rolling retirees: 2018 and beyond

Had no idea he wasn't already retired.

maybe he was hoping to pull a matt holliday but no one called

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm_RhIrU4AAMM3k.jpg:small

They said it could never be done

a 6.66 K/9 would have been the icing on the cake but I shouldn’t quibble

david wright, after one final home series

Online prices for his presumed last start on 9/29 have skyrocketed in the last few minutes. (I already am going to the NY Film Festival that night.)

actually, not technically retiring but being medically sidelined a la prince fielder

Gulp.

https://www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2018/09/victor_martinez_retirement_1.html

reliever brad ziegler

a little surprising as he was still doing alright and getting saves this year.

Ike Davis has retired https://t.co/ciETMhLWTd

— HardballTalk (@HardballTalk) November 6, 2018

noted former pirate

Joe Mauer

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25228494/joe-mauer-retire-15-seasons-minnesota-twins

Utley.

At one point I would have thought both those guys were headed for the hall.

they still might be

It's really too bad that the Twins never won anything with Mauer, they had some good teams but seemed to choke against the Yankees every year. Even with all his injuries he had a hell of a career.

our beloved adrian beltre

:( :( :(

nooooooo

bartolo : is now the last active* player who played in the majors in the 20th century

huh.

P sure Armando Benitez is playing in Mexico still

catcher dan butler, after 768 minor league games

played in seven games for the red sox in 2014 and two more this year, going 5-for-25 with three doubles and throwing out three of eight attempted base stealers. he was never drafted

THANK YOU... pic.twitter.com/CzhaoU9YUH

— Mike Napoli (@MikeNapoli25) December 8, 2018

Only reached 140 games twice--I don't know if he was the most productive long-term part-time hitter of the past couple of decades, but he must be close (including one monster season in 2011: .320/.414/.631, 30 HR and 5.5 WAR in 113 games).

I really wish the Jays had hung onto him after the Wells deal, instead of flipping him for a reliever who’s name time has forgotten.

reliever tom wilhelmsen, officially

outfielder colby rasmus, unofficially

Alfredo Amezaga (who will join Atlanta as a coach)

awesome

http://mlb.mlb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=l135&t=p_pbp&pid=150119

Jaime Garcia, 32 years old

https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/news/jaime-garcia-expected-to-retire-from-mlb/c-302541372

you wouldn't know from looking at his stats, but he really did have some exceptional stuff. sometimes it really seemed like he was throwing a wiffle ball out there. alas, he was almost always injured or recovering from an injury.

i just learned that he and Fernando Valenzuela were the only two pitchers born in Mexico to start in a world series.

former red sox third baseman of the future will middlebrooks

Willie Midds was basically a nicer, crappier Shea Hillenbrand

I didn't know Ricky Romero had been out there the past five years, trying to make it back.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/toronto-blue-jays-ricky-romero-retirement/

also shawn tolleson -- spent the last two years trying to come back from TJ but decided it wasn't going to work out

Dillon Gee, who spent the 2018 season with the Chunichi Dragons

jarrod saltalamacchia

cc sabathia will retire at the end of the season

doug fister

^his jersey will live on ironically at gay fetish events

?! I hardly knew her!

Bruce Bochy at end of season

Bruce Bochy announces he will retire after the 2019 season pic.twitter.com/TWiBLgL3Oh

— Kerry Crowley (@KO_Crowley) February 18, 2019

Ichiro has retired

Jason Hammel has retired

Hammel will always have the 2016 Cubs reunions to come, he had a heck of a season for that club.

punxsutawney native devin mesoraco, apparently

one monster season in 2014 and then just a ton of injuries

Allen Craig will join the Padres' front office as an advisor to baseball ops, thus ending his playing career. In 6 big league season, he batted .276/.333/.435. He won the '11 WS, was an All-Star in '13 and is the only player to score a WS game-winning run on an obstruction call.

— AJ Cassavell (@AJCassavell) April 12, 2019

craig gentry

at 1.1 bWAR in 68 games, he was the third-most-valuable position player who ended 2018 with the orioles

Jake Peavy

Lance Lynn

wow, didn't expect that! he put together a really good career. in his earlier years he always seemed to be overperforming, like how long could he last just throwing fastball after faster. turns out, a long time, and a 3.80-ish ERA and 3.80-ish FIP for his career. he was a reliable workhorse and from the glimpses i could get of his personality, he seems like a classic big goofball jock who would stuff you in a locker and eat 4 pizzas for dinner

Evan Longoria

I thought he was a decent bet for the HOF coming out of the 2019 season: about to turn 34, still playing regularly, 55+ WAR. Stalled after that, so now consigned to 3B purgatory with Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell, Sal Bando, Robin Ventura, and a few others.

Rolling Nosferatus: 2018 and Beyond.

https://www.mlb.com/news/rich-hill-signs-minor-league-deal-with-royals

I mean this with full respect, Evan Longoria was the Ian Kinsler of third basemen. Definitely a hall of very good guy.

otm

I should have said outside shot instead of decent, but here's where he stood after his age-33 season compared to Scott Rolen:

Longoria: 297 HR, 1015 RBI, .267/.335/.474, 121 OPS+, 55.5 bWAR
Rolen: 272 HR, 1062 RBI, .282/.370/.501, 125 OPS+, 58.6 bWAR

Other than Rolen playing his prime years during the PED era, I don't see a huge difference there. Rolen had three more good years after that; Longoria didn't.

matt carpenter

for some reason, there are 4 distinct versions of matt carpenter that stick out to me

1 in the early 2010s, he was a doubles-machine and an OBP-nerd’s dream. it seemed like every time he was up in a big moment, he came through. from memory, i believe in 2013 he hit something like almost 60 doubles? (*checks: he hit 55).

2 at some point, a cardinals celebration developed where a lot of the players, particularly carpenter, who was frequently standing out at 2B after hitting a clutch double, would make a “chip dipping into the salsa and stirring” motion. matt carpenter began selling salsa in st. louis

3 matt carpenter, the bad late career version, who would give you lower back pain just to watch him. clearly, it hurt and it hurts and it will always hurt. i also suffer from lower back pain and sciatica. however, i am not a professional ball player. he played through it and swung and missed at exactly 100.0% of pitches thrown in the lower quarter of the strike zone. he was physically incapable of hitting them and would swing over them, every single time, 100.0%. that is a record.

3a this doesn’t really deserve a full 4th spot, but during this era i got into playing the videogame “the show” on ps4 for a couple months. i was really bad at it, but i saw a youtube of a real life mlb player tournament and matt carpenter was a contestant. i watched a full episode of him getting his ass kicked by someone, i forget who. but what stuck out was how competitive he was and also how uncomfortable it was to be “around” him, even virtually

i remember version 1 well, the doubles machine! and hell, i’ll buy his salsa, whatever :D

What was that weird Yankees postseason version

That dead cat bounce where he was doing the giambi on cleveland golf-at-everything was fun

xp that was the cardinals devil magic that he withheld at a crucial time. but i was glad to see it was still in there!

forgot about this truly all-time matt carpenter moment. this is peak matt carpenter experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGsfhjYLQF0

tony kemp

kolten wong

jean segura

Jake Diekman

josh harrison

whit merrifield

unofficially: i recently noticed that adalberto mondesi hasn't played in the minors or foreign leagues since he played 15 games for KC then tore his ACL in 2022.

he was hot shit there for a little while; too bad he didn't even get to the majors until he was 27 (and therefore never made more than $7m a year)

you look at his numbers and it's sort of wild he only topped 4 WAR once in his career.
led the league in hits twice, SB three times, doubles once, triples once, topped out at 19 home runs one year and had a few season in the teens for HR. if he'd played in the 80's he would have been a legend.