Rich Garcés

Rich Garcés – beloved as “El Guapo” during his time as a relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox – enjoyed a professional baseball career that saw him play minor-league ball, Venezuelan Winter League ball, independent baseball, and 10 seasons of major-league baseball.

Richard Aron Garcés Mendoza was born in Maracay, Venezuela, on May 18, 1971, a city west of Caracas on the way to Valencia and the capital of Aragua State. Other ballplayers from Maracay include Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera, and Carlos Guillen.

Rich was the oldest of four children born to Fanny Maria Mendoza and Jesus Aron Garcés. His father worked in construction, building houses and other structures. Baseball was something Rich fell in love at a very early age. “I started baseball when I was 4 years old. It was just something I really wanted to do – hit the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball – to have some fun out there in the field. Since I was 4 years old, I drove my dad and my mom crazy wanting to play baseball. That’s what I did.”1

While he was still a young teenager, Rich attended a number of tryouts hosted by several major-league teams, such as the St. Louis Cardinals. After a few of them, he was starting to get a little discouraged – though he was just 16 years old. “I went to a lot of tryouts. I told my mom, ‘The Minnesota Twins is going to be my last tryout. If I sign, I sign. If I don’t, I’ll just go back to school and continue my studying.’ My mom told me, ‘No, you can make it. You can make it. It’s going to happen.’”2

Twins scout Enrique Brito noticed Garcés, and signed him about three weeks later. He had seen something in Garcés, who was an outfielder at the time. “Brito saw me throwing from the outfield. He told me, “Hey, you’ve got a pretty good arm. You want to throw from the mound and show me what you got?” I was so skinny. I was like 150 pounds. I was really skinny when I started. I had never pitched before, but he asked me, ‘You want to try it from the mound and see what happens?’ I was, ‘OK, man. Let’s try it and see what happens.’ I threw a couple of pitches – 84, 85. … He was like, ‘You look good. You look good, man.’” Brito asked him if he could throw even a little harder, but Rich had already put in a full workout, running the 60 and throwing from the outfield. He was tired.

Brito told him he’d be coming back in 15 or 20 days and that he’d like to see him throw more from the mound. He returned, and liked what he saw. Garcés had gotten the gun up to 86 or so. Brito offered a contract for $3,500. “I told my mom, ‘Hey, this is an opportunity that I have. I really want it. What do you think?” She said, “That’s your future. Don’t worry about me. I’ll sign it for you.’ I was underage. Sixteen years old. So she signed it for me. Thirty-five hundred dollars. After that, it was like, ‘Okay!’ I just really had one thing in my mind. This is an opportunity. If this is going to be my future, I’ll take it. It didn’t matter how much it was. I thought it was a good chance for, to come up here [to the United States] and play the game that I really love.”3

The young right-hander was signed by Twins scout Brito on December 29, 1987. In 1988 the Twins assigned him to the rookie-ball Elizabethton (Tennessee) Twins (Appalachian League). He pitched in 17 games, starting three and closing 10. His record was 5-4 with a 2.29 ERA, and he struck out 69 batters in 59 innings.

Garcés faced acculturation problems, coming as a teenager to a country where he didn’t speak the language well, and needing to adapt. Fortunately, Brito looked out for him. At one point, Garcés recalled, “They wanted me to go to Low-A ball, but I was going to be the only Latino in Low-A ball so Enrique told them no. My English was not good. That’s one of the things I was really afraid of. I was going to be by myself and they didn’t have any Latinos on the A-ball team. Enrique told me, ‘Hey, I talked to a guy upstairs and they told me you should stay here for the rest of the year.’ The next year, my velocity went up and before you know it, I was throwing 93, 94, 95. It was good.”4

In 1989 Garcés pitched in Wisconsin for the Kenosha Twins in the Class-A Midwest League. He started 24 games, working 142 2/3 innings. He was 9-10 (3.41) with four complete games and one shutout, a one-hitter against the Rockford Expos on August 27. But in 1990, the Twins converted him to a closer. In the minor leagues, he had no starts among his 62 games (56 of them finishing games). For advanced Class-A Visalia, he had a 1.81 ERA, making the league’s all-star team; after 47 games with them, he was promoted to Double-A Orlando (Southern League) and worked to a 2.08 ERA over another 15 appearances. The 36 saves he recorded for Visalia and Orlando combined helped earn him the award of Rolaids relief pitcher of the year in the minor leagues.5

Garcés was brought to the big leagues and debuted for the Twins on September 18, 1990, in a night game at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. There was far from any pressure involved; the Twins held a 10-4 lead over the visiting Royals after eight innings. Garcés pitched the top of the ninth. He got the first two batters out, gave up a walk and a single, and then secured the third out without a runner advancing past second base.

He appeared in four more games, working two innings without a hit on the 22nd, giving up one run in two-thirds of an inning on the 26th, and then adding an inning each in two October games. His earned-run average in 5 2/3 innings was 1.59. In 1990 he married for the first time.

That winter Garcés played for Aragua in the Venezuelan winter league. Despite showing well, he spent two more years in the minor leagues before returning to the majors. In 1991 he faced another challenge. In April, The Sporting News reported that the Twins’ “closer of the future” had returned to Venezuela soon after starting the early season with the Triple-A Portland Beavers (Pacific Coast League). Twins GM Andy MacPhail said, “It’s a delicate situation. We have to fine him but we don’t want it to be too punitive.”6 Garcés’s wife was pregnant, and he had run up some big telephone bills and he had reportedly left without informing club officials. Portland manager Russ Nixon said, “As far as I’m concerned, he’s not a part of this club. I don’t care if he ever comes back.”7 He had appeared in 10 games for Portland (0-1, with a 4.85 ERA). When Garcés returned after an absence of about a month, he was demoted to Orlando, where he appeared in 10 games with a 3.31 ERA. But that wasn’t the story as Garcés explained it in late 2018. He said he’d had a “little confrontation” with the manager, after he was told on the very last day of spring training that they had signed someone else with more experience. He was upset, got angry, and flew home, admitting, though, “I was a kid, missing my family so much.”8

Brito accompanied Garcés back to the States. “After that, I was fine. It was difficult for me because the language was hard. At the time, it was kind of hard to speak English. I was really frustrated at that time. But it’s like anything else in life. You’ve got to go on. You’ve got to learn the language. You’ve got to socialize with the rest of the team. They told me, ‘You’ve got to learn English. You’ve got to have communication with the catchers. With the infield. With the whole team.’” He bought some books, and a few of his teammates told him they would help teach him English. “A lot of guys wanted to help me with my English. I started learning. Everything got better.”9

Still working exclusively in relief, Garcés spent the full 1992 season with Orlando once more and struggled there again, working in 58 games (closing 42) with a 4.54 ERA. His stock had indeed fallen. There was an expansion draft held that fall, and the Twins did not protect him. He was not selected by another team.

Garcés started the 1993 season with the big-league club in Minnesota but – even though he worked four innings in April and May without giving up an earned run – he was asked to spend the rest of the year in Portland. There he started seven games and relieved in 28. His ERA was a very discouraging 8.33. In 1994 Garcés dropped down a level to Double-A Nashville. In 40 appearances (only one of them a start), he posted a 3.72 ERA. On October 25 the Twins cut their ties to Rich Garcés and released him.

Garcés pitched winter ball again and in January, it was reported that he was “burning up the Venezuelan Winter League as a reliever,” the author adding, “He ate himself out of the Twins’ organization as a homesick youth, but reports indicate Garcés is in shape and throwing as hard as ever.”10

Three months later, in January 1995, Garcés signed as a free agent with the Chicago Cubs. He pitched well for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs in Des Moines, working in 23 games with an ERA of 2.86. When Steve Buechele went on the disabled list, the Cubs called up Garcés and he appeared again in a major-league game on June 27. Over the next three-plus weeks, he pitched in seven games for the Cubs and worked a total of 11 innings, with just one poor outing. His ERA was a good 3.27, but the Cubs decided to go with Terry Adams and placed Garcés on waivers. On August 9 he was selected by the Florida Marlins.

After his first eight outings for the Marlins, Garcés was again with a 3.27 ERA and had earned his first hold, on August 28. In September he had his first decisions, both losses. Again, one bad outing cost him one of the two games and left him at season’s end with a 4.44 earned-run average.

Garcés became a free agent in November, and in December signed with the Boston Red Sox. Oakland’s Billy Beane was unhappy that Boston outbid him, saying, “If he keeps his weight down, he can be a force in anyone’s bullpen.”11 Garcés is listed as standing an even 6 feet tall and weighing 250 pounds.

He began the 1996 season with Pawtucket, but was called up in late April and through May had borne a couple of more losses in the majors, with a 4.91 ERA. On June 7 he got his first big-league win by being the pitcher of record when the Red Sox scored four runs in the bottom of the eighth inning (on a pair of two-run homers) to take a 10-7 lead over visiting Milwaukee. Heathcliff Slocumb threw the ninth and preserved the win for Garcés.

Garcés won again on June 26, beating Cleveland thanks to another two-run homer, hit by Tim Naehring in the bottom of the 15th inning.

After experiencing some tightness in his throwing arm, Garcés spent about a month on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Pawtucket (4-0, 2.30) but returned to Boston and picked up a third win on August 20. Another injury, a strained muscle in his rib cage, troubled him in early September. He finished the season 3-2, 4.91.

In 1997, when the Red Sox broke camp, they left Garcés behind. Boston Globe sportswriter Gordon Edes wrote, “Word is, general manager Dan Duquette was upset that Garcés was 8 pounds overweight. … [He] apparently not only didn’t lose weight in camp, he put more on.”12 He was put on the disabled list and then had a rehab assignment with Pawtucket. Garcés came up at the very end of April and – appearing in 12 games – was 0-1 (4.61) through June 1. He was placed on waivers, cleared them, was outrighted to Pawtucket, and spent the remainder of the season there, 2-1 (1.45).

By 1998 Garcés he was being called “El Guapo” (The Handsome One) by his teammates. It was also, perhaps more pertinent to the time it was first bestowed on him, “the name of the villain in the movie Three Amigos, whom his teammates decided he resembled.” Edes said he “resembles an overripe eggplant.”13 Garcés said he was pleased to be in Boston. “I’m very happy here. I’ve never been as comfortable as I’ve been here.”14 He didn’t give up an earned run in all of spring training.

Garcés’s 1998 saw him with two stretches in Pawtucket (frustrating him greatly, since he had not been injured and was essentially being parked there on what his agent said was a specious rehab assignment – specious because the team had never had Garcés consult a doctor)15 but appearing in 30 games for Boston (1-1, 3.33). Regarding Garcés’s girth, teammate Vaughn Eshelman said, “You can talk about size all you want. It’s what you do on the field. And the kid has a big heart.”16

At one point Garcés was deemed “almost unhittable,” but in early August had to go on the DL and he had arthroscopic surgery to have bone chips removed from his right elbow in September.17 At the end of the year, the Red Sox released him, but three months later he was re-signed.

Garcés started 1999 with Pawtucket but just before the All-Star break was brought back to Boston and had an excellent season, mostly working as a seventh- or eighth-inning reliever. He appeared in 30 games, with an ERA of 1.55 and a final record of 5-1. The Red Sox had made a race of it, finishing just four games behind the division-leading New York Yankees, and Garcés had been a significant part of their success.

The Red Sox got to play in the postseason, beating the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series. Garcés got the win in Game Four with 2 1/3 innings of one-run relief in a 23-7 laugher. His fondest memory, though, was a game the team lost – Game Four of the ALCS against the Yankees. New York was leading, 3-2, in the top of the eighth, and had the bases loaded with just one out. Garcés induced Scott Brosius to pop up to second base and then struck out Chad Curtis. “That was the best game I ever had in my life. It was a dream come true, a game I’ll never forget.”18

El Guapo’s 2000 season saw him set career highs, both in innings pitched (74 2/3) and wins (he was 8-1 with a 3.25 earned-run average.)19 Only Pedro Martinez and his brother Ramon Martinez had more wins for the Red Sox. Garcés was often used as a set-up man for closer Derek Lowe. The Red Sox lost him for nearly two weeks in September, due to a groin injury. They finished just 2½ games behind the Yankees. He was a very popular player with fans at Fenway Park, and with the media. “Only in a place like Boston could a middle reliever be as popular as the mayor,” observed one sportswriter.20 After the 2000 season, he was given the Tommy McCarthy Good Guy Award.

In 2001, pitching on another one-year contract that pretty much doubled his 2000 salary, Garcés again had just one loss. In June he was on the disabled list again, this time with a right hamstring pull. He won six games during the 2001 season and had an ERA of 3.90. Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald wrote of him in early September, “By mixing up his big-breaking curveball and tough splitter, Garcés has been a stopper in most every setup situation in which he has been used. He is particularly tough on lefthanded hitters, which is one reason the club has not fretted over its inability to acquire a reliable lefthanded specialist this year. But given his portly build, the club is leery of using Garcés on back-to-back days for fear he will break down.”21

There was kind of a bizarre moment in August when ESPN The Magazine ran a poll asking “Whom do you want to win the home run race?” The winner, with 55 percent of the vote, was Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez. Voters showing a sense of humor saw Rich Garcés came in second with 14.9 percent. Barry Bonds was third with 13.6 percent.22

Garcés’s last season in the major leagues was 2002. He entered the year in something of a bad mood, because the Red Sox had declined to sign him to a multiyear deal, and declared that he wanted to be traded.23 Garcés reported some 35 pounds lighter, but may have put most of that weight back on early in the year. He appeared in 26 games, hampered by a reported strained right hamstring in June, and was 0-1 (but with a 7.59 ERA that brought about his designation for a minor-league assignment). At one point in May, he gave up 13 earned runs in 12 appearances. In June manager Grady Little had said, “I see a kid who doesn’t have a lot of confidence in his face and demeanor, like he did in the past. He used to have that bounce in his step when he got people out.”24 Garcés himself said it was another hamstring injury. Garcés declined the assignment and he was formally released on August 5. Interim GM Mike Port seemed to be more than a little miffed, saying, “Different people react to challenges differently. We’ll take the guys who are willing to fight the battle and be part of this.”25 Relations had apparently deteriorated. When he was let go, Garcés said that Grady Little “didn’t say anything to me. One of the reasons I left [is] that they never really respected me.”26

It was disappointing all the way around. In another article, Hohler noted that the Red Sox season somewhat fell apart due a few factors, one of them being “the complete failure” of Garcés, who had “entered the season as one of the league’s premier setup men.”27

Come November, Garcés was pitching for Aragua again in Venezuelan Winter League ball – perhaps ironically working under manager Buddy Bailey, who would have been his manager in Pawtucket had he gone there.

The Colorado Rockies were prepared to give Garcés a look, signing him in January 2003, but he failed to show up for his physical exam in Tucson, did not report, and announced his retirement through his agent in February. The Rockies released him in March. His major-league career was over. He was a good fielding pitcher, committing only one error in 69 chances (.986). He had only three plate appearances in his entire big-league career, grounding out once for the Cubs in 1995 and then batting twice in interleague play for Boston in 2001. He struck out once and grounded into a double play the other time. His career won-lost record was 23-10 (3.74).

Garcés did not pitch in Organized Baseball in either 2003 or 2004, though in November 2004 he pitched for Magallanes in the Venezuelan Winter League. He had 14 saves.

There was some drama in January 2005. Garcés went missing. A report in the January 27 Boston Herald said that he had been missing since the 17th and that his family hadn’t heard from him. After a Magallanes game against Caracas, he disappeared. His wife, wrote Jeff Horrigan, “is said to have filed a police report. The disappearance is troubling due to the rash of kidnappings that have taken place in South American involved high-profile athletes and their families.” He noted that Ugueth Urbina’s mother had been kidnapped only four months earlier. Garcés’s agent, Jeff Borris, was “stunned” to hear of his disappearance.28 It was apparently not a kidnapping at all. He’d gone to a beach party. For days. “A Red Sox official with knowledge of the affair said that family problems may have been behind Garcés’ absence,” concluded a story in the Globe.29

On May 27, 2005, the Red Sox signed Garcés as a free agent. It was a very modest contract, said to be for about $2,500 per month. Gabe Kapler faced him in July and said he looked good, “very similar to what I’ve always known Rich Garcés to be.”30 He pitched three innings over three games in the Gulf Coast League (rookie league), but advanced no further and was released at the end of August.

A broken hand kept Garcés out of winter ball in 2005-06, but in 2006-07 and 2007-08, he pitched in Maracaibo for Aguilas del Zulia in the Venezuela Winter League. In the 2006-07 season, he was 3-1 (2.31) with 11 saves.

In 2007 Garcés returned to New England and worked in 36 games for the Nashua Pride, in the independent Canadian-American Association. The team was managed by former Red Sox third baseman Butch Hobson. Garcés said he was hoping to make it back to the major leagues. “That’s my goal right now. I can’t think about retirement right now. I’m only 35. I’m still throwing 93, 94. … There are a lot of guys 39, 40, 41 years old who are still pitching in the big leagues.”31 He was 6-4 (4.42).

The following year (2008), after another winter-league season for Zulia, Garcés pitched for Nashua in 16 more games (1-0, 3.71). He also pitched in 13 games for the Potros de Tijuana in Mexican League baseball. They were his last games in professional baseball.

His pitching career over, Garcés decided he wanted to take up coaching. “Coaching’s going to be a chance to give back, to share my experience from all those years in the big leagues. And I might have a shot to get back to the big leagues. You never know. Maybe a pitching coach, maybe a bullpen coach. Whatever. I decided to be a coach and that’s what I have been doing.

“I coached for Zulia for a couple of years. I worked with the Leones de Caracas for two years as the pitching coach. The third year with them, I was the bullpen coach. Last year [2017], Luis Rodriguez was the manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish here in the Atlantic League. We talked about it in the wintertime and he told me, ‘Hey, compadre, why don’t you come with me to the Atlantic League? I’m going to be the manager. You take care of the pitchers.’”32

Garcés and his second wife, Yesenia, got a place in Fairfield, Connecticut, where they live with two of his daughters. He has worked as pitching coach for the Bluefish, working also with former major-league pitcher Mike Porzio, who built an academy called The Clubhouse in Fairfield. Garcés is the academy’s MLB Pitching Instructor.33 “I’m happy, man. I’m happy. That’s why I’m walking with my head high. I do what I can. I’d even go out there with a broken leg. As long as I’m pitching, it makes me happy.”

In a November 2018 interview, Garcés was looking forward to returning to Fort Myers and taking part in Red Sox Fantasy Camp, which he had done for three prior years. He said he enjoyed the interactions with the campers and seeing and playing baseball with some of his old teammates.34

One of Rich’s brothers, Jesus Garcés, was in 2018 working as a scout for the Detroit Tigers organization. Rich himself continued to credit his family for his success in baseball: “The people who helped me the most in my long career is my mom and my dad. One of my brothers was a big factor in that. He helped me in a lot of ways when I really needed it. When I was down, he was there for me.”

Naturally, at the time of the interview, he expressed his hopes to continue to coach, and perhaps before too long be invited to sign on for a return trip to the major leagues, this time as a coach or instructor.

In October 2020, Garcés began working for Denis Boucher on the coaching staff at CTEdge Baseball Academy, which maintains a complex of five fields, an indoor dome, and a full baseball field house with batting cages and the like in North Branford, Connnecticut.

Last revised: January 31, 2026

SOURCES

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Garcés’s player file from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com. Thanks to Rod Nelson of SABR’s Scouts Committee.

Photo credit: Rich Garcés, courtesy of the Boston Red Sox.

NOTES

1 Rich Garcés, interview with author on November 13, 2018.

2 Garcés interview.

3 Garcés interview.

4 Garcés interview.

5 “Aguilera Seeking Tendinitis Remedy,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1990: 16.

6 Jeff Lehman, “Minnesota Twins,” The Sporting News, April 15, 1991: 21.

7 “Falling Stock,” The Sporting News, July 8, 1991: 36.

8 Garcés interview.

9 Garcés interview.

10 Joe Goddard, “Chicago Cubs,” The Sporting News, January 30, 1995: 45.

11 Peter Gammons, “Red Sox Had Better Mind Their Business.” Boston Globe, November 19, 1995: 61.

12 Gordon Edes, “Leading the Way,” Boston Globe, March 31, 1997: 50.

13 Gordon Edes, “Garcés in Thick of Things in Pen,” Boston Globe, March 18, 1998: 78. The nickname was reportedly first bestowed by Mike Maddux. See Sean Deveney, “The Book On … Rich Garcés,” The Sporting News, July 10, 2000: 22.

14 “The Book On … Rich Garcés.”

15 Gordon Edes, “Frustrated Garcés Wants Out,” Boston Globe, May 6, 1998: 49.

16 Gordon Edes, “Sox Crest as They Ride Home,” Boston Globe, June 3, 1988: 49.

17 Paul Doyle used the phrase in the June 29, 1998, Sporting News on page 36.

18 Gordon Edes, “Castoff Joins a Cast of Characters,” Boston Globe, July 28, 2002: 57. What he may have forgotten is the top of the ninth, when he left with the bases loaded, after which Rod Beck gave up a grand slam to pinch-hitter Ricky Ledee. The Yankees won the game, 9-2.

19 In Fort Myers on March 14, 2000, he joined five other Red Sox pitchers in throwing a perfect game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

20 Gordon Edes, “Castoff Joins a Cast of Characters.”

21 Michael Silverman, “Rotation Regains Martinez and Loses Saberhagen in a Matter of Days,” The Sporting News, September 3, 2001: 22.

22 Tom FitzGerald, “South Korean Archers in Gutter,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2001: 68.

23 Michael Silverman, “Boston Red Sox,” The Sporting News, February 4, 2002: 57.

24 Gordon Edes, “Where’s Guapo’s Game?” Boston Globe, June 2, 2002: 62.

25 Bob Hohler, “Players Will OK Steroid Testing,” Boston Globe, August 8, 2002: 69.

26 Tom King, “Pride Sign Former Sox Reliever Garcés,” Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph, February 21, 2007.

27 “Sox Must Rearm for ’03,” Boston Globe, September 24, 2002: 70.

28 Jeff Horrigan, “Ex-Sox Garcés Missing,” Boston Herald, January 27, 2005. http://bostonherald.com/redSox/view.bg?articleid=65426&format=text.

29 “It Can Be a Dangerous Game in Venezuela,” Boston Globe, January 30, 2005: 42.

30 Chris Snow, “Garcés Eyeing a Big Comeback,” Boston Globe, August 5, 2005: 31.

31 Tom King, “Pride Sign Former Sox Reliever Garcés.”

32 Garcés interview.

33 See The Clubhouse at http://www.theclubhousect.com/.

34 Rich Garcés, interview with author, November 27, 2018.