It looks like Garcia cannot hit a major-league breaking ball. That's the old, old story of the hotshot kid at Spring Training: "I'll see you soon, Ma. They're throwing breaking balls now".
OK, to repeat: unless Garcia can field SS, where would he play for the Nats? Hernandez is a competent major league hitter, and a decent fielding 2B. Should the Nats sit Hernandez and let Garcia try 2B again? And, as much as I dislike playing a season to flip players for prospects, why have Hernandez at all, then?
A large part of AAA is to sort out guys who can't hit breaking stuff. There are enough guys there that have MLB caliber offspeed stuff that it's a good place to learn to hit it. You can't just sit on fastballs and hit well in AAA.
And he has to play SS. That's the second reason he is in AAA. His viability as a major leaguer would be vastly increased if he can play SS capably, even if only for a few years. He's still very young for AAA (he'll be 22 next week) and the last time he played over 40 games at SS was in 2019. That's just not enough experience for him to be reasonably expected to do it every day in MLB.
Still crushing the ball. Weeks since an error.
This is nearing service time manipulation territory.
Lack of errors doesn't tell the whole story. Is he getting to balls? Are they completing double plays when he's in them, or settling for forces? Is he getting rid of the ball fast and strong enough to get outs on tight plays or is he giving up infield hits? None of those show up in the error column but all of them determine whether he can play SS at the top level.
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