For the first month of the 2025 MLB season, Yimi Garcia was the Toronto Blue Jays’ rock in the bullpen — the guy who’d enter games with tension thick enough to cut with a knife and slice through it like a hot blade through butter.
With 14 consecutive scoreless innings under his belt and a stellar 18 strikeouts against just three walks, Garcia had built himself a fortress of dominance.
But even the sturdiest walls can crack. And on Saturday, with the Blue Jays holding a slim 3-1 lead and just one out standing between them and a win, a single swing from Cleveland’s Daniel Schneemann reduced that fortress to rubble.
A Game That Turned on a Dime — or a Grand Slam
It was the kind of moment that feels like a punch in the gut: two outs, bases loaded, Garcia grinding through his 32nd pitch, and Schneemann sending a ball hurtling into the seats.
Suddenly, the scoreboard blinked 5-3 in favor of the Guardians. From potential victory to a stunning defeat in a heartbeat.
Garcia’s ERA, once a pristine 0.00, ballooned to 2.46. The margin of error for a reliever is razor thin, and Garcia, who had been threading that needle all season, finally missed a stitch.
The Toll of the Workload
To point the finger solely at Garcia, though, would be to ignore the broader picture. He’s been leaned on heavily in recent days, and the fatigue showed.
Thirty-two pitches is a lot for any reliever, let alone one operating under the strain of high-leverage innings game after game. His fastball still had bite — two of his outs were strikeouts — but his command wavered. Two walks, two hits, and one fateful mistake.
Blue Jays insider Ben Nicholson-Smith summed it up succinctly in the moment: “Daniel Schneemann hits a grand slam on Yimi Garcia’s 32nd pitch of the day and the Guardians are now leading 5-3.”
An Off Night
Everyone has a day when the wheels come loose. For Garcia, this was his. The two hits he gave up? One was manageable. The other went so far it probably needed a boarding pass.
Toronto’s bats had no answer for Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase, and Schneemann’s late-game heroics sealed the Blue Jays’ fate.
No dramatics to end this one — just one rough outing in an otherwise stellar campaign for the righty.