Giants: How can waiver claim Rico Garcia help the team in 2020?

The MLB offseason is officially underway, and Tuesday was a busy day on the waiver wire for the San Francisco Giants. Who is waiver claim Rico Garcia?

The San Francisco Giants added three new players via waivers on Tuesday, with teams around the league shuffling their 40-man rosters in preparation for a busy offseason to come.

Throughout the 2019 season, team president Farhan Zaidi worked on the margins of the roster, hunting for value in the form of other teams’ cast-offs.

He hit on the waiver claim of Alex Dickerson, which made all the other shuffling that didn’t bear fruit well worth the effort.

Here’s a look at Tuesday’s maneuvering:

We’ll be putting together an article on each of the three newcomers and how they can potentially help the team in 2020.

Here we’ll focus on right-hander Rico Garcia.

The 25-year-old made his MLB debut in 2019 after rising the minor league ranks as a 30th-round pick in the 2016 MLB draft.

He was knocked around in a pair of appearances in the big leagues, but his minor league track record is intriguing. It includes a strong 2019 season where he posted a 4.24 ERA with 138 strikeouts in 129.1 innings over 26 starts between Double-A and Triple-A.

He ended the 2019 season ranked as the No. 20 prospect in the Colorado farm system, according to MLB.com, who offered up the following scouting report:

While he is just 5-foot-11, Garcia still manages to get good downhill plane, and his fearlessness on the mound helps his stuff play up. Thanks to a structured throwing program, he’s managed to add 3-4 mph on his fastball since signing and will sit in the low-90s with the ability to reach back for more with his four-seamer on occasion, while his two-seamer has cutting action to it. His breaking ball can be a plus pitch, with late knee-buckling action to it, thrown in the 80-81 mph range. His changeup gives him what should be a solid third option.Garcia has shown he can throw strikes, though there’s still work to be done with his command within the zone. As the Rockies have challenged him to build up innings aggressively, he’s answered the bell, with the hopes he can be a 180-200 IP back-end starter, with the knowledge that his fastball-curve might play up out of the bullpen as a solid backup plan.

While he’s on the older end of the prospect scale at 25 years old, his high floor and three remaining minor league options make him an excellent depth addition.

He joins the likes of Tyler Beede, Logan Webb, Dereck Rodriguez, Conner Menez and Andrew Suarez as a contender for a spot at the back of the MLB rotation, and he’ll definitely be one to watch this spring.

Expect to see plenty more moves like this by the San Francisco Giants before the offseason is over.