Devon Garcia batted 1-for-11 in a three-game series against Siena in mid-March. If that sounds unimpressive, it should.
But he also scored a run, laid down a sac bunt, was hit by pitch twice and stretched multiple at-bats to full counts. His effort doesn’t always show up in the box score.
Garcia, a sophomore outfielder who is fleet of foot with a flashy glove, has appeared in 26 of Ohio’s 30 games this year — and for good reason.
“He’s given us competitive at-bats,” Ohio coach Rob Smith said. “And obviously his defense is just stellar. So he’s solidified himself to this point and he’s been very consistent and I hope that he continues to do so.”
As the youngest of four brothers, Garcia is used to putting in the extra effort to see results.
“I didn’t really get off a basketball shot until I was in the sixth grade because they never really took it easy on me,” Garcia said. “And obviously it helped me now because they always taught me just to work harder. There’s always one person out there trying to work harder than you.”
Garcia’s work was first noticed by Smith following his sophomore season of high school when Garcia played shortstop for a summer team in Cincinnati called the Midland Braves.
He stayed with a host family for two summers to receive more exposure playing for the Braves than he would have playing at home in Bowling Green.
Smith watched nearly 30 of his games and Ohio was the first school to show interest in Garcia, which helped his decision.
“I felt if (Smith) could believe that much in me then I could believe in him,” Garcia told the Sentinel-Tribune when he signed his letter of intent in November 2014.
Despite coming to Ohio hoping to compete for playing time at shortstop, Garcia said he had been a center fielder all his life.
That changed in high school when his team’s shortstop was injured and Garcia had success as a fill-in. But flipping back to the outfield as a Bobcat has been a smooth transition.
“When a guy’s on second base, maybe one out and the game’s on the line, I love the fact that if somebody hits it up the middle I get to just chuck it as hard as I can," Garcia said. "Try to make a play.”
He didn’t have many chances to make plays as a freshman, hitting 1-for-9 in 15 games and stealing a base on his only attempt.
But even when he knew he wasn’t going to play last season — particularly with Ohio returning the Mid-American Conference Player of the Year and a member of the All-MAC Defensive Team as two-thirds of its outfield — his hard work was noticeable.
Redshirt junior catcher Nick Bredeson, who first met Garcia because they were neighbors in the locker room, watched Garcia take his batting practice and pre-game reps with the intensity of the starters.
“And I think that has helped him exponentially in terms of putting him in the position he’s in this year,” Bredeson said, “where he’s playing all the time and starting and doing as well as he’s playing.”
Garcia and Bredeson are close. So close, in fact, that Bredeson called Garcia his “little brother in the locker room” and Garcia lists Bredeson as his favorite athlete on the team website.
Bredeson picks on Garcia for consistently having the messiest locker. Once, Bredeson and some other players took Ace bandage wrap and tied it all through Garcia’s locker so he couldn’t open it.
On the field, Garcia is far from a mess. He’s light-hitting, with a .235 batting average, but his .361 on-base percentage is second-best on the team.
And he’s not afraid of the big play.
In an early March game against Wright State, with the Raiders’ tying run on second base with two outs in the bottom of the 11th, Garcia lunged into the gap in left-center to make a game-sealing catch.
When the ball left the bat, Bredeson, who was crouched behind the plate, thought Wright State was about to make a comeback.
“All of a sudden, Devon comes out of absolutely nowhere,” Bredeson said.
Just like he has this season for Ohio.
