July 8th: The Nationals have now officially announced the signing of Garcia. Right-hander Eduardo Salazar has been optioned to Triple-A Rochester as the corresponding active roster move. Righty Trevor Williams has been transferred to the 60-day injured list to open a 40-man spot. Williams was just placed on the 15-day IL a few days ago due to an elbow sprain. It appears the Nats don’t expect him to return before September. Washington also recalled catcher Drew Millas and placed catcher Keibert Ruiz on the seven-day concussion-related IL.
July 6th: The Nationals have signed right-hander Luis Garcia to a Major League contract, the Washington Post’s Andrew Golden reports. The deal will become official when the 38-year-old Garcia passes a physical.
It didn’t take long for Garcia to find a new landing spot, as the Dodgers only just released the veteran reliever on Friday. Garcia signed a minor league deal with Los Angeles last winter and broke camp with the team, but his struggled during his time on the big league roster. Garcia posted a 5.27 ERA and 12.7% walk rate over 27 1/3 innings, and spent about a month on the injured list recovering from an adductor strain.
There have been plenty of ups and downs for Garcia over his 13 MLB seasons, which isn’t surprising for a grounder specialist who relies a lot of batted-ball luck. His most sustained stretch of success came fairly recently, as Garcia posted a 3.62 ERA, 23.4% strikeout rate, and 7.4% walk rate across 154 relief innings for the Cardinals and Padres from 2021-23. Those results led to a one-year, $4.25MM free agent deal with the Angels during the 2023-24 offseason, and Garcia continued to pitch decently well before his production dipped after a deadline trade to the Red Sox.
Washington has one of the league’s worst bullpens, so there’s not much risk for the Nats in taking a flier to see if Garcia can bounce back from his rough showing in L.A. If he really pitches well between now and the July 31 trade deadline, the Nationals could even look to quickly flip Garcia elsewhere for a low-level minor leaguer.
Once Garcia gets into a game with his new club, he will have pitched with eight different teams at the big league level over the course of his long career. This is actually the second Dodgers-to-Nationals trip Garcia has taken — after beginning his career as an international prospect in Los Angeles’ farm system, the Dodgers dealt Garcia to the Nats way back in August 2009. Garcia didn’t see any big league action during his year-plus in the Washington organization, and didn’t end up making his MLB debut until he was a 26-year-old pitching with the Phillies in 2013. (By coincidence, Garcia pitched against the Nats in his first Major League game.)
Not confusing at all.
Garcia will be GM-Manager-relief pitcher?
It was a contest to see how many times the name Garcia could be fit into one article. The winner, at 17.
Hire Luis Garcia today
Okay thank you Mike
Now unfortunately your fired
Acting GM Team Doctor will also perform the physical!
Nats bullpen is pitiful so Garcia will be a slight improvement
If he pitches more than 30 innings he gets $200 million right? Thats how the nationals do it.
Deferred.
The Nationals were deferring before deferring was cool.
It’s almost as if people are just looking for something to complain about with the dodgers… naw, who would be that petty to call something the dodgers are doing illegal, tax evading or cheating, when many other teams have been doing it for years and decades? That would be pretty low
Fat fingers get you laid!
Will they do the same thing that the two Luis Castillos did when in Seattle where the new one went by Luis F. Castillo? This Luis Garcia’s middle name starts with an A so Luis A. Garcia sounds nice. But the second baseman Luis Garcia does go by Luis Garcia Jr. so maybe this whole comment will be totally trivial by tomorrow and the world will not change.
They really need the player’s union to be set up like the actor’s union. If another player has your name when you make it to the majors, you need to pick a stage name.
Sadly, Giuseppe Chiaramonte never made the majors, but he wasn’t going to have to worry about any name confusion.
Isn’t there another Luis Garcia who pitches for the Astros?
BigFred,
You’re thinking of the other, other Luis Garcia. Or maybe another one…
There are 3 Luis Garcia currently in the majors. It is almost as bad as about 10 years ago when there were three different players named Miguel Gonzalez in the same year. One was a catcher for the White Sox and the other two were pitchers for the Phillies and Orioles. What made that situation worse was that all three of them shared “A” as their middle initial. One was Angel, one was Alfredo, and the third was Antonio.
And then there are two Brady Feigls, somehow not related though they could be twins.
Let’s get all of these players together on one team with the 2 Max Muncys and make the most confusing team of all time.
In the late 80’s the Orioles had two Mike Smiths on the roster. One was Texas Mike and the other was Mississippi Mike.
No Magic Mike?
I assume the janitor signed him
Nope. My inside sources tell me it’s the VP of Marketing.
Same person
Is like in “Major League: Back to the Minors”? With “Juan 1” and “Juan 2″…
We had four Johns on one team. Not only confusing but also the source of a lot of humor that can’t be repeated here.
How is this guy still in the bigs? He’s never been better than an average big leaguer and that hasn’t been in many years
He has a better than average ERA+ in 2021-’23 and in ’24 with the Angels.
YES. GO GET THE STARTING PITCHER FROM HOUSTON TO COMPLETE THE TRIFECTA. I WOULD HAVE DONE THIS YEARS AGO.
They do kinda need the triple Luis Garcia effect. It appears the Astro Luis is starting his rehab…
“Now playing second base, Bugs Bunny. Now playing …”
We no longer have two Luis Castillo’s on the same team…but now there’s two Luis Garcia’s on the same team to fill the void.
Luis, Luis
Oh yeah
We have two of them
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This’ll be great at the trade deadline. Teams looking for middle infield help better check the fine print when dealing with the Nats new acting GM.
The Dodgers were outscored 38-7 the last 4 games. They could use a guy that has only allowed 1 home run and has a 3.56 FIP in 27.1 innings.
Oh, wait.
Yep, 4 games is a great indicator of a baseball team mid season.
For a team that’s thrown significantly more reliever innings than any other team in baseball, I’d agree.
Why is this in a cardinals feed?
Looks like Gagne and that is not a compliment
This has nothing to do with the Cardinals. Why is it in their feed?
Why is there no Joe Ryan trade rumors? I should get those rumors here not on mlb.com!
Remove this from the STL Cardinals feed