How Royals’ Maikel Garcia morphed from 130-pound prospect to leading AL in HRs, RBIs

Eight years ago, then-Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar suggested to team brass that he had a 16-year-old cousin worth a look back in La Sabana, Venezuela.

Rene Francisco, the man in charge of that theater of operations, took him to heart. He called Richard Castro, the club’s scouting director in Venezuela, who was aware of and liked the prospect.

Shortly thereafter, the candidate named Maikel Garcia was invited to a weeklong group tryout at the Royals Academy in the Dominican Republic.

Never mind that he had what might be considered inauspicious physical appeal.

At least on the most superficial and immediately measurable levels.

While he stood about 5-foot-11, Francisco recalled Thursday, Garcia weighed … 127 pounds.

“One twenty-eight,” Garcia corrected, smiling, late Thursday night at Kauffman Stadium.

Moreover, what he lacked in muscle mass, well, he also lacked in speed.

Or as Francisco put it, “He could not run.”

So the same guy who as of Thursday night was tied for the (very early-season) American League lead in home runs (three) and RBIs (eight) once was thin and weak and plodding.

So much so that he then ran the 60-yard dash a full second below what Francisco considered average speed for a prospect (6.8 seconds), and he couldn’t so much as pull the ball or get anything resembling lift or launch during those workouts.

For that matter, Garcia said, he auditioned in a T-shirt because he was so skinny he couldn’t move around in a regular jersey without becoming entangled in it.

Even over the course of some two years after the Royals signed him for $30,000 in 2016, it wasn’t unusual for Francisco to call academy field coordinator Victor Baez and tell him just to rest Garcia so he could pace his way through the season.

Some seven years after his debut in Dominican league play, Garcia remembers being sat down for the second game of the season because of his perceived frailty.

“I was mad for that,” he said.

But he was made for all this, it turns out.

Despite the fact no one but the Royals showed interest — and that even they might well have passed on him given those uninspiring guideposts.

All because of the tell-tale heart that couldn’t be gauged at a glance.

And because of what Francisco, Castro and other scouts discerned beyond the dubious surface impressions.

It was in Garcia’s footwork and instincts. His flow and how he threw and how he positioned himself. How he always hit the ball on the barrel and in his feel for the strike zone.

And how they figured his body projected to develop strength — and speed with it — and contour into the frame of a shortstop initially and now as a third baseman.

“Everything that you’ve seen now is what he was. Except strength,” Francisco said, later adding, “He was a baseball player. You just had to wait to see the body grow.”

There was something else coursing through the now 190-pound 24-year-old, too.

It was in the attitude to go with the aptitude apparently in the family DNA, considering he is one of eight members of his extended family to play in MLB.

That includes Escobar, Garcia’s uncle, Kelvim Escobar and Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr. — related both by the marriage of Garcia’s mother to Acuna’s father, Garcia said, but also as a cousin.

“It’s a little bit crazy,” Garcia said.

Beyond the pedigree, though, is what really distinguishes him.

It’s a certain exuberance and pride and fire inside — a burn to win, or at least to not lose, that at times in the minor leagues compelled him to throw helmets in anger.

That passion comes with a commitment to both honor the family baseball legacy and make his own name.

That’s a point he accents with the words inscribed on a pair of his cleats — “I am who I am; I do what I do” — and as a frequent theme in conversations with him.

“I’m Maikel Garcia,” he said during an interview with The Star at his locker during spring training in Surprise, Arizona. “I want to let them know that I’m Maikel Garcia.”

On Thursday night, he put it thusly: “I want everybody to know who is Maikel Garcia.”

And so he is, offering fresh testimony to that meaning since literally the Royals’ first at-bat of the season. That’s when he became just the second player in club history and first in 40 years (Onix Concepcion in 1984) to lead off a season with a home run.

Early on, anyway, he’s been delivering on what he said when I asked him at spring training about how much he relished leading off: “That’s what I do,” he said. “That’s who I am.”

Through six games, Garcia, along with Bobby Witt Jr., stood as one of just five players in Royals history to have recorded six extra-base hits in that season-opening span.

With his eighth RBI of the season on Thursday night in the Royals 10-1 victory over the White Sox, he joined teammate Sal Perez and two others atop the American League RBI race (as well as the four others with whom he leads the AL in homers).

“He’s got something special,” Perez told me during spring training. “He’s kind of like Bobby Witt Jr. They have something special. They have something inside. You can see it.”

While it’s early in the season and the real measure of his success will be in the months and even years ahead, thus far his career trajectory is an affirmation of the vision of Francisco and Castro and other scouts.

And in the faith he earned along the way toward making his big-league debut on May 2, 2022 … and since.

“We’ve got a lot of belief in Maikel being better than just an average major-league player,” Royals’ executive vice president and general manager J.J. Picollo said the day before the Royals opened the season. “We think he can do some great things in this game and be a name that people around baseball recognize.”

Amid the considerable and entirely appropriate buzz over the Royals’ offseason free-agent signings, Witt’s massive contract extension and such developments as the return of the injured Vinnie Pasquantino, Garcia perhaps was not as recognized as he might have been after hitting .272 with 50 RBIs, 20 doubles and four home runs in his first full season with the team in 2023.

But the Royals had a sense this could be a breakout year for him after he spent much of last season acclimating to third base — where Garcia said at spring training he already felt he’d spent his entire career.

“He learned third base on the fly, essentially, in the big leagues, which is no easy task,” manager Matt Quatraro said in Surprise, adding, “What goes into that … should not be taken lightly.”

It was something Garcia could manage largely because of the very things the Royals saw in him in the first place: a zealous mindset and the baseball feel reflected in what Quatraro calls “incredible feet.”

That also stems from what Picollo calls a common trait in great players.

“It’s fearlessness,” he said.

Like the way Garcia was even when his physique said he didn’t belong.

A sense no doubt further cultivated along the way by the Royals’ belief in his capacity to morph from spindly and slow-footed into a big-league player who still is emerging.

“I mean, next year, he probably will gain another 10 pounds,” Francisco said. “He’s still growing.”

Because that’s who he is.