August 22, 2010: Cardinals rookie Jaime García faces one over the minimum, blanks Giants for first career shutout

After a standout career at Sharyland High School in Mission, Texas, Jaime García – born in Reynosa, Mexico, on July 8, 1986 – was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the 30th round of the 2004 June Amateur Draft.

As was their policy at the time, the Orioles required each of their draftees to pass a test. García didn’t make the grade, but it wasn’t due to lack of intelligence. 

“They didn’t let me sign him,” said Joe Almaraz, then an Orioles scout and a former Spanish teacher. “But it wasn’t that he didn’t do well on the test. The problem was that when they translated the test into Spanish for him, it was misinterpreted. I read the whole thing myself.”1

By the time the error was discovered, García – still enrolled at Sharyland but too old to play high-school baseball – decided to go back into the draft rather than sign with Baltimore.2 This time, in 2005, he was selected in the 22nd round by a different type of birds, the St. Louis Cardinals.

García debuted for St. Louis on July 11, 2008, when he allowed one hit and a walk in the final two innings of a 6-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. He appeared in 10 games (including one start), compiling a 1-1 record with a 5.63 ERA in 16 innings before having reconstructive elbow surgery in September 2008. Garcia logged just 37⅔ minor-league innings in 2009 before returning to the Cardinals to start the 2010 season.3

The 24-year-old García came into a muggy Sunday afternoon matchup against the San Francisco Giants on August 22 with a 2010 record of 10-6 and a 2.58 ERA in 23 starts and was being mentioned as a possibility for NL Rookie of the Year.4

On August 13, after beginning an eight-game homestand with a 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs, the Cardinals had enjoyed a one-game lead over the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Central Division. But they lost their next five games before beating the Giants in the middle game of a three-game weekend series on August 21. St. Louis entered the final game of the homestand a day later at 66-54, 3½ games behind the Reds.

The Giants – on their way to the National League West crown and their first World Series title since 1954, when they played at the Polo Grounds in New York – were 69-55 and in second place in the NL West Division, five games behind the San Diego Padres.

García was opposed by 32-year-old lefty Barry Zito, who was four seasons removed from his glory days with the Oakland A’s. He was 102-63 from 2000 to 2006, leading the American League with 23 wins and capturing the AL Cy Young Award in 2002. Since signing a seven-year, $126 million contract and moving across San Francisco Bay to the Giants in 2007, Zito was just 39-50, including an 8-7 record with a 3.56 ERA entering this game.5

In a preview of innings to come, García cruised through the first, retiring Aaron Rowand, Freddy Sanchez, and Buster Posey on just 10 pitches. Giants left fielder Pat Burrell led off the second with a soft grounder to left for a single but was quickly erased when José Guillén bounced into a 6-4-3 double play. Pablo Sandoval flied out to right on García’s sixth pitch to end the inning.

In the third, García needed 11 pitches for a perfect inning, which included strikeouts of Juan Uribe and Eli Whiteside.

Zito matched García with two straight scoreless innings, working around a two-out single by Pedro Feliz and a walk to Yadier Molina in the second, but ran into trouble in the third. Brendan Ryan doubled to left with one out and went to third on a wild pitch as Jon Jay walked.

Albert Pujols lined a single to left to score Ryan with the game’s first run, with Jay stopping at second.6 Matt Holliday grounded a single to center to plate Jay, and Pujols took third when the Giants were caught napping on the cutoff throw to Uribe in shallow left field.7 Felipe Lopez lofted a sacrifice fly to deep center field to score Pujols and put St. Louis up 3-0.

After García pitched a perfect fourth, the Cardinals upped their lead to 5-0 when Molina led off with a walk and rookie Allen Craig followed with his second career home run.

After a two-out single by Jay, Zito was replaced by Guillermo Mota, who finished the inning with no further damage. At 3⅔ innings, it was Zito’s shortest outing since the previous June, and the impending loss dropped his lifetime record against St. Louis to 1-5.8

In the Giants’ fifth, García threw just nine pitches. Burrell again led off with a single and was again erased on a 6-4-3 double play by Guillen; Sandoval bounced back to the mound for the third out.

St. Louis continued to expand its lead. Lopez started the bottom of the fifth with a walk against Mota and stole second with one out; he scored when Molina hit a ground-rule double down the right-field line.

García slapped a single to left, putting runners on the corners. Ryan drilled a single to right to score Molina and chase Mota from the game. Javier Lopez took the mound and allowed Jay’s base hit to center to score García and put the Cardinals up 8-0.

With a commanding lead, García continued to be efficient with his pitches, using just eight to get through the sixth – including a strikeout of pinch-hitter Nate Schierholtz – and nine in the seventh inning, which included strikeouts of Sanchez and Posey.

For the first time in his career, García pitched into the eighth inning, where the Giants forced him to hurl his most pitches in a single inning; he needed 13 to retire them in order, including a strikeout of Travis Ishikawa.

In the bottom of the eighth, Craig’s two-out bloop single plated Lopez with the Cardinals’ final run. With two outs, García was allowed to bat for himself and was at first unaware that the crowd of 42,638 had risen to give him an ovation.

“I’m trying to concentrate and stay locked in and focus on pitching. But our fans are awesome. It was a great feeling when I was hitting and when I was standing on the mound,” he said. “It was one of my greatest moments in baseball.”9

García took the mound looking to go the distance. After quickly retiring Uribe and Whiteside on three pitches, he had the opportunity to face the minimum of 27 batters, but Schierholtz lined a single just over second baseman Aaron Miles, who had entered the game defensively to start the ninth. 

Rowand forced Schierholtz at second on García’s 89th pitch, ending the game. It was the fewest pitches by a Cardinals pitcher in a complete game since Bob Tewksbury needed just 86 to beat San Diego on May 30, 1992.10 García’s shutout was the first by a Cardinals rookie since Bud Smith’s unlikely no-hitter against San Diego on September 3, 2001.11

“I thought he had shutout type command,” said St. Louis manager Tony La Russa. “He’s got four, five, six pitches depending on how many [catcher Yadier Molina] wants to use that day. He didn’t throw a whole lot of pitches down the middle. That’s what I was impressed with.”12

García finished the season 13-8 with a 2.70 ERA and was a distant third in the Rookie of the Year voting behind San Francisco’s Posey and Jason Heyward. of the Atlanta Braves.

In the 2011 season, García was 13-7 and helped the Cardinals win the NL wild card with a 90-72 record. During the Cardinals’ unlikely run to the World Series title, he was winless in five games, although he pitched well in two World Series starts – both no-decisions – and joined Fernando Valenzuela as the only Mexican-born pitchers to start a World Series game.13

Limited by injuries, García was just 15-10 from 2012 to 2014, but bounced back with a 10-6 record and a 2.43 ERA in 20 starts in 2015. After struggling to a 10-13 mark with a 4.67 ERA in 2016, he was traded to the Atlanta Braves.14

García bounced around the final two years of his career, pitching for five teams. From July 21 to August 4, 2017, he started games for three teams – the Braves, Minnesota Twins, and New York Yankees – within a 15-day span, a first in major-league history.15

In 2018 García had a 3-6 record and a 5.82 ERA when the Toronto Blue Jays released him. After an eight-game stint with the Chicago Cubs, he made four appearances with the Naranjeros de Hermosillo of the Mexican Pacific Winter League before announcing his retirement from baseball.16 He ended his major-league career with a 70-62 record and a 3.85 ERA in 218 games (188 starts).

A man of strong Christian faith, in his post-baseball life García partners with Water Mission, donating his time and finances to an engineering ministry that provides safe water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions in developing nations “to help bring hope and share God’s love to communities in Mexico through safe water.”17

Author’s Note 

The author attended this game with his father and son. They also attended the previous day’s game, in which the Cardinals beat the Giants, 5-1.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Russ Walsh and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted data from Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN201008220.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2010/B08220SLN2010.htm

Notes

1 Tyler Kepner, “Cardinals Are Glad García Got Lost in Translation,” New York Times, June 5, 2010, https://archive.nytimes.com/bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/cardinals-are-glad-García-got-lost-in-translation/.

2 Kepner.

3 Kepner.

4 Andrew Baggarly, “Zito Struggles as Giants Fall to Cardinals,” Modesto (California) Bee, August 23, 2010: C6.

5 In 2008 Zito led the National League with 17 losses.

6 Pujols led the National League with 118 RBIs in 2010. Despite 2,218 RBIs, this was the only year he led his league.

7 Baggarly.

8 R.B. Fallstrom, “Dreadful End to Rocky Road Trip,” San Francisco Examiner, August 23, 2010: A27.

9 Joe Strauss, “Completely in Control,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 23, 2010: B1.

10 Strauss.

11 Strauss. Smith was 7-8 with a 4.95 ERA in 27 career games (24 starts) for St. Louis in 2001 and 2002. His no-hitter was the only game in which he pitched past the seventh inning.

12 Strauss.

13 Daniel Kramer and Jenifer Langosch, “Veteran Lefty J. García Announces Retirement,” MLB.com, January 9, 2019, https://www.mlb.com/news/jaime-García-announces-retirement-from-mlb-c302541372.

14 The Cardinals received John Gant, Chris Ellis, and Luke Dykstra. Gant was 22-17 with the Cardinals from 2017 to 2021. Ellis and Dykstra never appeared with St. Louis.

15 Kramer and Langosch. All three games were on the road. García picked up wins with Atlanta at Los Angeles and with Minnesota at Oakland before taking the loss with New York at Cleveland.

16 Kramer and Langosch.

17 Scott Linebrink, “Former MLB Pitcher Jaime García Overcomes Fear, Shares Gospel Through Work With Water Mission,” Sports Spectrum, June 11, 2020, https://sportsspectrum.com/sport/baseball/2020/06/11/pitcher-jaime-García-shares-gospel-water-mission/.