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T-Rat Talk: Eduardo Garcia

Longtime shortstop thriving in new role
By Kyle Lobner
May 23, 2025

It's been nearly three years since then Timber Rattlers infielder, now Timber Rattlers infielder/outfielder Eduardo Garcia came to Appleton for the first time, and he's had plenty of time to build up a list of fond memories.

It's been nearly three years since then Timber Rattlers infielder, now Timber Rattlers infielder/outfielder Eduardo Garcia came to Appleton for the first time, and he's had plenty of time to build up a list of fond memories.

“What he remembers most from 2022 was that he was feeling super great that year, he hit his last five home runs here, and he just remembers that he likes the fans, the team, the city, the stadium and everything, so he’s just happy to be here,” Garcia said through translator and Timber Rattlers outfielder Hedbert Perez.

That 2022 season, however, was the most recent time when everything went according to plan in a season for Garcia. He played in 111 regular season games split across the Carolina and Midwest leagues, batting .259 with 15 home runs and stealing 15 bases in 17 attempts as a 19-year-old. Garcia returned to Wisconsin for portions of the 2023 and 2024 seasons and played in 139 games for the Timber Rattlers over that time but dealt with frustrating injuries that limited his ability to build momentum. Hand and wrist injuries from getting hit by pitches knocked Garcia out of the lineup at times, but a recurring hamstring injury has been his biggest challenge.

“The majority of the time has been his hamstrings because he couldn’t hydrate the way he should. He’s gotten a lot better with it, so he’s good now. He’s doing what he has to do,” Garcia said through Perez.

With his legs feeling better, Garcia has been able to stay on the field and be one of Wisconsin's most productive players in 2025. Garcia played in 37 of the Timber Rattlers’ first 39 games this season and was tied for the team lead in home runs (four) and RBI (17) while going 10-for-11 in stolen base attempts. Overall his .733 OPS at the end of the Beloit series was 4% better than league average in addition to positive contributions on defense in the infield and outfield. Meanwhile, despite having spent portions of four seasons with Wisconsin, Garcia is still only 22 years old and is younger than the average player in the Midwest League.

“I think he’s a little more quiet at the plate, making better decisions,” Timber Rattlers manager Victor Estevez said. “Whenever he swings out of the zone, he’s able to make adjustments during the at bat. Eliminating those chases has helped him a little bit offensively because we know he’s a guy that can do damage when he swings in the zone.”

The 2025 season has brought a new challenge for Garcia, however: The Timber Rattlers have been shorthanded in the outfield for much of the year with injuries to Luis Castillo and Kay-Lin Nicasia and an early trade sending Opening Day center fielder Yophery Rodriguez to the Red Sox. After spending almost all of his professional career as an infielder, mostly as a shortstop, Garcia was tabbed to play center field in 18 of Wisconsin's first 39 games.

“So at first it was a little hard, he had to adjust to the position. He’s played shortstop his entire life, so now being in the outfield is a little hard but he’s worked a lot in the outfield with Marcelo (Timber Rattlers coach Marcelo Alfonsin), and he’s just grateful to play and give the team everything he can,” Garcia said through Perez.

Garcia has certainly helped the Timber Rattlers by being willing to move off of his natural position, but in the long run it’s also likely to help his chances for success within the Brewers organization. Many of the Brewers’ top prospects also play on the left side of the infield, so positional flexibility could be a near requirement for Garcia to continue to advance.

“Having (2024 Timber Rattler and MLB Piepline’s #3 Brewers prospect) Cooper Pratt in AA, he’s basically going to play shortstop the entire year. So we need to move Garcia around a little bit so whenever he gets a chance to go up there he’s ready to play center, right, left, short, third, second and become a super utility guy wherever he goes,” Estevez said.

This spring Garcia is also reaping the benefits of an offseason experience he described as “amazing:” The 2024-25 winter was Garcia’s second season with the Venezuelan Winter League’s Cardenales de Lara. He played six positions defensively across 17 regular season games with the Cardenales and experienced significant success at the plate, batting .407 and having seven of his eleven hits go for extra bases. Garcia was nearly eight years younger than the average player in the league and 22 of the players on his team were current or former major leaguers.

“It helps a lot because of the mentality,” Estevez said. “Now he plays here and he controls the environment a little bit better because there, the Venezuelan winter league is similar to the Dominican winter league, you play there just to win because there’s a lot of money involved over there. So you’ve got to play at the highest level every day and I think that experience over there helped him to mature a little bit more.”

While Garcia had also played in a handful of games for Lara during the previous winter, this year he got to experience a great deal of baseball at the winter leagues’ highest level. Lara was the regular season and postseason champion of the Venezuelan Winter League and advanced to the Caribbean Series, where Garcia played shortstop in five of their six games and batted .368 with a .902 OPS in a tournament where the average was just .610.

“It was a beautiful experience,” Garcia said through Perez. “He played for the team in the city he’s from, and he just feels like he learned a lot when he was down there with the guys. There were a lot of big leaguers. He tried to learn as much as he could. He felt like the best thing he could learn was just maturity, getting to understand a little more of the game. The Caribbean Series, obviously, was a beautiful experience and he loved it and wants to go back again this year.”

Now that he’s back with Wisconsin Garcia is working to translate the lessons he’s learned over the last few seasons to success on the field for himself and his team. If he could go back to that 2022 day when he came to Wisconsin for the first time he said he wouldn’t change much.

“He just says that if he could go back to 2022 he would tell himself to keep doing what he was doing, but just be a little more focused on the little stuff. Keep having fun. He feels like right now, aside from being focused, he’s having a little bit more fun when he’s out there. So he’d want to go back and tell himself that,” Garcia said through Perez.

In the meantime, however, Garcia’s extended experience with Wisconsin puts him in a strong position to be a leader and someone to go to for advice in the Timber Rattlers clubhouse.

“He says that since he’s been here for a couple of years a lot of the guys will ask him about the weather and the pitching,” Garcia said through Perez. “He just says that it’s not impossible. The weather, obviously it’s cold at the start, but it’s just baseball. Go out there and have fun. He likes helping out the other guys and trying to give them the best advice possible.”

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