Luis García Jr. has put himself right in the middle of the trade conversation, and the timing makes sense. With the market expected to be short on power bats, the Nationals infielder is drawing attention from multiple teams looking for offense.
For Washington, though, nothing is close yet. People familiar with the situation said any talks involving García are still in a preliminary stage, and the Nationals have not seriously engaged on the subject with just over two weeks left before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. They are open to listening, but they also know exactly what they have: a 26-year-old hitter with talent, a reasonable salary and another year of club control.
García is making $6.875 million this season through arbitration and is under team control through the 2027 season.
This has been the year García’s bat has started to match the promise. In his seventh big-league season, the left-handed hitter reached 20 home runs by the All-Star break, a career high, and entered Friday with an .871 OPS across 90 games and 319 plate appearances. He has become a real power threat, especially from the left side.
The profile is not spotless. Over his career, García has a .729 OPS and a 102 OPS+. He also still sits against left-handed pitching, carrying a .619 OPS versus lefties compared with a .909 mark against right-handers.
Even with those warts, the trade market may not offer many cleaner fits. One of the better hitters available is San Francisco’s Luis Arraez, but his game is built on batting average, not power.
The Giants are an obvious seller, while the resurgent Red Sox were once viewed that way before their hot stretch changed the picture. Boston could still line up as a fit for García, who has spent most of this season at first base and also has experience at second.
Washington’s first half was one of the brighter stories in the league. The Nationals reached the All-Star break at 48-49 and four games out of a wild-card spot, though they never expected to be true playoff contenders this season.
Even before the deadline push, the Nationals had been testing the market. This spring, they checked league-wide interest in García and several other players in the organization, according to multiple MLB evaluators.
The underlying numbers have liked García for a while. He has graded out as an above-average bat by those metrics in each of the last three seasons, and this year the results have finally caught up. In 2026, those numbers have improved even more, helped by a new set of voices that have worked with him on driving the ball in the air with more consistency.
What Washington does next is still being sorted out, but it would be a surprise if the club came out of the deadline without adding some arms that could help as soon as 2027. García could be part of the return that makes that possible.
There is also the human side of the decision. García is the longest-tenured National and a key part of the clubhouse culture, which could make any move harder for an executive group that understands what a sell-off can do to morale.
His defensive home has also shifted. García moved full-time from second base to first in 2026 after years of rough defensive numbers up the middle. The early results were shaky, but he put in plenty of pregame work in April and May, and his play at first has looked better in June and July, even if it remains imperfect.
The Nationals’ new hitting coaches also saw a path for him early this spring. They told García that his mix of contact and power made him special, and that he did not need a total overhaul. The main issue was his chase rate, which still runs high, but he has narrowed that problem to pitches at the top of the zone, where he does the most damage.
“It’s kind of funny,” Nationals hitting coach Matt Borgschulte said. “Every once in a while, somebody tries to get a fastball at the top by him, and I love to watch them try to do that, because it’s really, really challenging to do.”
Since coming back from a wrist injury that briefly sidelined him in early May - and one he kept hitting through after returning - García has been one of the most productive hitters in MLB.
That production, plus the lack of obvious power bats on the market, is why his name is surfacing now. And with Washington also having two first basemen in Triple-A Rochester who could help at the major-league level this season - Abimelec Ortiz and Yohandy Morales - the Nationals have more than one moving part to consider. Morales leads the farm system in homers, and Ortiz, acquired in the MacKenzie Gore trade this winter, made his MLB debut last Sunday before being sent back to Rochester.
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For a club trying to sort out its pitching picture, Littell now sits in an awkward middle ground: not quite reliable enough to count on, and not productive enough to assume there will be a strong market for him. Washington has to decide whether to ride it out with him the rest of the season and factor in the 2027 mutual option, or keep exploring a move even as the clock toward the Aug. 3 deadline keeps ticking. [Read more 🡒]