The Phillies announced that outfielder Adolis García will undergo right latissimus dorsi repair surgery on Wednesday, June 24th. The recovery period is six to eight months, so he will miss the remainder of the season. He is expected to be ready for the start of the 2027 schedule. He is already on the 60-day injured list and will stay there for the rest of the campaign. He will be a free agent at season’s end.
García’s injury was clear at the moment it occurred, as seen in this clip from MLB.com. In a game against the Blue Jays last week, García came up throwing as George Springer tried to score from third on a fly out off the bat of Kazuma Okamoto. García made a strong throw, though Springer was safe on the play. Immediately after the throw, García was in obvious pain. He received attention from the training staff and then departed the contest.
Two days later, the Phillies placed García on the 60-day injured list, indicating they knew pretty quickly that he was going to miss at least a few months. Now he’ll miss even more than that and won’t be a factor in the second half.
The news closes the book on Philadelphia’s planned switch in right field for 2026. They had Nick Castellanos in that position for many years and he was still signed through this year but it was clear all offseason that they would be moving on from him before the campaign kicked off. They signed García to a one-year, $10MM deal in December and then released Castellanos in February.
That pivot has not worked out. Moving on from Castellanos was sensible enough. His numbers had been declining for a while and he hit .191/.221/.339 for the Padres this year. But García couldn’t meaningfully patch that spot. He hit .195/.270/.329 while striking out at a 32.4% pace before this shoulder injury wiped out the rest of his season.
The Phils are reportedly on the look for outfield help and they will almost certainly do something prior to the trade deadline. They still have Brandon Marsh and Justin Crawford in two spots. Marsh is having a good season but Crawford has a .238/.293/.330 line in his first 222 career plate appearances. Since García’s injury, the Phils have been using a platoon of Gabriel Rincones Jr. and Edmundo Sosa to cover another spot. Sosa has a .234/.269/.378 line on the year and Rinconces has a .071/.071/.286 line through 14 plate appearances.
For García, it’s a rough position to be in. He had some strong seasons with the Rangers from 2021 to 2023, helping that club win the World Series in the final of those three seasons. His numbers slipped from there, as he slashed .225/.278/.397 over the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Texas decided to move on, non-tendering him after last year.
His strong defense and his past success were still enough to get him his aforementioned deal with the Phillies but he performed poorly and will still be recovering from this surgery when the offseason begins. It’s widely expected that there will be a lockout at the start of December, like there was in the 2021-22 offseason. That winter saw a rush of transactions before and after the lockout. If that happens again this time, García might be trying to draw some attention amid that frenzy with some kind of showcase after he is recovered.
Photo courtesy of John E. Sokolowski, Imagn Images
