After spring of tough love, García delivered breakthrough season

PLAYER REVIEW: LUIS GARCÍA JR.

Age on Opening Day 2025: 24

How acquired: Signed as international free agent, July 2016

MLB service time: 3 years, 142 days

2024 salary: $1.95 million

Contract status: Arbitration-eligible, free agent in 2028

2024 stats: 140 G, 528 PA, 500 AB, 58 R, 141 H, 25 2B, 1 3B, 18 HR, 70 RBI, 22 SB, 5 CS, 27 BB, 86 SO, .282 AVG, .318 OBP, .444 SLG, .762 OPS, 115 OPS+, -5 DRS, 5 OAA, 2.2 bWAR, 3.1 fWAR

Quotable: “I’m very proud of the way I performed this year, especially after what happened last season. I took it with a grain of salt and learned from it. And this year, I’m very proud of myself and how my year ended.” – Luis García Jr., via interpreter Octavio Martinez

2024 analysis: Few players on the Nationals roster entered the season under more pressure than Luis García Jr., who after a rough 2023 that included a brief demotion to Triple-A Rochester was scrutinized heavily by manager Davey Martinez. Martinez made it clear through his words and actions this spring the rope was shortening on García if he didn’t clean up his defensive and baserunning mistakes.

Then the season began, and García put all those doubts to rest and delivered a breakthrough performance in every aspect of his game. He was a consistent offensive performer, posting an OPS below .729 in only one of the season’s first five months. He hit both for average and for power, establishing career highs in hits, doubles, homers and RBIs. In the field, García was a much more consistent second baseman. He was smooth turning double plays, and he made tough ground balls to his left become entirely routine, perfecting a sliding stop and strong throw to first lacking in previous years. And while he was far from the fastest player on the team, García became one of the Nationals’ most effective and efficient baserunners. Of the eight Nats who stole at least 10 bases, his 81 percent success rate ranked second only to Trey Lipscomb’s 85 percent clip.

Put all that together, and by season’s end García was named the Nationals’ Player of the Year in a vote by media members, an honor few could have foreseen back in March when he was under serious fire just to retain his job.

2025 outlook: García’s breakthrough performance was a win not only for him but for the Nationals, who stuck it out with their talented young infielder, gave him some tough love and were rewarded for it over time. They can only hope that rubs off on other enigmatic young players like double-play partner CJ Abrams. And they can only hope García keeps it going next year and beyond.

Whenever asked about the difference in his play from previous seasons, García invariably cited improved “focus” on his part. And certainly that was a point of emphasis when the club sent him to Rochester in 2023, making him stay fully engaged on every pitch of every game. But there was more to his turnaround this year, especially his offensive improvement.

García always had great bat-to-ball skills. Sometimes that came back to haunt him, because he would make too much weak contact and hit into too many outs. One key to his success this season was his ability to reduce his ground ball rate (from 53.4 percent to 48.4 percent) and increase his fly ball rate (from 18.2 percent to 25.1 percent). He also started using “the big part of the field,” as Martinez likes to call it, with more regularity, with 46.3 percent of his batted balls going up the middle as opposed to a career-low 26.3 percent that were pulled. A quick glance at his spray chart reveals how many more doubles and homers he hit to left-center, center and right-center fields, a huge reason for his increased production.

There’s still room to grow, though. Martinez remained reluctant to play García every day, typically sitting him against left-handers. (His OPS against righties was 150 points higher.) Though he showed some improvement there, García still at times took some awkward at-bats against lefties, his feet moving and his hips flying open. To take the next big step in his development, he needs to show he can be more consistent against southpaws, which would allow him to become a true everyday player in the long run.