It’s 2023. I’m 33 years old, I’m with the Boston Red Sox, and I’m pitching through a tremendous amount of pain going into spring training.
But I was optimistic. I was throwing well. I genuinely believed I was going to stick in big league camp for a while.
Low and behold — first or second round of cuts, I get called into the office.
The GM, the manager, the pitching coach. All in the room. I sit down and there’s complete silence. Nobody says anything. Then the GM breaks the ice — they’re sending me down to minor league camp.
I looked around the room. Alex Cora — the manager — put his head down and said something like, “Yeah, I got nothing.”
That stuck with me. Not in a bad way toward Alex. But that moment — that silence, that head drop — left a sour taste in my mouth that never really went away.
For the rest of spring training my attitude changed. I was disappointed. Confused. Bummed out. I didn’t pitch in a single minor league game — all my appearances were in big league games — but I was living in minor league camp. That’s its own kind of purgatory.
Fast forward to the season. I get called up in May and I’m pitching well. My fastball is below average, I’m in pain, but I’m getting the job done.
The problem is I can’t keep a spot. I’m up for a day, maybe two, then back down to Triple-A. Up, down, up, down. I started to become miserable.
The same thing had happened to me in 2021 — up and down eleven times that season. Eleven. That does something to you mentally. You can’t settle. You can’t breathe. You’re always in between.
And now it’s happening again and I’m 33 and I’m hurting and I’m starting to ask myself — how much longer can I actually do this?
The breaking point came on a Monday.
I’d pitched three innings over the weekend and got called back up to Boston. My flight gets delayed because some guy got so drunk they had to pull him off the plane. I don’t land until 5am. I have to be at the stadium at noon.
That night I pitch almost three innings of one-run baseball.
Three days off. Then a doubleheader — I pitch in both games.
Then I get sent back down to Triple-A.
My arm was cooked. I went on the seven-day IL with forearm tightness. And the moment I came off the IL, the Red Sox DFA’d me.
At that point I was done mentally. Physically. I elected free agency and signed with the Dodgers — I’d always wanted to pitch at Dodger Stadium, that was real — but my second Triple-A game, the forearm tightened up again. I called the farm director and told him I thought this was it.
And I went home.
Was it embarrassing? Of course. Would I have loved to pitch at Dodger Stadium? Absolutely.
But my body and my mind couldn’t do it anymore. I never knew what the next day was going to bring. That uncertainty — after 13 years — had finally worn me all the way down.
I attempted a comeback a few months later. Had a stint in the Dominican and Mexico. But my arm and my mentality couldn’t keep up and I knew it. I knew it in a way I hadn’t let myself know it before.
It was time.
I’m writing about all of it — the career, the releases, the money, what nobody tells you about life in professional baseball. Subscribe to follow along.
That's the problem with equating options with years. In the past, every call-up counted as one option. When a man earned a call-up, it was, relatively speaking, long-term. Now, there is yet another level of baseball. A level that requires young men, still trying to hone their skills, to pick up and leave on a moment's notice, travel hundreds or thousands of miles, find a place to eat and sleep, and then show up to the ballpark prepared to face the best hitters in the world. Then, turning around, and joining the minor league club wherever they happen to be playing the next night. All this while knowing that, if they're successful the first time, they'll probably have to repeat this process again in a few weeks.
Sherriff does a great job of describing the human toll it takes for these young men to be put on this itinerant lifestyle while attempting to play their best.
I believe this has been detrimental to the development of two Orioles in particular: Cade Povich and Trey Gibson.
The powers that be should give these young players a little of the respect that the established stars are getting. In the words of Sammy Basillo, "We're not robots."
Always felt that bullpen arms get completely overused. It’s really a shame your career ended that way.