Robert Garcia
When the Rangers traded first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to the Nationals after he gave them four solid seasons and contributed to a World Series championship, fans likely expected a promising prospect or two in return. Instead, 28-year old left-handed reliever Robert Garcia was sent back to Texas in a perplexing one-for-one deal that left many wondering why the Rangers had set their bar so low.
A portion of the trade’s reasoning was financial considerations. Lowe is set to make about $11 million in arbitration in 2025, and though that is a reasonable price for his services, the acquisition of Jake Burger on a cheap, pre-arbitration contract essentially broadcast the Rangers’ intentions to move on from Lowe. From the outside, the trade looked like an unnecessary salary dump for a replacement-level relief pitcher.
However, a closer look at that pitcher shows potential for the Rangers to get a sneaky win out of this trade.
On the surface, Robert Garcia had a mediocre year in 2024, which was his first full season in the MLB after a half-season debut the previous year. In 59.2 innings, he put together a middle-of-the-pack 4.22 ERA that didn’t make any headlines. Baseball Reference’s WAR, which prioritizes results over peripherals, even measured Garcia as slightly below replacement at -0.2.
However, the version of WAR over at FanGraphs, which focuses more on underlying skills, placed him at 1.5, a noticeably stark difference and a valuable total for a reliever. Suddenly, Garcia looks less like someone who could be replaced by grabbing the nearest reliever off the scrap pile, and more like a meaningful contributor to a playoff-ready bullpen.
The wide gap in these evaluations can be attributed to the two contrasting pictures painted by Garcia’s ERA and FIP. In plain terms, his 4.22 ERA towers over his 2.38 FIP; by LASR scores, we can see that Garcia’s ERA (45) was below league average while his FIP (65) was significantly above league average. SIERA and other ERA estimators (not shown above) all take FIP’s side of the argument.
Garcia was about a standard deviation above league average (60 on the LASR scale) in getting strikeouts, preventing walks, and preventing home runs. He was above average at getting whiffs and limiting high exit velocities, and was particularly skilled at getting batters to chase or miss barreled contact. By most accounts, Garcia had the makings of a rockstar reliever.
Unfortunately, the earned runs stacked up at a higher volume than expected, but there is hope for a turnaround. Garcia received bad luck on batted balls, with a Prevent BABIP LASR grade of 40, and had an atrocious strand rate, with a LOB% LASR grade of 25. While there is a little inherent skill in these metrics, they are largely luck-based and should rebound closer to league average in 2025.
The Rangers acquired Garcia for a reason, and they may have ideas for potential improvements even past a dependence on better luck. He will also benefit from their defense, which ranked 7th in FanGraphs’ Defense metric in 2024 while the Nationals ranked 27th.
With excellent underlying abilities, better luck, and better defenders behind him, Robert Garcia may be a key piece to a Texas push to return to the playoffs.