ARLINGTON, Texas — You’ve seen this before. The pounding of the chest. The flipping of the bat. The tugging of the jersey. And the final stomps toward home.
That’s because of two things: Adolis García has both flair and a flair for the dramatic.
On Saturday, he did his dance again, destroying a two-strike slider to give the Rangers a 3-2 walk-off win over Washington. According to Statcast, the ball left the bat at approximately the speed of sound and traveled seven miles. OK, we’re exaggerating: 108 mph off the bat, 449 feet into space.
It was his third walk-off hit in two seasons with the Rangers, most for any player. And because of this, the Rangers have to come up with new celebrations for him. This time, he got a cooler full of ice water in his face from Charlie Culberson. Like that’s going to cool him off right now.
The celebration spilled into the postgame when effervescent manager Chris Woodward gushed more over García. Even Woodward’s praise went to a different level on Saturday.
“He is my perfect player,” the manager said. “The way he plays the game, the style he plays the game, the passion he has and the kind of teammate he is. I can go on and on. There is true joy to his game. Nobody plays the game harder — maybe as hard, but not harder — than Adolis. I tell him this constantly: ‘You make our entire organization better. You make this game better, honestly.’”
OK, well, that’s a mouthful. So where do you go from there? Well, maybe let’s start with the stuff García didn’t actually impact, namely an umpire’s call that went fortuitously in the Rangers’ favor. In the eighth, with the score tied at two, a runner on and nobody out, former Ranger Nelson Cruz lined a ball that ticked off the glove of lunging third baseman Josh Smith and into foul territory. Only umpire Chad Fairchild ruled the ball had been in foul ground when it hit Smith’s glove. As an infield fair/foul call, it could not be reviewed.
Woodward, still buzzing over the win, acknowledged it was as fortunate a call as he’s ever had as the Rangers manager. There, he might not have been overexaggerating.
Now, back to García. In June, García and Nathaniel Lowe, two players in their second full seasons, have given the Rangers hope their offense can survive until when and if the half-a-billion boys figure things out.
For the time being, the only people Marcus Semien and Corey Seager are dueling with are each other ... in a perverse batting race. After each going 0 for 4 Saturday, they enter the series finale batting .227. Semien seemed more impatient than usual, seeing just seven pitches Saturday; Seager struck out three times.
The conventional wisdom entering the season was that this lineup would only go as far as that duo could carry it. Everybody else was cargo. García and Lowe, particularly in the last month, have changed the narrative. Both have batting averages above .300 and an OPS above .900 for the month: .318/.953 for García; .306./.937 for Lowe, whose two-run homer off Josiah Gray provided the only other runs the Rangers scored Saturday.
García shook off some early-season passiveness and got more aggressive against fastballs. Lowe has finally found an ability to hit velocity with some authority. His homer Saturday came on a 94.1-mph fastball from Gray, the hardest pitch in the majors he’s ever hit for a homer. On pitches at 94 or above, considered above average velocity, he’s now hitting .264, a jump of nearly 60 points over 2021.
“It’s been cool to see those guys kind of carry the team,” Woodward said. “I know there’s going to be a time when Semien and Seager will put us on their shoulders. But these two guys, this is a big year for them. We challenged them pretty hard coming into the season. They had a lot to prove. They had good years last year, but they could get better.”
Through interpreter Raul Cardenas, García, wearing the cowboy hat that goes to the star of a Rangers win, said: “Playing together, we’ve come a long way. Between us both, we can contribute to do whatever the team needs to help win.”
Before he led off the bottom of the ninth with the homer, García had gone into the right-field corner in the top of the inning to catch one fly ball and dived toward right center to grab another.
At 2-2 against Kyle Finnegan, García swung at a fastball at his eyebrows, fouling it off. He stepped back in, hung with a slider and demolished it.
“You see the details, the knowledge he’s got now,” Woodward said. “He takes a big deep breath in and dials in. I would not want to be pitching.”
It was the perfect situation for Woodward’s perfect player.
He did what he does. And the dance ensued.
