Royals Rumors: Power-heavy former All-Star listed as trade deadline fit for Royals

The Kansas City Royals seemed poised to make a go of pushing for the postseason in the final month's of the 2025 campaign.

Besides shocking the baseball world by taking starter Seth Lugo off the trade market after agreeing to a mid-season contract extension, they've made a few moves to address their outfield depth with the mid-July trade for utility man Adam Frazier and more notably acquiring veteran Randal Grichuk.

However, the Royals outfield could still do with a further boost, especially after the loss of Jac Caglianone to the IL. They entered Wednesday's rubber match against the Atlanta Braves with the lowest outfield wRC+ (61), OPS (.594) and RBI (82) by a wide margin compared to the respective teams sitting in 29th.

According to a collective of baseball writers over at The Athletic, a possible solution for the Royals' outfield woes might just be on one of their current Wild Card rivals in the Texas Rangers. This of course is Adolis García.

Adolis García listed as outfield trade fit for Royals ahead of Thursday's trade deadline

The 2025 season hasn't gone to plan for the Texas Rangers after having busy offseason in hopes of improving this squad and getting them back on track to competing again after their miraculous World Series title run in 2023. A poor first half of the season though, sees them outside of the postseason positions in the late stages of July.

And the player that best represents the Rangers failing to live up to preseason expectations might just be García, who's in the midst of yet another disappointing year at the plate.

García looks nothing like the 2023 All-Star that took the league by storm with a brilliant season at the plate. After breaking onto the scene as a rookie back in 2021 with his first appearance in the Midsummer Classic, he'd have arguably his best season of his career two years later.

In the 2023 campaign, García hit .245 with 39 HR and 107 RBI as well as an .836 OPS, 127 wRC+ and 4.6 fWAR. This resulted in his second career All-Star appearance, a Gold Glove and even a bit of MVP love - albeit finishing 14th in AL voting.

Since then though, he's looked a shell of himself at the plate. So far this season he's followed up his underwhelming 93 wRC+ and -0.2 fWAR season in '24 by slashing just .227/.273/.389 with an 82 wRC+ and 0.7 fWAR in 103 games this season.

However, this could play into the Royals favor, as a potential All-Star talent is at the cheapest price he's ever been and still has plenty of aspects that could be of use to the Royals.

First of all, there's his calling card, his electrifying power abilities. This is a hitter that entered 2025 coming off four consecutive seasons with 25 or more homers. So far this year, García has 14 but there's no reason to think he can't bring that total up into the 20s or maybe even surpass 25 again with two months remaining.

His underlying metrics suggest that that power hitter we've become accustomed to seeing is still there, ranking in the 76th percentile of the league in hard-hit rate, 80th percentile in barrel rate and 91st percentile in AVG exit velocity.

A 20+ home run hitter could go a long way for the Royals, who sit 28th in baseball in home runs entering Wednesday's action.

Then, there's the added bonus of his well above average defense. García put up a staggering 17 DRS this season along with 1 OAA and possesses 95th percentile arm strength.

The question now becomes; will the Rangers actually sell from their core ahead of the deadline?

According to Kennedi Landry of MLB.com, Rangers President of Baseball Operations Chris Young feels optimistic for the second half of the season.

"There's a lot of indicators that we've played really good baseball over the past four or five weeks, and we can continue that," Young told Landry.

And the fact is, they have. They're 15-8 to this point in the month of July and while they still may be on the outside looking in on the AL Wild Card spots, they entered Wednesday just a game behind the Seattle Mariners for that final Wild Card position.

They may not want to trade in general, but more specifically, they may not want to trade a key piece of their lineup to a team like the Royals, who are in direct competition for a postseason spot alongside them.

However, regardless of if García ends up on the Royals, it's easy to see why he's considered a fit for them. And again if J.J. Picollo and Co. can pull this deal off, he would certainly be a valued addition to this inconsistent lineup, even if he's having another down year himself.