Brewers Sign Ryan Braun-Type to Complement Actual Ryan Braun
The Milwaukee Brewers acquired two thirds of a world class outfield before the 2018 season, trading for Christian Yelich and signing Lorenzo Cain in free agency. Yelich has been one of the best players in baseball since joining Milwaukee, and Cain was excellent in 2018 before injuries and age slowed him somewhat in 2019. Few teams in baseball would take their center and right field pairing over Milwaukee’s.
But as I learned in third grade math, two thirds is less than one. Left field has been a hodgepodge over the last two years. In 2018, the team relied on a combination of Ryan Braun, Eric Thames, Domingo Santana, and even Hernán Pérez to fill innings. That was mostly okay, though the team wasn’t satisfied; they sent Santana to Seattle in the offseason in exchange for Ben Gamel in an attempt to patch up the outfield.
In 2019, it was more of the same. Braun and Gamel got the majority of the playing time and were fine. Trent Grisham had a late-season cameo replacing Yelich and looked to be the left fielder of the future, but the team sent him to San Diego to shore up other holes in the roster earlier this offseason. The team also cut ties with Thames (and traded Jesús Aguilar during the season), so Braun will be covering first base in 2020. Put it all together, and the team was sorely in need of outfield help.
That help arrived yesterday in the form of Avisaíl García. Fresh off of a one year stint in Tampa that rehabilitated his market, García signed a two year, $20 million deal to join the Brewers, as first reported by Jon Heyman. He immediately profiles as a starter, with Gamel likely taking away some starts against right-handed pitchers. Braun is now free to move to first base, something that was always likely given his age and speed. But now it’s in service of getting a new, Braun-esque bat into the lineup, rather than in service of freeing up Gamel.
García, it should be said, is far from a stable commodity. He was outstanding in 2017, with a 138 wRC+ over nearly 600 plate appearances with the White Sox, though his batting line was propped up by a spicy .392 BABIP. In 2018, it all fell apart; his defense got worse, his BABIP cratered to .271, and he walked less while striking out more. He was nearly replacement level as he reached free agency, which cleared the way for the Rays to sign him.
In Tampa, García turned in a season somewhere between his stellar 2017 and poor 2018. He compiled a 112 wRC+, again driven by a strong record on batted balls, though this time with a more reasonable .340 BABIP. He walked a little, didn’t strike out too much, and hit for enough power to get by; essentially an average batter in terms of everything but BABIP. And those batted ball results weren’t purely fluky; Statcast saw his expected BABIP, given his speed and batted ball characteristics, as .343, more or less bang on his actual number.
In the field, he put together his best season by DRS and second best by UZR. Statcast’s outs above average also liked his defense, and in fact liked it even in 2017 and 2018, when the other advanced defensive systems were more skeptical. Even if he’s as bad as he ever was in the outfield, however, he likely represents an upgrade on Braun, who is 36 and was one of the worst outfielders in baseball by OAA last year.
If you ask the Brewers what they expect of García, they’d likely tell you they hope he’ll be an All-Star who forms a star-studded trio of outfielders that anchors the team. That’s certainly possible, but I suspect that if you could get the truth out of them, they’d tell you they expect him to be essentially a league average player. He’s 28, young enough that a decline seems unlikely, which means that they’re looking at that average production over the next two years.
Does that make this acquisition a good one for the Brewers? It depends heavily on how you view their team. The Brewers rode a scintillating September to a Wild Card berth in 2019, only to run into destiny and Juan Soto in the single elimination round. They won the division in game 163 in 2018. If that’s their level in 2020, this signing makes a lot of sense. Contending teams can’t afford black holes at outfield corners, and García is a hell of a lot better than a black hole.
But I think it’s probably somewhat optimistic to view the Brewers in 2020 as a presumptive playoff team. They lost two of their most productive players in 2019 — Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas — to free agency. Their pitching staff is also enduring a ton of turnover — midseason acquisitions Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Lyles, and Drew Pomeranz are gone, as are internal options Junior Guerra, Jimmy Nelson, Zach Davies, and Chase Anderson.
Even ignoring those departures, Steamer and ZiPS weren’t enamored with the Brewers going into 2019, and the team hardly blew its critics away. They won 89 games, but outperformed their Pythagorean record (their run differential on the year was an uninspiring +3) by eight wins and their BaseRuns record by four wins. Take that talent level and trade out Moustakas and Grandal for Luis Urías and Omar Narváez, and you have a team on the outside looking in. With Cincinnati looming as a new contender in the Central and Chicago and St. Louis treading water, the Brewers needed to be assertive this offseason to keep pace.
This move doesn’t rise to that bar. Braun and Gamel combined for 2.8 WAR last year; in 2018, Braun and friends were somewhere around 2.5 WAR. That looks like a reasonable projection for Garcia and Gamel in 2020, but flat isn’t enough for a team with so much wood to chop at other positions, and they aren’t making an enormous upgrade at first base by moving Braun there either.
That’s not to say that the team is paying too much for García. This contract looks like a reasonable number for a reasonable player; the second year might raise eyebrows, but the AAV is bang on what Kiley predicted as part of our Top 50 Free Agent ranking, and García is young enough that there’s no reason to think his services should be wildly differently priced in 2021. $10 million for a league average player who is still 28 sounds like a savvy move on the team’s part.
But the larger picture is still confusing. The Brewers don’t run big payrolls; they have taken a small-budget approach of constructing average players out of minor leaguers, trades, and the waiver wire. They’ve spent on stars in free agency or tried to acquire them in trade; Yelich is on a phenomenally team-friendly contract and cost the team several top prospects, while Cain and Grandal were marquee free agents.
I would have pursued a similar approach in 2020. The team clearly doesn’t agree with me; they weren’t a rumored destination for any of the top tier pitchers that have signed this offseason, and the cupboard is pretty bare at this point. Brett Anderson, Eric Lauer, and Josh Lindblom, all of whom the team has acquired in the last month, fit the old Brewers plan of cobbling together wins. That left some payroll room for a big splash. But by filling García into left field, the team is out of positions where they could make said splash; only starters and relievers remain, and there simply aren’t many impact names left on the board.
None of this means the Brewers won’t make the playoffs in 2020. Projections are just that, and nothing is stopping Narváez, Keston Hiura, or even Urías from taking the next step from good to great (and Hiura is already borderline great). But if this is their last big move of the offseason, it feels incomplete to me. Milwaukee has been a great success story the past two years, riding a Yelich breakout and an aggressive front office to two playoff berths, but I don’t see the trend continuing in 2020, and the García signing seems to me to lessen the odds of another late free agent coup that puts them over the top.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
One position left to improve lineup and defense. Brewers still need a 3B. How badly does Colorado want to move money? Could Muncy + May be the price for Hader?
Colorado could consider trading one of Hampson or Rodgers, but they aren’t moving Arenado if that’s what you were implying.
I’d say Hampson or McMahon. Rodgers would take a bigger return.
I thought it was just trolling, but having seen so many, do people really think the Dodgers would trade Muncy and/or May for a reliever? I’m not sure they’d trade relievers for relievers much less All-Stars/Top 10 prospects.
In general, yes. However, some high-end relievers (Chapman, Miller) have returned similar value in recent years, so that adage might not pertain to today’s valuing of players/win curve.
Where can the Brewers still make a splash, I don’t know? Thirdbase! Urias represents a huge upgrade over Arcia offensively at SS. So if the Brewers can slot in a Wilmer Flores, Asdrubal Cabrera, Todd Frazier, or god (and by god I mean Mark Antansio) willing Josh Donaldson, the offseason picture becomes more complete.
I think the Crew has kind of shown how having 8 good starting pitchers can have as big of an impact as a few really good good ones without the depth (as predicted by this great article at BP Milwaukee before 2018, http://milwaukee.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/12/the-rotation-is-good/ ) So I think the rotation looks pretty solid. The biggest question still is the bullpen.
Knebel probably won’t return until May and when he does he may not be the lights out reliever he was before TJ. The 2018 breakout star, Jeremey Jeffress, and the 2019 one, Drew Pomeranz, are both gone. Brent Suter and Freddy Peralta were terrific to end the year, but it still feels like they are missing a bullpen piece or two. Finishing the offseason with Will Harris or Delin Beatnces (WhyNotBoth.gif) would be make for a nice final touch.
Wilmer Flores, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Todd Frazier are not a splashes.
Familiar with all three as a Mets fan. You don’t want to see the first 2 fielding third base everyday. Frazier is the best fall back option of the three, still has a solid glove and but not sure how much he’s got left in the bat.
^this. Rendon or Cole/Stras would have been a difference maker; even retaining Mous, maybe (not at that price). Donaldson is their last/best bet now.
The thrust of this article is right — this is at best a borderline playoff team. But I don’t agree that they don’t have holes to fill anymore, or that the Garcia signing does much to prevent them from continuing to add.
3B is the obvious hole. Very hard to imagine that they pony up for Donaldson but he’s absolutely an impact name left on the board (and one I would like to see them get, even it if takes four years and a lot of money — the clock is ticking on Yelich’s time with the team).
Based on beat writer reaction, it also sounds like the plan isn’t just to shift Braun to 1B full time. He’ll get starts there and in the outfield, and they’re still on the hunt for a LH 1B. Nothing exciting on the market there, but that’s where a potential Hader trade comes into the picture.
Yeah if they get Donaldson that makes my point about no holes left to fill moot. I can’t really see that happening, just because the Nats and Braves have a lot of interest in him and both seem to me like the frontrunners there. But if the Crew get him that puts them right in step with the best of the central.
As to a first baseman, that I don’t understand at all. If that’s your plan, then your left field is a share between Braun (when the lh 1b plays) and avisail. Does this make Garcia essentially the short side of a platoon? Are they making Braun a part timer? I wouldn’t go pay 10 million dollars for a righty left fielder if I wanted to also give Braun a lot of reps there. Now if it’s more of a we want our pinch hitter type to be a lefty 1b who starts 20 games a year then sure, but at that point that’s not really moving the needle.
My guess is that they are looking to add someone to the 1B mix largely for depth reasons (Braun and Cain are both likely to miss time and will need maintenance days) and, depending on who they get, would be comfortable platooning Braun until the inevitable injury occurs.
Wait, is Thames gone? Isn’t he the left-handed hitting first basemen to pair with the Braun-Garcia duo?
Yep. Thames is gone, although he cost a fair amount of money so I sort of get it. And so is Shaw, another left-handed hitter from last year. Oh, and Grandal (switch hitter) and Moustakas (left-handed), so the team is way less left-handed than they were before.
Their lineup consists of Cain, Yelich, Hiura, Braun, Garcia, Urias/Arcia, Pina/Narvaez, and…Mark Matias? With Ben Gamel off the bench. And their rotation is Woodruff, Houser, Lauer, Anderson, and…Lindblom? I don’t know what they’re going for, but whatever their goal is, there’s got to be a better way of getting there than this.
I’d assume Corbin Burnes would get another shot at the rotation, you know, the guy that had an 8.82 era and a 3.37 xfip.
I agree with the main thrust here and would go even further than Ben here: I hate what the Brewers are doing with their offseason. The Brewers lost their 2nd and 4th best position players (I’ll count Hiura as #3), cut their regular 1B option (who, to be fair, was going to make a lot of money, but still) and was poised to have one of the worst rotations in major league baseball, with only two guys they could count on as actual contributors (Woodruff and Houser). And on top of that, they have one of the rarest situations in major league baseball: A perennial MVP candidate under contract for not much money for 3 years.
The Brewers have payroll room, and *could* have just waited to see who fell through the cracks like previous years, but what they’ve been doing seems to be overly cautious. With the exception of the Grisham-Urias trade (which was good), they’re giving up relatively little in money or prospects to bring in players who you want to replace if you are looking to actually win. They traded almost nothing for Narvaez, which is good, except that Narvaez can’t actually play catcher. They signed Anderson, which was for a reasonable price, but who is a terrible fit for that infield defense and is likely to give them all kinds of headaches. And now they signed Avisail Garcia, and it’s not an enormous amount of money, but it is a fair amount of money for a guy you would actually want to replace if you wanted to win games. All of these guys are likely to be below-average starters (less than 2 wins) and all are more likely to perform worse than they did last year than better, and in every single case the projections reflect that; there’s limited upside for all of these guys, but a lot of ways for their profiles to go wrong. These are not the moves of a team that wants to win games. And it’s weird because I kind of feel like this is a new trend among the “new school” front offices. I don’t like it.
With respect to the Garcia move, it’s particularly puzzling to me why they didn’t wait. Ryan Braun is fine in left field, and a question mark at first base where his bat would also be less valuable, so it’s not like they needed an outfielder. They could have just as easily gotten a first baseman, so they could have waited it out just fine. If you’re going to cheap out and fill out your roster with 1.5-win veterans like this, you don’t need to do it now.
Boom — spot on! As a White Sox fan, I’m not a big fan of either Narvaez or Avisail.
I hope there’s an article coming on the Rays signing Tsutsugo, since I know very little about this slugger.
I bet you that your boy Castellanos, another mediocre OF, will still be hanging out there in late January and will go for not much more than Avisail just did. Stearns may kick himself for not waiting.
I wouldn’t really say Castellanos is a “mediocre” OF. He’s a solid bat (he was .321/.356/.646 with 21 doubles and 16 HR’s in just 51 games with Chicago this year) and he’s not a butcher defensively.
Castellanos is the definition of a butcher. -35 DRS and -24.9 UZR over the last 3 years in RF. Though, he seems to be improving a bit with his defense. He’s still a very bad defender.
Probably would’ve been better to say he’s improving rather than “not a butcher”
Haha yeah I’m on board with improvement. Mike Petriello has pointed out that he has way fewer reps in the outfield than most players his age because he came up as an infielder. Still, though, so far it’s been a yikes.
“Not a butcher defensively” might be the hottest take of the offseason!
I have a feeling Castellanos is going to sign for a lot more than we expected him too. And while he is bad on defense, he also spent time in Detroit where it is a lot more difficult to hide in the outfield than some other ballparks.
If NC goes for not much more than Avisail, Stearns will be kicking himself. But this market makes me think he will go for over 4 years/60M.
Maybe. If the Brewers had waited, I am pretty sure that someone from the set of Ozuna, Castellanos, Puig, or Garcia would be hanging out in late January. I couldn’t predict which one or what sort of money they would command at that point, but in almost every scenario I can think of the Brewers come away with one of those guys at a deal I like better than this one. That’s especially true since Garcia is probably the worst of all of them (although Puig and Garcia had similar years last year). And then when you expand the pool to include Calhoun and Dickerson–both of whom are projected for MORE wins than Garcia, although they’re both lefties–I am pretty sure the Brewers didn’t need to do this now.
At first glance I feel like Garcia is the worst of all, but, is he? He hits the ball hard, but needs to elevate it more. They had pretty good success with another guy who needed to elevate the ball (Yelich). Maybe they specifically wanted Garcia since they felt he would be the cheapest and they felt like his was a profile they could improve.
Well, they also got Yelich to hit the ball a whole hell of a lot harder too, and Garcia’s ground ball rates the last few years aren’t anything like Yelich’s were (which were pretty extreme). Cutting Garcia’s ground ball rate as much as Yelich did would be crazy.
Still, this is the single most plausible theory I’ve heard so far, and that’s crazy because there’s not a shred of evidence the Brewers think they can do this, and not that much evidence that they could get Garcia to change if they put their mind to it.
I definitely agree that the plan seemed to be “wait to see who falls through the cracks” again this year.
It’s interesting how a true competitive edge of “yeah, we’ll actually spend a bit of money” in the past two frozen free agent markets can be so easily wiped away by teams just going out and signing people. And when you miss on the few one-year rebuild my value deals that do pop up (Didi, Porcello, Treinen, and to some extent Hamels all come to mind) there’s not any impact left.
Is it just me or do long comments not get vot d much because people are too lazy to read them
If he improves his discipline he should be a fine player in Left
Remember how the Brewers got torched for their deadline approach last year, only for Lyles & Pomeranz to come up big down the stretch & help lead them to the postseason?
I sense something similar is afoot with regards to their approach this offseason.
Have Stearns & company beaten their projections, pyhtag & baseruns records like 4 years in a row now?
Maybe they know more than even the most astutest of internet commenters.
Seems more likely that they know they’re not competing with the Cubs and Cards without a major investment, but are unwilling to trade Yelich to reload because the fans would revolt.
Or, that they’re focusing on the vaunted “flexibility” for business reasons that we are not aware of.
Last season was the Cubs, Cards, and Brewers spending most of the season giving away the lead in the division, and the Reds desperately trying to take it and failing miserably. It’s weird that the on-field products of last year seem to work as a metaphor for their offseasons as well.
The business reason that causes them to focus on flexibility is no secret, they have one of thee worst TV deals in baseball as a result of being one of thee tiniest markets so they have far less resources to work with, despite strong fan support/attendance numbers…
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/estimated-tv-revenues-for-all-30-mlb-teams/
They’ve won more game the last three years than the Rays or the A’s, yet Stearns & company don’t get near the benefit of the doubt afforded those organizations working with similar constraints.
Well, I certainly don’t give the Rays the benefit of the doubt either, at least not on stuff like this. And in comparison to the Brewers and Rays, the A’s don’t do dumb things like count on Avisail Garcia, or double down on catchers who either can’t field at all or can’t hit at all. I would have trashed the Rays or A’s if they had made this move too.
There’s a certain attitude that some teams are playing 12-dimensional chess, and that we can’t possibly hope to understand what they’re doing, and that they’ll always come out on top no matter what they do. Deals like this push these sorts of attitudes to the point of absurdity. You can’t contend if you sign a bunch of 1-1.5 win players and hope that they all become 2-2.5 win players, and if you aren’t trying to win you’re better off signing the 1-1.5 win players who don’t cost you that much money.
(And while this is neither here nor there, I believe the Brewers’ TV deal ends this year.)
This is overly harsh. I agree the brewers as presently constructed are a fringe playoff team, but they’re certainly *trying* to compete, and the strategy makes sense. They’re going cheap with pitching and hoping to maximize value through smart usage and player development (an area they’ve proven to do well at, and one I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on), and spending on the offensive side with an eye to extending their lineup as much as possible (where the jury is still out, and the work’s not done). Same exact formula that’s worked very well for them the last couple years.
What’s ironic about your strident pessimism is that the Brewers have shown the very ability to find 1-1.5 WAR players and make them 2-2.5 WAR players. You make it seem like they’re picking players at random to fill in a projection formula. The reality is, they almost certainly see something in *the specific players they’re acquiring* that they can tweak or maximize to add value. Whether they’ve done or will do enough is a valid question, but I’ll take their track record over ours at this point.
Honestly, now: If another team made these moves, would you say this? If the Reds made this move, we would trash them. If the Twins made this move, we would trash them. If the Mets made this move, we would absolutely trash them. And realistically, the difference between the Reds and the Mets and the Brewers is that the Brewers haven’t done dumb things like this. They’ve been very assertive getting outstanding veterans on relatively cheap deals, and maximizing their skillset (especially as it pertains to left-handed hitters in Miller Park). They are not magicians, they’re just good at picking players, and we know when they pick good players at the time. And this time they didn’t. Notice how absolutely no one is defending this move *on the merits of the move*.
I think the signing is fine, and I think the redundancy on the roster is an understandable decision in light of having two older, injury-prone outfielders and a currently-open spot at first. No one is doing cartwheels over 2/$20 but it’s about the AAV I’d expect, he’s young enough that 2 years isn’t bothersome, and he had some 3-year offers so it’s what the market was asking. I don’t mind Stearns locking this in versus waiting to see if he can vulture value later in the offseason, and, yeah, I’m going to look at their track record and assume they think they can squeeze some extra value out of the deal.
Is the signing dumb? Worth trashing a team over? No way.
I just don’t see the Cubs being very good next year, honestly.
Why? They we’re a better team offensively than the Brewers and Cardinals (102 wRC+ compared to 97 and 95 respectively), and had more SP WAR. However, the Cubs DEF fell but was still better than the Brewers. The Cubs bullpen was vastly better than the Cardinals, obviously not a s good as the Brewers. The Cubs also ran a -7 Pythagorean and the Brewers were +8, Cards were -1. By Baseruns the Cubs were -5, Cards were +1, & Brewers were +4.
TL;DR Cubs are in a better position than the Brewers and at least close to the Cardinals so I don’t understand where you’re coming from.
I could be wrong. I like Darvish, Hendricks and Lester always seem to make it work, but Lester has been on the edge forever. Lester could break to worst pitcher in mlb territory. Quintana has been meh for a while. Bryant is one of few guys who was a no-doubt superstar who made dumb changes that made him not a superstar. The rest of the team is basically average. Rizzo is a solid but unspectacular 3-4 war guy. Baez seems to have a wide range of outcomes. I look at a team like the Padres and wonder if they are not already better. Better rotation currently, with a ton of upside. I mean they got rid of two better versions of schwarber (franimal, renfroe) and have guys like France who put up the best minor numbers I have ever seen waiting. Tatis is probably already better than Baez, and there is upside that the Cubs don’t have. Reds are making moves. Cardinals and Brewers aren’t clearly worse. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but the Cubs to me seem like a very average team with a shitty bullpen.
Hmmm this agrees with me : https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=1
You sir are correct. I find it funny how every projection system consistently has missed on the low side on the Brewers during the Stearns era.
Stearns looks to be filling a lineup with few holes – Yelich, Hiura, Garcia, Braun, Narvaez, Urias, Cain, 3B, P is a pretty good everyday lineup right now. If they sign Frazier, that is OK. If they sign Donaldson, that is fantastic. Removing Shaw and Arcia is classic addition by subtraction.
A pretty decent offensive comp for him that will help jog Brewer’s fan’s memories seems to be 2013-14 Carlos Gomez. His 2020 BABIP projection is lower than what Gomez was running those years, but I could see those two seasons as roughly 60-70th percentile outcomes.
Todays signing was umm…weird
The team that wins the offseason rarely wins the real season. Garcia is not a “wow” signing, but he fits the Brewers’ offseason template of filling the lineup with young, underappreciated good hitters. A team with Milwaukee’s resources always has to try to exploit inefficiencies, and that seems to be the inefficiency du jour. Sure, Garcia is hit-or-miss, but who isn’t? Many of the guys who happen to have a “hit” walk season going into free agency rather than a “miss” are still hit-or-miss, but for a much higher price. Garcia is no world beater, but it’s interesting (at least to me) that his 117 cumulative wRC+ over the past three seasons is tied with exactly two other players: Yasmani Grandal and Manny Machado. Obviously those two other players bring additional value with their defense, but this signing ain’t half bad out of the bargain bin for a guy who might be the #5 or #6 guy in the lineup.
Appreciate the thought, Ben, but Avisail is spelled without the accent mark https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisail_Garc%C3%ADa English speakers (including his English Wikipedia page) often add an accent to Spanish names even when they shouldn’t be there, apparently on the principle of adding accent marks wherever possible, but if the word ends in a consonant other than n or s and the accent is on the last syllable, there’s no accent mark.
So we use the official MLB preferred spelling guide, which is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrbXbEt8tK9xv5inhFRuDghxoiWfH1ZZ/view
My guess is that there might be an umlaut issue here, like let’s say penguino, where you’d use an umlaut to denote that both vowels should be pronounced independently rather than blending. But in any case, it seems like there’s some disagreement on the correct diacritical marks, but I think that Avisail with no marks at all would sound more like Ah-vee-SAYL, whereas per BR his is pronounced ah-vee-cy-EEL.
In any case yeah I don’t know! My Spanish is rusty, and my Spanish formal language rules doubly so. So we just stick to the guide.
My Spanish is not rusty, lo hablo como hablo ingles. I also teach linguistics in a university, so I’m supposed to care about these things (so here goes a lecture which isn’t really in place here). The umlaut in Spanish isn’t used to mark the vowels as separate. The umlaut is used on u following g to mark that a glide (not vowel) which sounds like w should be pronounced (so it’s pronounced like pingwino (with e, not i)); if the accent weren’t written, the u wouldn’t be pronounced at all (it would only influence the pronunciation of the preceding g, making it like the English g instead of a velar/uvular fricative (like German ch). It isn’t pronounced ping-u-i-no. So in fact there IS ‘blending’ here in the Spanish word. There are cases where an accent is used over the FIRST of two consecutive vowels if the second vowel is the last letter in the word, and the result is that the two vowels are pronounced separately, for example in García, although that isn’t the way that the rule is stated (the rule is stated in terms of the stress being on the next to last syllable of a word ending in a vowel, s, or n, or the final syllable of a word if it ends in some other consonant, UNLESS an accent mark contradicts this). So if Garcia were written without an accent mark, the stress would be on the a in the first syllable (like it is on the e in necio (‘stupid’)), but because there’s an accent over the i in García, then this must be because it’s the second-to-last syllable, which means that it’s pronounced separately from the final a. Or the accent can be used over the SECOND of two consecutive vowels in the second-to-last syllable of a word ending in a vowel (like cocaína), but here too the motivation is the rule which marks stress (so that readers won’t think that it’s on the a as in habláis, for example). In Avisail, the rules of the language make it obvious that the stress is on the last syllable, so there is no need to mark it with an accent mark. What has happened is that English speakers have misinterpreted the Spanish stress-marking rule as a rule marking non-blending (as you put it) and so they put an accent mark where it shouldn’t be. There isn’t any disagreement, it’s just that English speakers misunderstand the Spanish rule and use the accent where it shouldn’t be used.
That is really interesting, and makes me feel like I didn’t pay enough attention to rules like this when I learned it. I wonder who put the accent in the preferred spelling guide, then. In theory the players are suggesting them, as that’s the whole idea, but it seems like that might not be the case here.
I think that there is a tendency for english speakers to add accent marks where they aren’t there in spanish to compensate for *not* putting them where they *should* be. I think the mistake of not putting in the accent when it should be there is somehow seen as more politically incorrect that the mistake of putting in the accent when it shouldn’t be there. I would guess that the people who made up the guide just added accents whenever they were in doubt without checking.
If you aren’t sure whether to put an accent, you can check the player’s spanish wikipedia page (it’ll be linked to the english one). It’ll have the correct spelling.