PORTLAND, Maine — Jhostynxon Garcia leads all Red Sox minor leaguers with 23 home runs and his power-hitting brother is keeping tabs while he rehabs torn ligaments in his knee at the JetBlue Park complex in Fort Myers.
“Save a couple homers for me. I need a couple next year,” the 21-year-old Jhostynxon said his brother, 19-year-old Johanfran Garcia, texted him one night.
It has been an unforgettable season for Jhostynxon, an outfielder who has received two promotions and skyrocketed up the organizational prospect rankings. He’s batting .294 with a .361 on-base percentage, .559 slugging percentage, .920 OPS, 23 homers, 22 doubles, four triples, 66 RBIs, 76 runs, 29 walks, 87 strikeouts and 16 steals combined between Low-A Salem (24 games), High-A Greenville (53 games) and Double-A Portland (19 games).
The 2024 season hasn’t been as rewarding for Johanfran after he started it mashing for Salem. He batted .385 (20-for-52) with a .467 on-base percentage, .596 slugging percentage, 1.063 OPS, two homers and five doubles in 14 games (60 plate appearances). But he suffered his knee injury during a game May 1, then underwent season-ending surgery.
“Obviously I’m a little sad that my brother is not playing and out on the field,” Jhostynxon said through translator Justin Frometa. “But that happens in this game. Injuries happen. He needs to take advantage of the fact that he’s down in Fort Myers, get really healthy and get better at the things they are asking of him so hopefully, we can be back together next year.”
Johanfran, a catcher from Venezuela, has spent the summer rehabbing his knee at JetBlue Park. He is working in the weight room and training room while he has also started to do some light catching.
“When I’m out of the complex, I’m just relaxing (at home) to make sure the knee is recovering for the next day,” Johanfran said through translator Alex Pimentel.
“Since I’m down here, I really don’t want to focus on watching baseball games,” Johanfran added. “But every once in a while I watch my brother play and it makes me really happy seeing him with the success that he’s having.”
The brothers talk regularly. And Johanfran has diligently kept up with Jhostynxon’s enormous stats and sends him texts like the one Jhostynxon mentioned — save some homers for me.
“We tend to joke about the numbers in a very light fashion,” Johanfran said.
But Johanfran said they also take the numbers seriously. He’s proud Jhostynxon has made himself into a true prospect this season and he wants his brother to keep it up.
“I felt I always had the talent,” Jhostynxon said. “I just feel like some of my talent and hard work didn’t come to fruition on the field. My stats weren’t where I wanted them to be. But obviously this year those things are happening. But I felt like the talent was always there.”
Jhostynxon did not appear on either Baseball America or MLB Pipeline’s Red Sox Top 30 prospect lists entering 2024.
He now is ranked No. 18 on Baseball America organizational list, one spot below his brother (No. 17) who has slightly fallen simply because he hasn’t played the past four months. Johanfran began the season ranked No. 14.
MLB Pipeline’s Red Sox organizational list now has Jhostynxon at No. 12.
SoxProspects.com also had Jhostynxon unranked in its Top 60 entering spring training. It jumped him to No. 49 entering the regular season and now has him No. 17.
“Just seeing him get promoted throughout the ranks, it makes me really happy to see my brother have a lot of success this year,” Johanfran said.
Jhostynxon knew he needed to make adjustments after he batted only .230 with a .329 on-base percentage, .374 slugging percentage, .703 OPS, four homers, 14 doubles, six triples, 24 RBIs, 46 runs, 37 walks and 79 strikeouts in 73 games (310 plate appearances) for Salem in 2023.
“Coming off the seasons we had last year, we were really focused on our work in the cage and what we were doing in the weight room,” Jhostynxon said. “It was really trying to improve upon the things that we learned from last season.”
Jhostynxon Garcia and Johanfran Garcia. (Courtesy photo)Courtesy photo
The brothers trained at the JetBlue Park complex throughout last offseason. The hard work they put in didn’t go unnoticed by the Red Sox staff.
“I worked a lot on my swing to try to hit balls in the air,” Jhostynxon said. “Just try to elevate baseballs.
“I made a small adjustment with the hands when it was time to go and time to trigger the barrel, which has allowed me to have more (line drives),” he added.
Jhostynxon, who’s 6 feet, 215 pounds, also transformed his body.
“Thinking about where I was last year, I adjusted my body composition,” Jhostynxon said. “I had a little bit more body fat last year while this year I’ve transferred that into muscle mass. I raised my muscle mass and decreased my body fat percentage.”
Johanfran spent much of last offseason working hard on his offense. He always has had raw power and upside that has caught the attention of evaluators. A National League scout who saw Garcia play in the Florida Complex League during 2023 told MassLive last year that Garcia “can be a Gary Sanchez-type power producer, with sound hitting actions, and the type of strength to drive the ball to the big part of the field. Projects as an above-average skill-position player, supplying a five-hole bat.”
“I worked on my bat speed,” Johanfran said. “I worked on trying to improve my swing and try to make it a little bit more flat, a little bit more straight. And then defensively where I felt like I could really improve was my framing skills, my arm speed, accuracy on throws to second and all that. But I was really happy with the work that I put in this past offseason.”
With Jhostynxon’s success has also come a nickname. He’s become known as “The Password,” which actually originated from the X user @InsideFastball last October 2021. The nickname has gained more momentum this summer with Jhostynxon raking. It is included on his Baseball-Reference page. The Red Sox player development and minor league affiliate X accounts also call him the nickname in tweets when they post his highlights.
@InsideFastball recently tweeted, “Thought the use of consonants was unique & reminiscent of a password… Jhostynxon saw it and graciously adopted it as his own!”
Jhostynxon, who confirmed that he likes the nickname, said he has never met a person with his name before.
“My parents came up with a couple names and combined them, threw a couple letters together and that’s what they came up with,” Jhostynxon said.
Johanfran said he has met people who share his same first name but none of them share the same spelling.
Johanfran also said he’s not the biggest fan of his brother’s “The Password” nickname but it has made him “laugh a lot.”
The Red Sox first got a look at Johanfran while scouting Jhostynxon in Venezuela.
“They saw him at a really young age because they had already seen me,” Jhostynxon said. “They had talked to my parents about him and they said they saw really good projection on him. And he put in the work and was able to make that come to fruition.”
Family members encouraged Johanfran to sign with the Red Sox so the brothers could be in the same organization together.
Boston signed Jhostynxon on July 2, 2019. They inked Johanfran on June 1, 2022.
The two brothers not only played baseball together growing up.
“Apart from baseball, soccer has been the biggest thing we’ve both done together growing up in Venezuela,” Johanfran said. “We also played a little bit of basketball and a little bit of tennis.”
Jhostynxon added, “We loved to play soccer. We used to play a ton of soccer.”
Jhostynxon said it feels cool to join his brother in prospect rankings.
“I feel extremely happy and proud … and eager for more with the fact that me and my brother are both prospects and rising in the rankings,” Jhostynxon said.
Jhostynxon added that his agent keeps him informed.
“He tells me I’m doing pretty well because a lot of people are writing about me and I’m appearing in prospect rankings,” Jhostynxon said. “For the most part, I’ve been hearing some things throughout the year.”
How does he describe the feeling of jumping three levels in one season?
“For me, it’s unexplainable the way I feel and the way things have gone on this season,” Jhostynxon said. “It’s amazing. … I want to keep building upon the things I started in the offseason, specifically my work in the cage and just building off that every single day.”
Johanfran, meanwhile, continues to grind it out in Fort Myers with an eye on 2025.
“I’ve really been focusing on just trying to get the knee better and stronger every day,” he said. “I’m in the training room. I’m in the weight room trying to do everything I possibly can.”
