad, until you really start to look at the individual game logs and see the pattern that emerges. While compiling statistics based on these game logs, I separated out all of the innings in which Garcia allowed one or more runs AFTER an error was committed behind him (in other words, runs that scored because Garcia lost concentration following an error, not because of the error itself). I also separated out the innings in which Garcia walked one or more batters prior to surrendering runs.

	2010	2011	2012	Total
Total Innings	163.1	194.2	44.0	402.0
Total Innings scored upon	35	56	10	101
Scored After Walks	7	6	3	16
Scored After Errors	7	10	0	17

As we can see, a full 33% of Garcia’s scored-upon innings occurred as a result of an error or a walk surrendered prior to a run scoring. By comparison, Kyle Lohse had a rate of 26% in 2011, and he was pretty erratic, too. It’s safe to say that Garcia is not controlling the game under certain adverse circumstances.

If we add in other adverse, Garcia-rattling game events like hit batters and balks (which I counted as regular runs), Garcia’s percentage of runs allowed afterwards rises to 40% over the course of his career. That’s a staggering number of runs allowed following an adverse event.

Every starting pitcher faces adverse events throughout their career. The great ones limit the damage and maintain their control over both their composure and the game. As these statistics show, Garcia often fails to do that.

More than almost any other factor, Garcia’s lack of focus following an adverse event has tarnished the start of his career. Garcia has the physical ability to become one of the greatest left-handed starters in baseball. However, physical ability means nothing if he cannot overcome his own mental and emotional immaturity. It is that mental level of the game, the part not covered by statistics and graphs, that separates the “good” players from the greatest players.

Let’s see if Jaime can grow enough to overcome himself and fulfill his potential.