2024 Rangers season in review: Gerson Garabito

With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.

Today, we look at pitcher Gerson Garabito.

Many a baseball season, you'll get a guy or two who ends up in the majors with your team and provides a non-nominal amount of innings or at bats who was on no one's radar before the season. The Mystery Player who gets summoned because a body is needed, performs acceptably, and ends up accumulating action and service time and becoming part of that year's team Sporcle quiz.

Which brings us to 2024 Texas Ranger Gerson Garabito.

When spring training started in February of 2024, when the Rangers' pitchers and catchers reported, there were 24 pitchers on the 40 man major league roster, as well as 14 non-roster invitees. A total of 38 pitchers in the major league camp.

Gerson Garabito was not one of those 38 pitchers. Garabito was signed in December, 2023, to a minor league deal, but without an invite to the major league camp.

Which...well, there wouldn't be any reason to expect Garabito would get an invite to the major league camp. He was 28 years old and hadn't pitched in affiliated ball the previous two seasons. He pitched in the Venezuelan Winter League in the 2021-22 offseason, in the Nicaraguan Winter League in the 2022-23 offseason, and in the Dominican Winter League in 2023-24. Someone with the Rangers saw him in the Dominican Winter League last offseason and thought he was worth bringing in as upper level minor league depth.

Garabito was originally signed by the Kansas City Royals out of the Dominican, and presumably folks with the Rangers saw him in Surprise, where the Royals and Rangers share a spring training complex. He appeared at the back half of the BA top 30 prospect list for the Royals in the late-2010s, and made 26 starts apiece in high-A and AA in the Royals' system in 2018 and 2019. COVID wiped out 2020, after which he signed with the San Francisco Giants and split 2021 between AA and AAA.

Then...for two years, nothing, as far as affiliated ball goes. Garabito was, one would think, a victim of the minor league roster limit rules. Enacted prior to the 2021 season, the new rules prohibited teams from having more than 180 minor league players under contract (excluding Dominican Summer League players). Absent that rule, one would think that a pitcher in his mid-20s with a track record of being able to provide acceptable innings as a starter in AA would have been picked up by some team as a swingman for their AA or AAA team.

The roster limit dropped from 180 to 165 for 2024, putting even more of a squeeze on the fringe minor leaguers, but Garabito ended up being one of the 165 for the Rangers. Sent to Frisco to start the season, he only made one start before moving to AAA, where he worked in that swingman role we referenced earlier.

And did well enough that, when the Rangers needed someone to make a spot start in late May, Garabito got the nod. In his major league debut, he allowed a run in 3.2 IP against the Twins, and stuck around to make a couple of mop-up appearances in early June before being sent back to AAA.

Garabito was brought back up five more times in 2024, including three separate times in September as the Rangers juggled their roster. In each instance his job was to be in the bullpen in case he was needed, and to keep his bagged packed, since he could be sent back to, or summoned from, Round Rock at a moments notice.

Garabito wasn't a particularly good major league pitcher in 2024. He logged 26.1 innings over 18 appearances. He put up a 4.78 ERA, a 5.29 FIP, and a 6.69 xERA. He walked an above-average number of batters and struck out a below-average number of batters, not an ideal combination.

Gerson Garabito was more or less your garden variety replacement level pitcher in 2024, a fungible arm that was freely available to the Rangers in the offseason, who was shuffled between AAA and the majors as needs required, and who likely will be dropped from the 40 man roster at some point this offseason. He did his job, and at a minimum, it likely earned him a spot in a major league camp somewhere this coming spring.

Previously:

Jesus Tinoco

Marcus Semien

Josh Sborz

Sam Huff

Jacob deGrom

Michael Lorenzen