The odds of veteran catcher Aramis Garcia being summoned to the Phillies late in the season aren’t very good.

Outside of an injury to either starter J.T. Realmuto or backup Garrett Stubbs, the only shot that the 30-year-old has would be a September call up, and the Phillies would need to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for that to happen. One other longshot would be for Garcia to wind up with another team, but that is somewhat unlikely.

Garcia, though, is playing like a guy looking for a trip to a major league city. Twice on the previous homestand against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Garcia hit two home runs in one game, giving him six for the month of August. Not bad production for a guy who played in just eight games, and had 27 at-bats all month long, after he had hit five home runs over the previous four months combined. Garcia finished August with 14 RBIs, and amassed a slash line of .407/.448/1.185 with Lehigh Valley.

For much of the season, Garcia has been spending time here and there on the developmental list as the IronPigs juggled four catchers on their roster. Rafael Marchan was hurt early on and not on the active roster, but both John Hicks and Vito Friscia were also looking for time behind the plate. Marchan is now healthy, Hicks was released, and Friscia has generally been the odd man out and has spent a lot of time on the developmental list.

Throughout his career, Garcia has been a guy looking for a soft spot to land. He has played in a total of 116 MLB games with San Francisco, Oakland, and Cincinnati and has patiently hoped for a return to the majors with the Phillies. His 11 home runs this season are the most since he played for Sacramento - the Giants top farm team in the Pacific Coast League. Defensively, Garcia is solid, but at the plate he is just a career .216 hitter. Many times, a catcher who has some defensive skills, works well with pitchers, and can chip in with a few hits along the way finds a job as a backup catcher, but that hasn’t been the case this season.

It could be argued that Garcia hasn’t had enough of an opportunity at the major league level. After debuting with the Giants on Aug. 31, 2018, Garcia played in 19 games the rest of that season and hit .286 with four home runs. The next season he was back at Sacramento, playing for former IronPigs manager Dave Brundage, and made four separate trips back to the Giants where he played in 18 games total and hit just .148. That spiral labeled him as too soft offensively to be a major leaguer, and he began to bounce around. COVID wiped out the 2020 season, and Garcia was limited to 32 games with Oakland the following season where he hit .205 before heading to Cincinnati during the offseason and playing in the majors with the Reds for part of the 2022 season.

One possibility for Garcia to see the majors would be a trade. While teams are barred from dealing players on their 40-man roster, they can swap players who are only on a minor league roster. That would mean there’s the potential for a team to acquire Garcia in a minor league deal, and add him to their 40-man roster and then bring him to the majors. Not great odds, but at least he knows that he is doing everything possible to get back to where he wants to be.

PIGS EAT SHRIMP … Jacksonville (25-20) came into town as a hot team and left feeling not so jumbo about themselves as they lost four games to the IronPigs. As the dust settled, Lehigh Valley (28-16) finds itself a half-game ahead of Durham (28-17) for the lead in the International League East in the second half of the season. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (23-20) is next up for the IronPigs, with the RailRiders trailing Lehigh Valley by 4 ½ games in the second-half standings.

HEY, MR. WILSON! ... Weston Wilson was optioned back to Lehigh Valley following the Phillies Sunday night game at the Little League Baseball Classic in Williamsport. Wilson played his first game on the night that Michael Lorenzen threw a no-hitter and Nick Castellanos homered twice to reach the 200-home run plateau for his career. Of course, Wilson may remember it as the night those two played in the game where he homered in his first major league at-bat.

HERE AND GONE … Brad Marsh and Jose Alvarado both made rehab appearances with Lehigh Valley this week, and both are now back with the Phillies for the Sunday night game. Marsh was added to the Philadelphia roster in time for the Little League Classic game for which both teams were allowed to carry 27 players. Following the game, Wilson was optioned back to Lehigh Valley and on Monday, Alvarado was activated, and reliever Luis Ortiz was sent back to the Pigs. Cristian Pache is rehabbing an elbow injury with the Pigs, but now has tightness in his hip, which kept him out of the final two games of the Jacksonville series.