If you can be good in Colorado, you can be great in other places.
Thatap according to Brock Burke, the Reds’ best reliever this season, who finished up a weekend of work at Coors Field by pitching a scoreless seventh inning in a 9-6 Cincinnati win. Despite Hunter Goodman’s three home runs on Sunday, the Reds took the rubber match to open the second half of the season.
Burke, who starred at Evergreen High School before being selected by the Tampa Bay Rays in the third round of the 2014 draft, leads the National League in appearances (49) this season while allowing a hit or fewer in 42 of those outings. He threw a total of 20 pitches in two appearances against the Rockies, throwing 11 pitches and giving up one hit in the Reds’ 7-2 win on Friday. He induced two fly balls and a groundout in Sunday’s win.
For Burke and Reds relievers Pierce Johnson and Julian Garcia, the three-game series at Coors Field was a homecoming of sorts for all three former high school stars from the Centennial State.
It also underscored that pitchers who excel here can make it anywhere.
“You just battle adversity and learn how to pitch,” Burke said. “Your stuff doesn’t move … You kind of have to be perfect here to get the ball to move. It just teaches you to be very good in your mechanics. And the way you throw the ball.”
Garcia, who pitched for Metro State just minutes down the road, saw countless games at Coors Field growing up, but he had never been on the field as a player until Friday. His decade-long odyssey from Division II baseball to making his big-league debut with the Reds last month, at 31, after stints in independent ball and the Puerto Rican Winter League, would make for a great screenplay.
But it wasn’t until Saturday, when he gave up two hits in a little more than two innings of work in a 10-3 Rockies’ win, that Garcia fully comprehended just how hard it is to pitch in Colorado. Thatap when he got the breakdown of the 32 pitches he threw against the Rockies.
“In all those years I was at Metro, we didn’t have the TrackMan. We didn’t have the Rapsodo stuff or the reports to see all the movement profiles and stuff like that,” said Garcia, who starred at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins. “Now, seeing it, and seeing your fastball, like in Cincinnati, or on the East Coast, where itap like 18-20 inches of vertical and then itap like yesterday, you’re looking at the board, and itap like 13 or 14 inches, itap crazy. There’s really no jump.”
Living pitch to pitch
Burke and Johnson, unlike Garcia, entered the weekend with plenty of experience on the mound at Coors Field. Johnson spent the first half of the 2023 season with the Rockies before being dealt to the Braves.
The right-hander, who starred at Faith Christian High School, put up his worst career numbers in Colorado, where he started the year as a closer with 13 saves. He was 1-5 with a 6.00 ERA in 43 games for the Rockies.
Burke was still a teenager at 19 when he signed with the Rays after being picked in the 2014 draft — the same year the Rockies selected Kyle Freeland, another homegrown star. One of the things that certainly got the attention of big-league scouts when Burke was in high school was a 20-strikeout outing against Eaglecrest at Coors Field.
The scorecard might say 19 K’s, but Burke insisted it was 20 — the result of a dropped third strike that the scorekeeper for MaxPreps missed. He remembers it just like yesterday, explaining that the Coors Field grounds crew wouldn’t let the high schoolers warm up in the bullpen, so he just walked into the game cold.
“I think I walked the first three guys and then struck out the next three,” he said, with a laugh. “That was the first time I touched the mound that day. No warmup.”
His success this season has been the result of going back to his roots as a pitcher. He’s been a name that has frequently surfaced in trade deadline chatter, given the market for left-handers and the Reds bringing up the rear in the NL Central race, 17 games back of the Brewers.
“I pitch kind of weird, and I think throughout my career, people have tried to change me,” Burke said. “Kinda me just getting back to my roots. Kind of just moving how I move and doing how I do. Just trying to think about competing every pitch and not worrying about how I’m moving or how I’m doing certain things. Kind of just live, pitch by pitch, and game by game.”
‘I wouldn’t want it any other way’
Garcia has been living by the same code, not letting himself get too high or too low about finally making it to The Show at 31 after years of coming so close.
He had an array of family members and friends attend all three games at Coors, and he relished the time at home during the All-Star break.
“Itap been crazy. I don’t really have any words to describe it,” he said. “Itap been a cool journey, and I’ve told everybody I wouldn’t want it any other way. Kinda had to work for it, but itap been everything I’d imagined. No words to describe it.”
He dealt with some nerves entering the series only because he didn’t want to get out on the mound and not perform for all of those who’d come out to see him.
“Just the build-up of it all,” he said. “I just tried to relax and see family and enjoy it, but it was like, OK, I’m pitching in front of all my friends and family. Itap kind of like, I don’t wanna go out there and make an idiot of myself. I want to prove that I’m good. I’m supposed to be here. And make them even more proud.”
Since making the jump to the big leagues on June 23, Garcia ranks tied for fifth among all National League relief pitchers with 13 strikeouts. He is the second Reds pitcher since 1900 with more than 13 strikeouts and no more than five hits allowed through his first eight career games.
There were plenty of times over the last decade when he seriously considered walking away from baseball, especially after the Phillies — who’d drafted him in 2016 — released him in 2023. But he always came back to the one thing he had wanted to accomplish since elementary school.
“That (2023) year, I was mentally checked out from baseball,” he said. “Baseball just wasn’t treating me very well and I wasn’t in love with the game anymore. But itap what I set out to do. I show pictures to my girlfriend all the time when I was a young kid, and you’re in elementary school, they’re like, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ I wanted to be a professional baseball player.
“… I didn’t want to give up. But there were times when it was like, this is tough. This is hard. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I need to provide for my family. I need to grow up.”
The game of baseball works in mysterious ways. After making it back to affiliated baseball and working his way through the minors, Garcia has run down the dream he’s been chasing since he was a young fireballer growing up in northern Colorado.
He doesn’t have to grow up just yet.
“Baseball, I knew I was good at it,” he said. “There’s nothing like it. I’ve been so close. Like, I was in Triple-A; I’ve been around guys, and I was like, OK, I’m as good as them, if not better. And I can get there. It was just putting my head down and trying to get back to here.”
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