DALLAS — The most infamous tweet of the 2023 postseason happened in 2019.
At the time, it likely seemed rather inconsequential, if it was noticed at all, the type of middle-of-winter baseball announcement of a transaction that drew no excitement.
"We have traded Adolis Garcia to the Texas Rangers for cash considerations," the St. Louis Cardinals posted on Dec. 21, 2019.
Nearly four years later, Adolis Garcia, now 30 and known as "El Bombi," is the American League Championship Series MVP.
And yes, the Rangers got him for practically nothing. "Cash considerations," in baseball jargon, is really just a fancy way of saying the Rangers paid the Cardinals to acquire Garcia, though it's typically not disclosed how much money is exchanged. For a minimum-salary player like Garcia, it likely wasn't much.
The bottom line: It's the easiest way to acquire a player from another team (aside from a waiver claim), as it doesn't involve trading another player or prospect.
And so it's not exactly the expectation that a "cash considerations" player becomes the MVP of the American League Championship Series.
But Garcia's journey, which included playing professionally in Cuba and Japan before he came to the states, didn't magically turn around the second he joined the Rangers. And the Rangers didn't fully know what they had found, at least not immediately.
Garcia barely played in the shortened 2020 season, getting just six at-bats and going hitless. In February 2021, before spring training began, the Rangers designated Garcia for assignment in favor of pitcher Mike Foltynewicz.
The move put Garcia on waivers, giving every other team in baseball the opportunity to claim him and bring him on their roster.
None did, as Cardinals beat reporter Derrick Goold noted on Twitter on Monday night. The Cardinals swung and miss on Garcia, and the Rangers nearly did, too.
The club brought Garcia back to the team for spring training. After missing the Opening Day roster, Garcia made his 2021 debut on April 13 and played the rest of the season with the club.
Garcia showed flashes of what he'd become, hitting 31 homers, stealing 16 bases and driving in 90 runs. But he also showed why teams might have been hesitant to give him a full-time job. His free-swinging ways led to 194 strikeouts, and his on-base percentage was a paltry .286.
Then Garcia did what several Rangers have done in the last two years: He kept getting better.
He raised that on-base percentage to .300 in 2022, and then to .328 this season. Garcia maintained, and even improved, his power numbers, but the key to his 2023 performance was getting more patient at the plate.
Garcia's walk rate of 10.3% was up from 6.1% in 2022 and up from 5.1% in 2021.
Which makes his stellar postseason performance all the more "El Bombi": He hasn't drawn a single walk in the playoffs.
Instead, he's been the swaggering, flexing slugger that Rangers fans love, and Astros fans hate.
His three-run blast against the Astros in Game 5 could have been one of the best moments in Rangers franchise history...if the Rangers didn't blow the lead. The loss was also marred by Garcia's run-in with Astros catcher Martin Maldonado, after reliever Bryan Abreu hit Garcia with a fastball.
Abreu and Garcia got ejected, and the scuffle set the stage for a chorus of boos from Astros fans in Game 6.
Garcia struck out his first four at-bats, but then he broke the dam with a ninth-inning grand slam to extend Texas' lead to 9-2.
He returned Monday night with the best game of his life: A 4-for-5 performance at the plate, with five RBI and two homers. On his solo shot in the fourth inning, Garcia stepped up the line and then turned back to Maldonado, smiling from ear to ear.
By the end of the night, Garcia was lifting the ALCS MVP award, with his legacy set: From "cash considerations" to Texas Rangers playoff legend.
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