With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at Gerson Garabito.
Yes, Gerson Garabito. We have to ease into the reviews, after all. We can’t be coming in hot with Josh Jung or Marcus Semien or Adolis Garcia talk. Can’t be cannonballing in right away with spicy Robert Garcia or Joc Pederson or Corey Seager takes, or even milky takes that are designed to dull the spiciness of the takes that you, dear reader, may have about such players.
We are going to dip a toe into the water, feel the temperature, get acclimated. It is a long offseason, and we shall have plenty of time for in-depth analysis and spirited arguments and yelling and references to pieholes.
What is a Gerson Garabito, really? It sounds like a type of bean. Something that you’d encounter in a stall at the farmer’s market, a stall manned by a woman with tats and dreads and the distinct scent of patchouli about them, tucked a little ways away from the heavily trafficked areas, the more mainstream produce options.
Our intrepid vendor will probably have a septum piercing, will likely be wearing a tie-dye t-shirt and baggy cargo pants and clunky boots, will be sporting a carbiner with a collection of keys (though the carbiner is not a lifestyle signifier, she will volunteer if anyone mentions it, and possibly even if they don’t). At least one article of clothing will be made of hemp, and a colorful wool cap will rest atop her head, and she will be accompanied by a guy of indeterminant age — he could be 30 or 60, no telling — with a long straight beard that comes down to his nipples. He won’t speak the entire time, but will be eyeballing you suspiciously, making it clear that if you try to palm one of the scented candles on the stand, he’ll catch you.
You want to ask if they are in a throuple, of if their domestic arrangement has evolved to be a polycule, but there’s never a good opening to make that inquiry.
Among their selection of organic, herbicide-free, earth-friendly produce you will find some of the finest selections of Garabito beans outside of the Pacific Northwest. The specific variety they sell is the Gerson Garabito, and the woman will show them off to you, point out the specific coloration that is how you can tell it is a Gerson Garabito instead of one of the more pedestrian Garabito varieties, explain how the loam at their farm results in especially flavorful Gerson Garabitos, that you’re in luck because most of the current batch was scooped up by their friend Windhoek, who is featuring them in the current menu of his pop-up kitchens, but they set some aside so that those who frequent the farmer’s market and have a love of lissome legumes would have the opportunity to experience them.
They are evangelical about the Gerson variety of Garabito, wanting to share the joy with those who haven’t been fortunate enough to encounter it yet.
Or at least she is. Her compatriot is busy sideeyeing anyone who comes by, weighing whether you might be the type of scoundrel who would try to take these perfect specimens and grow your own Gerson Garabitos, be the type of soulless captive of capitalism who would seek to exploit these pure Gerson Garabitos, mass produce them, dilute the experience — probably with infusions of money from venture capitalists — to turn a pure, beautiful product of the earth into a bland commodity, watered down for the masses.
Gerson Garabito the pitcher is a good story, though that story was told in 2024. Out of affiliated baseball for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, he signed a minor league deal with Texas in the 2023-24 offseason and ended up making his major league debut, functioning as a functional swingman who could be shuffled up and down between the majors and minors. Garabito wasn’t particularly good, but you didn’t have to be particularly good to be a functional up and down swingman.
Garabito clung to a 40 man roster spot all winter, which was mildly surprising, and made the Opening Day roster in 2025. The highlight of his season was a two inning outing in the third game of the season, when he picked up a hold while allowing no runs against the Boston Red Sox in a 4-3 Rangers win. In his next two outs in allowed 8 runs in 2.2 innings and then 4 runs in 3.1 innings before being banished to AAA, where he pitched poorly, putting up an 8.53 ERA in 10 starts covering 31.2 innings.
The Rangers released him in June so that he could go pitch for Samsung in the KBO. Garabito pitched well for Samsung, and one would assume that, at the age of 30 and little chance of getting back to the major leagues for any extended stretch in the foreseeable future, Garabito will try to return to Korea for 2026 and try to carve out a spot there for the next few years.
Who knows, maybe he can end up like another former Rangers pitcher who spent a number of years pitching in Korea and land a spot on a realty show.