SURPRISE, Ariz. -- Now that Maikel Garcia wears gold on his glove after winning his first career Gold Glove Award at third base last season, he’s even more motivated to win another … and another … and another.
“Like Salvy says, it’s not [about] playing two years in the big leagues, you want to play like 15 or 17,” Garcia said. “If you win a Gold Glove, you don’t want one, you want two, three, four. That’s the goal. Don’t get too comfortable because this is a humbling game.”
The journey toward another Gold Glove starts in the spring, Garcia says, setting the foundation before the regular season.
With that in mind, we wanted to get a closer look at what Garcia does to prepare for that, and he let us tag along for a morning workout with infield coach José Alguacil on the Royals’ mini field at their Spring Training complex.
“This is home for us,” Alguacil said as he pointed out to the field. “This is where we do a lot of our training.”
The Dick Howser Field only has an infield, allowing Royals infielders to get more specific work than they can get on a full-size field with a lot of stuff going on throughout the day. Each player connects with Alguacil on a time and what they need that day. In the spring, they can get a little more intense and fast-paced work if they’re not playing that day. Outside of full-team defensive drills during morning workouts, you can usually find Alguacil on the Howser field.
“Every play is important, and when we work, we work with urgency,” Alguacil said. “Why? Because we know where we want to be. We want to be, step by step, want to go to the playoffs, then keep building up and eventually go to the World Series and win. … Everything starts right here, prior to the season, and you can see the work carries through the season.”
On Tuesday, Garcia went out early for his individual defensive work to get it done before anything else. He warmed up with ground balls, and then Alguacil explained the drill they were going to do. He had two machines set up next to each other to shoot balls out at varying speeds toward Garcia. First, he got one with top spin that he had to backhand close to the line. Immediately after fielding that, a ball from the right side shoots out, and Garcia has to forehand the ball more toward the hole, followed by adjusting his feet and mimicking throwing to first.
After several sets of that, they reversed the order of the machines.
“Like it?” one coach asked Garcia after a round.
“Easy,” Garcia said.
The goal was to work on Garcia’s first-step quickness and both his backhand and forehand plays. There’s a reason third base is called the hot corner, and if Garcia can see as much quick spin and create as many angles as he can in practice, theoretically, it makes it easier in the game.
“The spin when the right-handed hitter hits to my backhand is a little bit tough in the game because it’s the big leagues and they hit it hard,” Garcia said. “So it’s kind of hard to read it. But when I moved to third, I just started waiting for the ball, don’t go forward too much because they hit it too hard. And then when we [went] to the forehand, we [were] trying to work on my first step, right after I got the ball with the backhand. That’s going to help me because I can get to more balls in the hole.”
Garcia has always been excellent defensively, but he grew up through the Royals’ system as a shortstop and only moved to third base when he got to the Majors because Kansas City had another Gold Glove shortstop already playing in Bobby Witt Jr.
With Garcia’s emergence as a standout defensive third baseman, then, the Royals now have one of the best left side infields in MLB. It’s not something the team takes for granted, especially now that both Witt and Garcia are playing on multi-year extensions that have them in Kansas City until at least 2030.
They’ll be powering the offense, but they’ll also be anchoring the infield. They want the Gold Gloves to keep coming.
“It’s so special to me because that was my dream when I was young,” Garcia said. “Getting one, that motivates me to get another one at the position I didn’t play in the Minor Leagues. I’m proud because it’s not my natural position, and winning a Gold Glove at a different position is kind of hard.”