Texas Rangers ‘Sneaky Pickup’ for Bullpen Poised To Break Out This Season

The Texas Rangers had a very busy offseason as president of baseball operations and general manager Chris Young got to work fixing the roster.

After winning the World Series in 2023, the team’s performance fell off in 2024. Injuries played a big rol, and the players who were healthy enough to be on the field didn’t produce at the same levels as they previously reached.

As a result, there were some major changes made.

Where the most turnover occurred was in the bullpen, where four key contributors hit the open market.

Closer Kirby Yates, David Robertson, Jose Leclerc and Andrew Chafin were all free agents. None of them have returned to the squad.

Yates is now with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Leclerc landed with the Athletics and Chafin signed a minor league deal with the Detroit Tigers, the team that traded him to the Rangers ahead of last year’s deadline. Robertson surprisingly remains a free agent.

A ton of additions were made in free agency to help offset those losses. The team signed Chris Martin, Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, Jacob Webb and Luke Jackson all to one-year deals to fill out the bullpen.

But, potentially the most impactful addition was made via trade with the Washington Nationals.

Texas sent first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to the nation’s capital in exchange for left-handed reliever Robert Garcia.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a deal that would move the needle too much. Garcia made 72 appearances last year for the Nationals, pitching 59.2 innings with a 4.22 ERA.

However, there were a few positives that stood out, such as the 75 strikeouts he had and 4.69 K/BB ratio. Solid control with that kind of strikeout potential is what future closers are made of.

With no clear-cut closer currently on the roster, Garcia could find himself in the mix late in games based on matchups. As Tristian H. Cockcraft of ESPN shared, he has legitimate breakout potential.

“A sneaky pickup in December's Nathaniel Lowe trade, Garcia had a 2.39 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching score) last season as a member of the Washington Nationals bullpen, 11th-best among 160 relief pitchers with at least 50 innings. Thanks to an electric changeup, he held right-handed hitters to a .272 wOBA (league average for lefties was .314) with a 31.1% strikeout rate, alleviating any worry about platoon splits or a situational role,” he wrote.

The talented lefty has also excelled at limiting hard contact. An average exit velocity of 86 mph and hard-hit rate of 30.7% in his career are both well below the MLB average.

He does a great job of limiting fly balls, inducing grounders 45% of the time throughout his career to this point, which helps limit damage.

With a little better luck, as his FIP indicates, he could emerge as one of the better relief pitchers in baseball this year.

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