Time brings the mighty low. It makes the tall stoop, the proud humble themselves. We know this implicitly. We just wish it wouldn’t apply to our free agent signings.
Enter Adolis García. At the end of the 2023 season he was riding a great Texas-sized wave, hoisting a Gold Glove, the ALCS MVP trophy, and the World Series trophy. His regular season (.245/.328/.508/).wasn’t quite as scorching hot as his postseason (.323/.382/.726), but it was still an All-Star campaign. But then came 2024 and a downturn
(.224/.284/.400). It happens. But his 2025 looked awfully similar: .227/.271/.394. 2023 is not the distant past, but the sport of the long season produces short memories. And so García found himself condemned to the purgatory of the bounce-back candidate. Do not abandon all hope, ye who enter here, because some players really do bounce back. But after two seasons of consistently underwhelming play, we cannot hope that his downturn was a fluke. Instead, we must hope that there are tweaks that can bring the 2023 García to the present day.
But first we have to diagnose the problem.
Let’s take a look at García’s swing/take decisions, and the run values he earned with them, in 2023:
And here’s the equivalent for 2024, when his production dropped precipitously:
García’s production over the heart of the plate plummeted. And that was largely the result of the pitches he swung at, rather than the ones he took. He had +11 swing runs over the heart of the plate in 2023, and that dropped to -9 in 2024 (he was at -5 in 2025, but I figured I’d spare you a third chart). He also dropped off in the shadow zone, though not to quite the same degree. Surveying García’s performance after 2024, Michael Baumann of FanGraphs noted that he was still making solid contact with the ball, but seemed to have lost some ability to translate that contact into damage. His assessment was that García had likely lost some bat speed, though the lack of data on swing speeds for 2023 left the conclusion speculative. But Statcast abhors a data vacuum, and we have since been granted the bat speed data for 2023. As such, we can confirm that Baumann’s assessment was on point. In 2023, García swung his bat at 73.6 MPH. In 2024, that was down to 72 MPH, and in 2025, it was 72.1. Correspondingly, his fast swing rate (% of swings at 75 MPH or above) dropped from 38.4% to 23% in 2024. And that explains the plummeting slash lines cited above.
As his ability to do damage with his swings dropped in 2024, he became somewhat more aggressive. His swing % jumped from 48.6% to 52.1%, his zone swing % rose from 71.5% to 74.9%, and his first pitch swing % went from 33.1% to 41.6%. His chase rate jumped by over 4%, and his chase contact dropped alongside it. In 2025, though, he partially reversed the trend. His zone swing % dropped to 69.9%, the lowest he’s posted over a full season. His chase contact rate jumped to 56%, the highest of his career. His zone contact rate of 77.2% was the highest he’s had in a full season, and his whiff rate of 30.3% was the lowest of his career. He’s still maintained some of that increased aggression; his overall swing rate in 2025 was just a tick higher than in 2024, and his chase rate rose again, reaching 35.7%.
So, what does this mean going forward? If García takes exactly the same approach at the plate that he took in his decorated 2023 campaign, he will not produce the same results again. But while humans are creatures of habit, and baseball players perhaps even more so, habits can be changed. Garcia got more aggressive in 2024 as he attempted to make up for his loss of bat speed. But in 2025 he reversed the trend and became more selective in the zone, as well as better at making contact both in and outside of it. The desired results didn’t quite follow. But you can see the vision: better contact to make up for the slower bat. I won’t entirely rule out the possibility that the Phillies might find a way to restore his bat speed— modern biomechanics are rather impressive— but bat speed, once sapped by aging, is not likely to return. More likely, then, that the path to success for García in Phillies pinstripes is to take a more contact-oriented approach to his game. Easier said than done. And perhaps not exactly what García would prefer to do; we’d all prefer it if we could stay at our peak. But if it restores some of his 2023 performance, he probably won’t complain too much. Neither will Phillies fans, for that matter.
