Who is Robert Garcia? 5 things to know about the Texas Rangers’ closer with a wild journey

The Texas Rangers made one of their biggest moves of the 2024 offseason on when they shipped out longtime first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to the Washington Nationals in a one-for-one deal for lefty relief pitcher Robert Garcia.

Since then, Garcia has quickly become an essential piece to the Rangers’ bullpen puzzle, to the point that he is now Texas’ closer.

Here are five things to know about Garcia.

1. The basics

Name: Robert Christopher Garcia

Birthdate: June 14, 1996

Position: Pitcher

Throws: Left

Height/Weight: 6-4, 236 pounds

Hometown: Manteca, Calif.

College: UC Davis

2. He nearly retired

It took a while for Garcia to reach the big leagues.

He made a stop at every single level of the minors but wasn’t dominant at any of them. He struggled in his age-25 season at Double-A, posting a 5.63 ERA in 33 games, and it left Garcia with a decision to make prior to the 2022 season.

Garcia actually retired — he got a desk job and everything — after the 2021 season. But his surprise selection in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft revived his career with the Miami Marlins, and Garcia thrived in the new environment. He did well in Triple-A in 2023, leading the Nationals to snatch him up on waivers.

“That’s when I kind of fell in love with the game, when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, I fell in love with it again,” Garcia told The News of his time with the Marlins. “I just had to fine tune some things. I really pushed myself to get there.”

3. Gig ‘Em Aggies

No, not those Aggies. The UC Davis Aggies.

See, perhaps some of the reason Garcia was ready for early retirement from baseball is because he seems to have his life-after-baseball plan all in order.

Garcia made the All-Big West Academic team at Davis, a very strong academic school albeit not a baseball powerhouse. He finished his undergrad degree in 2018 after being drafted in 2017, then during the 2020 shutdown he earned a master’s degree from Grand Canyon University.

“Doing all that while playing (baseball) made life and baseball just a little less stressful knowing I have that in my back pocket,” Garcia told MiLB.com.

Plus, he got out of Davis with much more than a degree — he met his wife Paige in college and the couple have two children, Adalynn and Andrew.

4. Go-to guy

It only took until May for Garcia to become the Rangers’ closer in his first season with the team. When the original 2025 closer Luke Jackson fell out of favor, Garcia got his opportunity to become the Rangers’ closer.

He sports a 3.12 ERA with four saves in a team-high 30 appearances so far in 2025 and has become an indispensable piece for Bruce Bochy in high-leverage situations.

5. What’d the Rangers see in him?

Garcia had mixed results in the majors before coming to Texas, but MLB’s advanced stats hub Baseball Savant was a big believer in him, and so were the Rangers.

First and foremost, he missed a lot of bats. He struck out 29.9% of the batters he faced in 2024, a top-10 number in all of baseball.

Among his advanced stat line, he was 90th percentile or better in xERA, Chase %, K %, Barrel % and Hard-Hit %. He threw 295 offspeed pitches in 2024, drew swinging strikes on 52.9% of those, and allowed just one to be hit for extra bases (a double).

Basically, guys had a hard time putting the bat on Garcia’s pitches, and when they did manage to, they didn’t hit it very hard.

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