Lookout Landing’s 2025 Prospect Ratings: #14 Brandyn Garcia

The masses might be familiarized with him much sooner than you might think

If you missed Tuesday’s writeup of Ben Williamson, click here. If you want to check out the entire collection of 2025 prospect writeups, click here.

Welcome back, prospect lovers! As spring training officially kicks off, a triple header for prospects this week is capped off by perhaps the biggest riser in the entire system, LHP Brandyn Garcia. An 11th rounder from the 2023 draft, Garcia began his career exclusively as a reliever before slowly transitioning into a short-stint starter over the course of the season. Despite rarely pitching past the fifth inning, Garcia put up one of the more impressive pitching seasons in the Mariner system since Logan Gilbert’s magical 2019 run of dominance. Finishing with a 2.25 ERA and 27% K rate, Garcia ventured his way up to Double-A in his first full season and helped lead the Travs to their second championship in as many years.

As a pitcher, Garcia is primarily a fastball-slider guy, but he’ll flash a changeup now and then to keep a hitter off balance. His slider has two distinct shapes, one a firmer gyro spin slider and the other a devastating sweeper that gets nearly two feet of break. Both pitches pair well with his sinker that’s typically in the mid-90’s, though he’s flirted with triple digits in the past when he’s used in a shorter stint. Garcia’s stuff is a huge help for his aforementioned affinity for striking batters out, however it doubles at inducing a healthy number of groundballs, finishing the year with a GB% north of 53%.

If you want to critique his season last year, you could point to his numbers in Double-A and say they weren’t quite as good as they were in Everett, however Garcia still worked to a 2.83 ERA on the tail end of his heaviest workload ever. The stuff wasn’t quite as sharp, however that’s somewhat expected for a first year starter. The criticism that holds more water, at least in my eyes, is his age. Garcia will turn 25 in late May, and it’s not impossible that some degree of his success came through facing inferior, less polished opponents. It’s tough to say how much value Garcia got from his time pitching at Quinnipiac for three seasons, but it’s undeniable that he is more physically mature than some of the teenage opposition he faced. I don’t think it’s much of a concern moving forward thanks to how quickly he progressed through the system, but it’s at least worth mentioning.

Garcia may seem more familiar than the average prospect to some, having drawn considerable attention from the front office this offseason. Having overtly said they plan to factor him into the big league bullpen in some capacity this season, I would expect the front office will transition Garcia back to the bullpen full time and forego ramping him up at all this spring. Without the immediate need for a starter and a profile that fits better there anyway, Garcia’s move to the ‘pen would allow him to get to the majors faster and add immediate value. It’s easy to argue that a starter is “X” amount more valuable than a reliever so why move him to the bullpen, however Garcia’s situation is a bit different than what’s typical (e.g. The Logan Evans Situation last season). Garcia’s current stuff is good enough to break camp as the big league club’s lefty arm and it’s not terribly hard to see a world where he mixes into some leverage spots down the line. There isn’t a need for his pitches to “tick up” as they needed with Evans. We’ve seen what he can do in shorter stints, and it should absolutely play at the highest level. Keep a close eye on Garcia this spring and expect him to get his fair share of reps come game time.