rolling retirees: 2018 and beyond

Guy I thought was playing--Edwin Encarnación--isn't; has he retired? Guy I thought was retired--Aaron Sanchez--is in San Francisco, pitching reasonably well so far.

edwin hasn’t retired, but no one has signed him. he was pretty bad last year, and the lack of NL DH hurts him

Give him a month.

Tyler Flowers has decided to retire. He played the past few seasons with two degenerative discs in his back and developed another while preparing to resume his career with the Braves in a few weeks. He’ll always be remembered for revolutionizing the art of pitch framing.

— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) May 14, 2021

Chris Davis. O's will still pay the remainder of his salary though. Worst contract ever?

7-year peak WAR: 18.8
career WAR: 11.7

amazing

i feel like we did the math at one point - and it was a yes.

xpost

i guess mike leake is done? opted out last year; this year no one was apparently interested in a 33yo with terrible strikeout numbers

Came across Justin Smoak's name this morning and wondered where he was, if anywhere. Baseball Reference says he played his last game Sept. 17, 2020, age 33. We could probably have a separate thread for Invisible COVID-era Retirements.

whoa

BREAKING NEWS: Sources tell The Athletic that Buster Posey will announce his retirement tomorrow. More to come...

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) November 3, 2021

i don't understand?

is it because of joey bart? but even then, couldn't posey play 1B/DH (and C when bart isn't playing, if that's the idea)?

I feel old with this news!

the impression I get with Joey Bart is that he’s not developing as they’d like him too? And he’s starting to get old for a prospect….

Just reading about Joey Bart for the first time, but unless Posey's banged up more than we know--or he's just lost interest--that's hard to understand.

He'd definitely be leaving on a Costanza high-note, and he's not a guy who needs to stick around for a title, but I don't know, his HOF status might be precarious without a little more bulk--or would it, I don't know.

I think Buster is automatic for the Hall.

It's worth remembering that he opted out of playing last year.

2020: "If these babies hadn't been born right now and weren't premature, I probably would be playing," Posey said. "I do think it's very much an individual decision because we're all trying to decipher information that's changing rapidly."

whatever he misses for shortness of career i think he easily makes up for with mvp/roy/batting title/three-time champ (and it's not like having his leg broken or there being a pandemic was his fault)

bart appears to be a perfectly serviceable mlb catcher at worst -- on most other teams i imagine he'd have been in the majors this year

too bad, though -- i like busty

I had to look up that quote--didn't know about his twin daughters.

Maybe after that meh 2019 and then covid, he’d made up his mind about retiring and had a sort of final hurrah adrenaline rush.

Honestly I’m on the fence about his HoF situation. 45 career WAR is awful low for the hall.

He’s Mauer with slightly more power and a much shorter career.

Trying to think of the last under-35 retiree who was still playing very well.

Honestly I’m on the fence about his HoF situation. 45 career WAR is awful low for the hall.

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall)

worth mentioning that fWAR has him at 57.6. he greatly benefited from their adding some sort of catcher framing value a year or two back.

and even just going by bWAR, i imagine that catchers have a lower overall average HOF WAR than any other position (other than relief pitcher)

JAWS has him as the 14th-best catcher of all time, which is good enough for me

(the top 11 are in the hall; 12 and 13 are thurman munson and gene tenace)

yadi molina is in the hall of fame

just staying

sigh

i fuckin love gene tenace

Mauer vs Posey is interesting!

https://stathead.com/baseball/player-comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&player_id1=mauerjo01&player_id2=poseybu01&type=b

i fuckin love gene tenace

for some reason i do too, never having seen him play. i had baseball card and i liked the cut of his jib, i liked his stats, and i liked the name gene tenace

mauer's a hall of famer imo. thing about comparing the two directly, though, is that mauer played so much of his career at 1B, where his bat was less valuable than as a catcher.

Posey:

C: 1080 games
1B: 219
DH: 31

Mauer:

C: 897
1B: 593
DH: 304

in other words, if you two players who are both similar career-level hitters (like posey and mauer, to a degree), i'll take the one that plays catcher most often, because a good catcher+hitter is much more valuable than the first base equivalent

Molina played so much longer than either of those guys, and all at catcher, and his defensive stats are off the charts good. But his offense is nothing special. It's cool that he seemed to get better as he got older.

i personally dislike yadi but i can't ignore the accumulation. being a big league catcher is incredibly hard and he's done it awfully well for fucking ever

there is absolutely a place in my hall for a league-average hitter who spent most of two decades absolutely terrifying baserunners and piling up dWAR

WAR aside, I think Posey has it over Mauer for various (obvious) reasons.

I saw Gene Tenace play lots. We were really stupid then, so we just thought he was a catcher with a low batting average.

"The Face of Baseball," Posey vs. David Wright...taking a wild guess that would look different today.

very sad about this news, i think Posey just wants to be with his family. the Giants were going to pick up his 22MM offer or even work out a longer deal.

the Bart era begins

Looking at Posada who had way more homers but was trash on D... looking at Munson who was Posey-esque but died young. Lots of interesting comparisons out there among the non-enshrined guys.

"the Bart era"

words that only appear once, ever

haha sorry

i sure do hope Posey makes Cooperstown, his numbers might be short but that should change a bit with time or hoping

he will 100% make it, has a better case than current hall of famer yadier molina iirc

I hadn't thought about it, but in a Posnanski column on Posey today, he mentions that comparisons to Munson have been frequent the past few days.

Posey (1371 games): .302/.372/.460, 158 HR, 129 OPS+, 44.9 bWAR, ROY, MVP, 3 World Series titles
Munson (1423 games): .292/.346/.410, 113 HR, 116 OPS+, 46.1 bWAR, ROY, MVP, 2 World Series titles

Definite offensive edge to Posey--was Munson's defense that great that he comes out ahead on bWAR? Anyway, I think Munson should be in the HOF, so that's not meant to bring Posey's case into question.

saw a thing on reddit claiming that posey had the third-best final-season fWAR of all-time -- behind two black sox -- but i'm guessing that it was not accurate because i can no longer find it

i suspect his 4.9 is up there, although i have no idea how to search for that

Position players, I assume--not sure what Koufax's fWAR was, but his bWAR was 10.3 in 1966.

(fWAR = 9.1)

no doubt

David Ortiz comes to mind too: 5.2 bWAR, 4.5 fWAR.