I have been accused by friends and fellow baseball fans of excessive and unwarranted mourning when a MLB player’s career comes to a crashing end with a DFA. I don’t know why, but I feel sad for guys, even the ones I rooted against or did damage to my team. It’s the end of a life, a baseball life, and it’s a sad event. For example, when the Braves let Jose Bautista go earlier this week after around 35 at bats, I felt terrible for him. I thought it could be the end of the line for him until the Mets picked him up today.
Now comes the even sadder news that the Twins have DFA’d former Yankee Phil Hughes:
Twins designate starter Hughes for assignment
https://es.pn/2GF9Lgk
Hughes came up in 2007 at the same time as another highly touted Yankees pitcher, Joba Chamberlain, and a equally or more highly touted Red Sox pitcher, Clay Bucholz. None of the 3 ended up having a great career, although Hughes and Chamberlain were contributors on the Yankees 2009 Championship season and both had some decent moments. Buchholz had probably 2 good years and was wildly inconsistent. It seems like all 3 battled injuries and never approached the greatness some thought they could achieve. Amazingly Buchholz managed to find employment with the Arizona DBacks (for now, anyway) but Hughes may well have thrown his last MLB pitch, his career derailed by a succession of injuries with thoracic outlet syndrome being the final nail in his coffin.
So many great MLB players had their careers derailed by injuries. The two that come to mind quickly are a Yankee, Don Mattingly, and a Red Sox, Nomar Garciaparra. Both were great players for 4-5 years before getting hurt and not again performing on a great level. Kind of sad. Mattingly was the best first baseman I have ever seen, and was a tremendous hitter. The only thing he couldn’t do was run. Garciaparra had a 3 or 4 year span when he was arguably better than ARod or Derek Jeter, his contemporaries, but did not possess their durability.
The saddest and most sudden demise of a MLB player I have seen is a tie between Chili Davis and Dave Justice, both of whom played with the Yankees at the end of their careers. Chili Davis kind of lost it in the second half of the 1999 season. Could no longer hit fastballs and MLB pitchers went after him relentlessly with steady heat. I watched as he popped up hittable pitch after hittable pitch until I was ready to puke. I just wanted Joe Torre to put him out of his misery, euthanize him to the bench.
Justice, portrayed loosely by a character in the movie “Moneyball”, inexplicably lost the ability to make any contact at the end and started striking out with alarming frequency. While Chili lost it at age 39, Justice went to shit at age 34, a demise likely hastened by his off field partying and carousing. He was a talented player in his prime, though.
I should add that ARod was pretty bad in the half year before he got released. He was at the end much like Chili Davis, couldn’t hit good fastballs. When you get old, the bat slows down and your exit velos dwindle, MLB knows, and MLB will bury an aging hitter with a steady and unrelenting diet of hard heat. And I just feel bad watching this because it’s like watching your old dog die. It’s never pretty until the plug is pulled.