When the Texas Rangers won the World Series in 2023, Brad Miller and Adolis García sprinted from the dugout to jubilate with their teammates behind the pitcher’s mound.
It wasn’t much of a race.
“Adolis has a torn oblique [in his left side] and is still just pulling away from me,” Miller said by phone this week, recalling the celebration. “Like, I can’t keep up with him.”
Nobody could. Not then. García was the hottest hitter on the planet for three weeks in the fall of 2023. He set a record with 22 RBIs in a postseason, including 15 in the American League Championship Series. With the Rangers facing elimination on the road in Houston, he smashed a grand slam in Game 6 and two homers in Game 7 to clinch the pennant.
“I’ve never seen a performance like that,” Miller said. “It was [freaking] insane.”
And it seems like a lifetime ago.
The Phillies signed García this week to a one-year, $10 million contract, and if he’s close to the middle-of-the-order masher that he once was, it will be a steal. From 2021 to 2023, he slugged .472 with a 113 OPS+, tied for sixth among all right-handed hitters with 97 home runs, won a Gold Glove, and was a two-time All-Star.
But in two seasons since his turn as Mr. October, he slugged .397 with a 96 OPS+ and 44 homers.
If that’s the hitter who shows up in Philly, the Rangers will be justified in not offering him a 2026 contract at a raised salary (projected $12 million) in his final year of arbitration. And it will be fair to wonder if García is an upgrade over even the right fielder he’s replacing: Nick Castellanos. Or if a Phillies outfield that is “pretty well set,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said this week, will be any better than it was this year.
OK, before we go further, a reminder: Castellanos isn’t leaving because he’s a free agent. (He’s actually still on the roster, not that you’d know it.) And the Phillies aren’t choosing to move on from him — even while paying all or most of his $20 million 2026 salary — simply because he’s amid a three-year decline as a hitter and one of the worst defenders in the sport.
The Phillies aren’t bringing back Castellanos because, well, they can’t. Not after his insubordinate behavior in the dugout June 16 in Miami when manager Rob Thomson took him out for defense in the ninth inning. Castellanos brooded over losing his everyday job in August and publicly criticized Thomson in September.
Quite simply, he has to go — and thus far, the Phillies haven’t gotten much interest, according to a source, even though they’re willing to foot the bill. If they’re unable to trade Castellanos before spring training, they are expected to release him.
Either way, right field will represent upward of a $30 million outlay in 2026, even though it won’t be filled by Kyle Tucker, Cody Bellinger, or another $30 million-plus player. García will step into the payroll space occupied this year by Max Kepler, who got paid $10 million to slug .391 with 18 homers and an 88 OPS+ in a one-and-done Phillies tenure.
The Phillies believe García has more upside than Kepler and Castellanos. It’s a low bar. And even if hitting coach Kevin Long and the slugger-friendly environment of Citizens Bank Park are unable to unlock more production from García, Phillies officials still figure they will come out ahead.
But don’t take their word for it.
“What I would tell people is, Adolis is worth the price of admission,“ said Miller, the bamboo-loving former Phillies utility man and now a Rangers pre- and postgame television analyst. ”It’s not just like, ‘Oh, he’s a good outfielder.’ It’s exciting stuff, like he’ll make diving plays, he’ll throw a guy out from the wall in right field. I can just picture that at the Bank. He’ll have the arm to throw in the air from anywhere in right field and get somebody out.
“He plays with a flair. And he can do everything. I’m excited for him. I think it’s going be a breath of fresh air.”
Tale of the tape
Name the players, based on these numbers over the last two seasons:
- Hitter A: .303 on-base, .416 slugging, 40 homers, 158 RBIs, 39.3% out-of-the-zone swing rate, 30% swing-and-miss rate, 21.8% strikeout rate, 96 OPS+.
- Hitter B: .278 on-base, .397 slugging, 44 homers, 160 RBIs, 34.5% out-of-the-zone swing rate, 32.4% swing-and-miss rate, 26.4% strikeout rate, 96 OPS+.
Castellanos is Hitter A; García, if you couldn’t guess, is Hitter B. They were strikingly similar in their swing-and-miss tendencies. If anything, García exhibited marginally better discipline while Castellanos struck out slightly less frequently.
But a deeper dive into the quality of the contact each player did make helps explain why multiple Phillies scouts recommended to Dombrowski that García could be poised for a bounce back.
Over the last two seasons, the average exit velocity on balls hit by Castellanos was 88.1 mph, compared to 91.6 mph for García. Castellanos’ hard-hit rate, defined as batted balls at 95 mph or more, was 36.5%; García‘s was 47.6%.
And García‘s metrics weren’t far off his career-best 2023 season, when his average exit velocity was 92.1 mph and his hard-hit rate totaled 49.7%.
“Our scouts had very good reports on him,” Dombrowski said. “Even though some of the stuff may be slightly down, it’s still positive in many directions. The tools are there. The ball jumps off his bat still; bat speed’s still there; exit velocity is very good. Those are all things that we feel encouraged about.
“We think it has more to do with approach than it does with ability.”
The Phillies’ efforts over the years to tweak Castellanos’ approach weren’t always embraced.
Although Thomson and Long conceded that Castellanos always would be an aggressive hitter, they focused on “controlled aggression,” a happy medium in which he could still swing at pitches early in the count while laying off low-and-away breaking balls in particular. Castellanos often said the emphasis on his chase rate left him stuck between approaches.
The Phillies will soon discover if García is open to adjustments. Long and assistant hitting coach Edwar Gonzalez are expected to drop in on García at his home in Tampa, Fla., before spring training to start “chipping away,” as Thomson put it.
García said he has already had phone calls with Long.
“We believe in the same things,” he said, via assistant general manager Jorge Velandia’s interpretation. “We’re on the same page already. … The focus is not to be a hero. Just [stay] within myself.”
Whereas Castellanos tends to fish for sliders (pitchers fed him almost as many breaking pitches as fastballs this season), García is vulnerable to elevated fastballs. As such, he saw heaters 64.3% of the time and flailed away, batting .215 and slugging only .300 against 95 mph and harder.
“What Adolis did when I saw him hitting at his best is he took most of those pitches,” Miller said. “He laid off the velocity up. He was really hunting a certain spot and not necessarily tomahawking balls and doing anything crazy. He was just laying off those tough pitches.”
Never more than in the 2023 postseason.
“He would take some swings like Adrian Beltré, where he’d fall over and his helmet would fly off because he wanted it so bad,” Miller said. “But then he would recalibrate, take a deep breath. When he was at his best, it was very controlled. Because he has enough power and then some. When he stays within himself, good things happen.”
At least they used to. Since the 2023 playoffs, García’s .278 on-base percentage is the lowest among 120 players with at least 1,000 plate appearances. His .675 OPS is tied for 116th.
Ready for a change
Corey Seager and Marcus Semien were the stars of the 2023 World Series team. But García predated both in Texas.
Acquired from the Cardinals in a cash trade in 2019, García got designated for assignment and outrighted to triple A in 2021 only to make the All-Star team later that season.
“He’s self-made, you know?” Miller said. “He was a fan favorite in Texas, truly. He was kind of ‘The Guy.’”
And when the Rangers stumbled to a 78-84 record in their title defense in 2024, Miller suggested nobody took it harder than García. He painted García as conscientious and “soft-spoken,” belying the fiery emotion that he often shows on the field.
It didn’t get much better this year. The Rangers were 26th in the majors in batting average (.234) and slugging (.381) and 22nd in runs scored (684). They got shut out 15 times and scored less than two runs in 20% of their games. Midway through the season, they fired hitting coach Donnie Ecker.
García conceded he might’ve put too much pressure on himself.
“He’s very self-aware,” Miller said.
In a sense, then, García might benefit from a change of scenery as much as Castellanos. Thomson, with Velandia’s help, delivered a message in their first phone conversation with him this week.
“You have to be yourself and relax,” Thomson said. “Have fun, be yourself, don’t try to do too much. Because we’ve got a lot of really good players around him. I know that Texas had some injuries last year. Maybe he tried to do a little bit too much for the team.”
Said Dombrowski: “We don’t need him to hit the ball out of the ballpark on every swing or every at-bat. He needs to be more under control with the swing. We think he can do that.”
And what if he does?
“There’s going to be some times,” Miller said, “where he is going to make Citizens Bank Park look very small.”
