Is Adolis Garcia a key to the Texas Rangers’ rebuild?

The Texas Rangers need attitude. Garcia brings it every day.

Teams such as the Padres, White Sox, and Rays have all enjoyed recent success because of home-grown talent. But that’s not the sole ingredient in the recipe for winning – they’re also having fun! Fernando Tatis is out there flipping bats and taunting pitchers. Yermin Mercedes cranked a moonshot home run on a 3-0 count in a blowout win over Minnesota, his manager criticized him for it, and essentially the entire baseball community came to his defense. Shoot, even the Astros have kind of adopted their “Houston against the world” mantra after the cheating scandal, however misplaced that attitude may be, depending on who you ask.

Part of the slow decline of the Texas Rangers over the last six years has been because of the team’s inability to put intimidating players on the field. Rougned Odor’s punch has gone down in history as the Rangers biggest highlight since the 2015 postseason, and he followed that up by becoming the worst hitter in baseball. We don’t even need to mention the whole “Warning to the West” marketing scheme that ended with Corey Kluber pitching a grand total of one inning during his time in Texas.

More from Nolan Writin'

• 3 Texas Rangers outfield trade targets not named Bryan Reynolds
• Did Jacob deGrom really mean what he said at his Texas Rangers press conference?
• Where do Texas Rangers prospects Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker stand after the DeGrom signing?
• Martin Perez accepting the qualifying offer looking like solid deal for the Rangers
• 4 outfielders the Texas Rangers can still pursue this winter

Now the Texas Rangers have a guy who yells. He walks to first base as he admires his homers. He is the first guy up and yelling in the dugout when his teammates are hitting. When is the last time a Texas Ranger waved goodbye to a catcher as he hit a walk-off home run against their biggest rival? Who’s the last Ranger to bat flip and pound his chest as he rounds the bases? If anything, the Rangers have been on the wrong side of the “cool” part of baseball for a long time, most recently being the victims of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s greatness and Chris Woodward publicly having a problem with it. Odor turning into the worst hitter in baseball and being the team’s intimidator didn’t help, either.

The debates over the unwritten rules of baseball have gotten quite tiring for most over the past couple of years. Objectively speaking, players who celebrate are good for baseball. Adolis Garcia likes to win. He likes to hit home runs. He likes to score, and he likes his team. Whether or not that helps a team win, again, depends on who you ask, but “El Bombi”, as the city has so adequately adopted him, absolutely adores the game of baseball. It’s been a really long time since Rangers baseball was fun, and he makes watching games fun!