Maikel Garcia has had a season that would have been very hard to project. Before the 2024 season, a few people did try to predict he would hit like this, only for him to come up empty with a lackluster campaign. The 2025 season has been anything but lackluster. Garcia’s age-25 campaign has pushed him squarely into the small core of the Royals young position players, along with Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, and hopefully Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen, that can be built around. That means
it is time to start discussing if he is for real and if he should be locked up to a long-term deal and at what cost.
When Garcia came up for his first long look at the majors in 2023, he did a number of things well. The defense was obviously great, and he hit the ball hard. That is a pretty good foundation to start from with breakout potential. In 2024, he continued to play good defense and hit the ball harder than most of the league, but it translated into a significantly below-average hitting line, but he provided enough defensive value to make him a mediocre regular. Then this year came, and he has continued more of the same style from a hitting perspective, but with two small tweaks that have made all the difference.
Maikel has showcased an ability to be slightly more selective at the plate. It is not a gigantic shift, but he is swinging less often than last season, about 3% less. Combine that with a little better contact rate and you end up with more walks. He is not a huge walker, still only 58th percentile in the league, but that is a lot better than the 30th percentile of a year before. He already has a career high in walks at 48, which has helped push his OBP all the way to .363, a far cry from the sub-.300 level of last season. A lot of that improvement is driven by more than walks though, so let’s take a look at the bigger change.
These two, at a glance, look somewhat similar, but if you really analyze them, you can see how the launch angle on batted balls has shifted for Garcia this year. In the terrible, never-want-to-hit-that angle spots below -50 and above 40, he hasn’t really done better this year. On a percentage basis he has been in those areas a little bit more actually, but from a sample size perspective it is statistically pretty similar. The big change is in the -50 to 5 range, not an area you want to live in too much as it is just ground balls, and they made up nearly 40% of his distribution last season.
This year he has dropped that to 30%, just shy of a full 10% drop. Those balls are now living much more in the air than they were before. His average launch angle has gone from 6.4 to 9.4 degrees and even with similar exit velocities and hard hit rates, it has pushed his xWOBA up 45 points. The space he is living in gives you a lot more extra base hits, he has set career highs in doubles and home runs and still has over a month left in the season. That has shifted his slugging from .332 to .469 and his ISO from .101 to .169, a vast improvement. He is still getting his singles too.
Those two changes along with solid defense has pushed Garcia up to a 4.7 fWAR. That is not a run-of-the-mill player like he has been the last two years, that is an All-Star caliber dude that you are excited to have on your team. So, the first question is, how sustainable is the change?
Launch angle changes are sticky and correlate reasonably well year to year. If you look at the players who had 3 degrees or more of increased launch angle from 2023 to 2024, 22 out of the 33 players (67%) have carried it over to this season. Not all of them for the better, but for the most part players can maintain a change in launch angle. The percent is probably even higher than that if you take into account things like Masataka Yoshida “not carrying it over” pretty much entirely due to injury. Can he maintain the higher walk rate and lower strike out rate is probably a little more iffy for me, but I am reasonably confident that Garcia will be an above average hitter over the next half decade or so, though I would take the under if you said can he match this years 128 wRC+ consistently.
If he is a league-average hitter or slightly better with the defensive value that I think he has proven is real, then I would put his average production from now to age 31 or so in the 3 to 4 WAR per-season range. That is a $25 million player on the open market – think Matt Chapman for a comp of a third baseman who just got paid like that. It would be great if the Royals could get as many years of that as possible. Right now, they have four arbitration seasons remaining before Maikel becomes a free agent before the 2030 season at age 29. I would love to see the Royals try to do a deal and get another year or two of Garcia under team control, at the right price of course.
Based on some similar level of players in recent years plus the extra arb year, I think he will get somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 to 35 million or a bit more over those four years if he is a 3 or so win player consistently. I am going a little lower since defense seems to be undervalued in the process and comping him to Luis Arraez mainly though I looked at Teoscar Hernandez several others. Based on that I think a deal structure that might make sense for Maikel and gives the team a little discount for the guarantee would be to offer something like 5 years and a guaranteed $51 million:
- $2 million for his first arbitration season in 2026
- $5 million for his second arbitration season in 2027
- $9 million for his third arbitration season in 2028
- $13 million for his fourth arbitration season in 2029
- $20 million for his first year of free agency in 2030
- $25 million club option ($2 million buyout) for his second year of free agency in 2031
It does not break the bank on the Royals side and gives them two more controllable years.
He is from Venezuela, and getting these extensions done with players from poorer countries tends to be a little easier – see Salvador Perez’ first contract or Ozzie Albies’ or a dozen other such players. It does mean they might be able to do it cheaper, but I hope they do not if it is pursued. Making fair deals for players is, in my opinion, always the best practice. If Maikel falls back to a 2-win player for the next 5 years, you get 10 WAR for a reasonable price and really only overpay him on the last season. Then you spend $2 million on the buyout of the sixth season. No one gets hurt. This also gets him to free agency before his age 32 season and gives him one more shot at getting a bag.
Maikel Garcia has been a life saver in an offense that has struggled for the majority of the season. His big step forward has been a huge factor in them still playing meaningful games into August and likely September (please don’t crash and burn this week). His style of play and defensive skills make him a safe enough bet that I would recommend pursuing a longer-term deal for him. He would probably appreciate some security and the team can lock up an important position where there are no near term up-and-coming prospects for most of the Bobby Witt years. This is exactly the type of thing the team should be doing to try and stay in contention through as much of those years as possible.
