Madsen, Garcia Up to Speed at Quartz Hill

Quartz Hill High baseball Coach Dave Stradling nearly jumped out of his shoes last week when he learned his two best pitchers--Mark Madsen and Bryan Garcia--were testing their fastballs on a radar gun in a booth at a JetHawk game.

Madsen, sidelined at the time because of a bad back, was clocked at 87 mph. Garcia, hours after pitching a complete game against Antelope Valley, checked in at 85.

“I wasn’t real happy with any of them, especially Madsen,” Stradling said. “He was just coming off a month of rehab.”

But Stradling doesn’t mind keeping a loose rein on Garcia, who is probably the front-runner for Golden League player-of-the-year honors.

His pitching and batting statistics are impressive enough. But Garcia, a 6-foot-3, 165-pound senior right-hander, also has stolen 15 bases, including home five times.

He did it twice last week.

Garcia has a 4-0 record, a 0.58 earned-run average, 43 strikeouts and only four walks in 36 1/3 innings. He also has a region-best six saves.

Garcia entered the week on a 15-for-17 hitting tear. He is batting .528 with seven doubles, three triples, three home runs and 22 runs batted in.

“We had three scouts out here and they came out of their seats,” Stradling said after a recent game.