Jaime Garcia was a little like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “little girl with a curl.” As Wadsworth wrote, “When she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad ...”
Wadsworth’s 19th century sentence ended with “horrid,” which wasn’t exactly the adverb by which the former Cardinals lefthander should be defined. But, mostly due to injury, there were great gaps between the good Jaime Garcia and the one not so good.
The 30-year-old Garcia, traded to the Atlanta Braves Thursday night for three minor leaguers, including big-league righthander John Gant, finished his Cardinals career with an impressive 62-45 record and 3.