After a trade-deadline deal, the infielder is adjusting to life away from the only MLB team he had known.
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BALTIMORE — A few hours before he took the field with the New York Yankees on Wednesday, Luis García Jr. sat with his feet propped up, tapping away on his phone in the visitors’ clubhouse at Camden Yards.
Almost two months ago, he stood proudly at the same locker after hitting two home runs in the Washington Nationals’ 6-4 win over the Baltimore Orioles. The team was 43-42. García, then the longest-tenured member of the Nationals, remarked that day that the future was bright. And getting to be a part of the turnaround after five miserable seasons meant the world to him.
“I’ve been here in this organization for a long time,” he said June 28. “Just being here, present, being here for my teammates, that’s really important. This year, yes, it’s a young team, but everyone is really excited.”
Just a month after that win, the Nationals traded García to the Yankees, Curtis Mead to the Boston Red Sox and Foster Griffin to the Cleveland Guardians. Add on James Wood’s prolonged oblique injury, and the once-promising season has been stalled in its tracks. Ahead of Thursday night’s game at the Texas Rangers, the Nationals had gone 6-9 since the trade deadline and fallen to six games under .500.
The trades brought much-needed pitching depth to help the team in the future. But they also put a dent in a promising season and separated a closely bonded clubhouse.
On Aug. 2, the Nationals were wrapping up a four-game series at Truist Park against the Atlanta Braves. García was held out of the lineup as Washington neared a deal with the Yankees. He waited all game for the news, but the trade wasn’t finalized until an hour after the game, when he and the team were already on their way to Philadelphia.
On the plane, García and his teammates were emotional as they enjoyed one last journey together. When the plane landed, the players formed a hug line and one-by-one made their way to García to say goodbye.
“Seeing everybody sad, some people cried — it was uncomfortable for me,” García said Wednesday.
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The Nationals were the only organization he had ever known. He signed as an international free agent in 2016, debuted for the team in 2020 and, after a career-best first half this year, became one of the clubhouse leaders.
He grew up with the Nationals. The first few days with the Yankees, he said, were hard. He was sad to move on without his friends. But the trade, he reminded himself, was also an opportunity. Not only will he probably go to the playoffs for the first time in his career — the Yankees held the top American League wild card spot heading into Thursday’s game against the Orioles — he also gets to play in front of his family.
García was born in the Bronx and still has relatives, including his mother and father, who reside there. He estimates he has close to 25 family members in the area, and they come watch him play almost every night.
“It’s really good,” García said. “When I have a day off, I can go be with my family, so it’s really different.”
And while he misses his old teammates, his new ones have been welcoming.
“Everybody here has been very good to me,” García said. “They try to make me feel good, feel at home. It’s going well so far.”
He was hitting .216 with four extra-base hits, including one home run, for the Yankees ahead of Thursday night’s game. It’s not quite up to the level he was hitting in the first half of the season, when he had a .873 OPS, but he understands there’s an adjustment period to being on a new team.
While García’s still getting acquainted with the Yankees, he’s keeping an eye on the Nationals. He still talks on the phone to his old teammates — Nasim Nuñez calls him every day, he said — and keeps up with their games and news. He thinks CJ Abrams moving to second will be a good move for him, he said.
“I watch the highlights, always,” García said.
Although he’s not a part of the team anymore, he still thinks, just like he said after that game at the end of June, that the Nations are on track to achieve something special soon — even if he’ll have to watch it happen from the outside.
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