I sometimes wonder why players who haven't been on a ML roster for a while officially retire – there must be technicalities that are not obvious from outside. Or maybe just the desire to have a formal occasion. I suppose somebody could unretire if they got a midseason distress call from a needy ballclub …

Kipnis was a good ballplayer. I remember him as an outstanding ballplayer, because (checking B-Ref), Kipnis hit .325/.396/.533 in Arlington for his career … I take it he didn't match that everywhere else :-D

Wow, I didn't realize he was even an active player. That extension looked great at the time, unfortunately the bat fell off (injuries). Very solid player for a while.

A member of the AL second base class of 2016, perhaps the best league-wide season of hitting by the position in MLB history.

He did play in AAA in 2021 -- put up a nice line even, 290/390/518. So I suppose maybe he was hoping for something to pop up in 2022 here or in Japan/Korea but obviously it didn't. Or he seems to have been hurt off and on in 2021 so maybe he was rehabbing in 2022 hoping for one last shot.

<blockquote>
I sometimes wonder why players who haven't been on a ML roster for a while officially retire – there must be technicalities that are not obvious from outside. Or maybe just the desire to have a formal occasion. I suppose somebody could unretire if they got a midseason distress call from a needy ballclub …</blockquote

I'm guessing you keep the phone open in case some one calls, then once its clear they won't, they file the paperwork.

Cheers to the former Glenbrook North Spartan. A fine career. Glad you got to finish up with a division championship for the hometown team.

Congratulations on a fine career. He got to play in the World Series, made a few All-Star teams, and made $53 million playing major league baseball for parts of 10 years. So many kids dream of doing something like this, and he got to do it. Whenever I see a player like this retire or see their career end, I try to put myself in their shoes. It must be tough to be in your 30s and know that you chased a dream - then lived the dream - but now that dream has ended...and you've still got 40-50 years left to live.

I've got to think a lot of pro athletes struggle quietly after their career ends, because it has been their identity since childhood. But I also wonder what percentage of former MLB players end up with careers directly related to baseball once they are no longer playing. Is it 25%? 75%? I honestly have no idea.

I also wonder what percentage of former MLB players end up with careers directly related to baseball once they are no longer playing

It's a very interesting question. I took a quick look at the roster of the 1989 Texas Rangers, simply because it's the first team I followed here in Texas and the players are by now long into whatever second career they've had. Basically, I can't find any who took up a second career outside of baseball. Granted, the Internet is only going to be interested in them as ballplayers, but one would think you'd find LinkedIn pages or other professional traces for guys who established themselves in business or other fields, if they'd gone into them.

The majority coached at some level, amateur or pro baseball. Quite a few seem to have devoted themselves to a son or sons' baseball careers, and the coaching was apparently a way to stay in with that. The stuff you read about "spending more time with family" is sometimes true. Others simply retired very young (a lot of notable guys played on that team and made huge sums of money even given the lower salaries of the 1980s & '90s). One guy who appears in numerous stories is Rick Leach, who was a football star at Michigan and has been retired in Petoskey, MI for a long time. He just seems to have retired.

A couple went into announcing (Jamie Moyer) or front offices (Nolan Ryan) or both (Jim Sundberg). Not many finished their education – one exception is Brad Arnsberg, who took classes for a while at my university and has a bachelor's and master's from Louisiana Tech; but Arnsberg too has stayed in baseball coaching.

And salaries have only gone up since those days, and the MLBPA has very substantial retirement benefits that kick in young. The days of obligatory second careers seem long past for anyone with much ML service time.

He was Cleveland's best player for a couple of years, got to play and perform very well in a WS, then his career kind of crash-landed. I remember him as an excellent fantasy player with good doubles and steals numbers.

The Athletic has been running a series on the best 30 Cleveland players of the past 30 years, and Kipnis came in at #22, which seems a bit low, but I can't strongly argue for him over some of the others. Maybe Charles Nagy and Michael Brantley, Kipnis probably is more well-regarded than those two. Excerpt from the list:

• No. 25: David Justice
• No. 24: Shane Bieber
• No. 23: Cody Allen
• No. 22: Jason Kipnis
• No. 21: Cliff Lee
• No. 20: Carlos Carrasco
• No. 19: Bartolo Colon
• No. 18: Charles Nagy
• No. 17: Victor Martinez
• No. 16: Sandy Alomar Jr.
• No. 15: Carlos Baerga
• No. 14: Carlos Santana
• No. 13: Travis Hafner
• No. 12: Michael Brantley
• No. 11: Roberto Alomar
• No. 10: Grady Sizemore

As noted, most players will have lived and breathed baseball (and sports generally) since they were 12. The players out of Latin America and high-school draftees would have virtually no useful education for a career outside of baseball. But there are only so many minor-league coaching and scouting spots and I assume that you have to get a degree of some sort to coach HS baseball/sports, at least in a public school.

Bobby Scales has a LinkedIn page. He "did it right," using his baseball scholarsip (I assume) to pick up a BA in sports management at Michigan, won some sort of student-athlete service award, toiled for a decade mostly in the minors, finally got his brief time in the majors, parlayed that into front office jobs getting as high as Director of Player Development with the Angels. And he picked up corporate HR lingo along the way ("Blaze a progressive path forward for the Pirates as a thought leader in baseball development. Further coaching and player development praxis...")

I'm also kinda surprised that Kipnis didn't manage to catch on somewhere. He had a not-terrible 2020 with the Cubs, played well in 2021 in AAA, and then ... nothing, I guess. Seems like he would have been worth a shot to someone, somewhere.

I have some sympathy for him - it's gotta suck to want to keep playing and no one wants you, especially when you spent some time as an All-Star caliber player. But at the same time, you actually have to choose to "end your career on your own terms." Some guys have sudden, catastrophic injuries that force their hand, but the reason most players don't get to leave on their own terms is that they simply decide not to before the league decides for them.

But still, it's gotta suck.

The big thing I remember with Kipnis -- HUGE Cubs fan growing up (He's from Northbrook, I think)... so, of course, gets to the 2016 WS with the Indians and of course... Then - he finally gets to come home, but for the pandemic year and they get swept out against the GD Marlins.

[11-Brian C] I get what you're saying, and it's not that I don't have sympathy for Kipnis, the feelings hidden in his statement, or that this sucks for him. But besides having earned 54M ways to dab his eyes, and that he'll always have two large photos on the wall of himself on the field at baseball's ASG, it was his time to say goodbye, and hopefully good on him for accepting that.

Baseball has always been a numbers game. Kipnis is a 36 yo minor league free agent 2B. There are only 30 MLB teams, and 100% of them have a 2B who is either unarguably better than him, or already under contract that they would have to pay out if they released him to try Kipnis, or under 26yo and still considered a prospect who is hoped will be better than 36/37/38yo Kipnis, so he's not pushing them out. And the team situation is probably similar at AAA, which is why he couldn't even get a minor league invite to spring training. Absent a horrific death crash at the keystone (or the Loop 101-I10 exit) he was looking at a season of independent ball or some foreign league like Korea, Italy or Israel? Maybe nobody in Korea or Taiwan would take him (as they have their own prospect developing system) and while other parts of Europe/Asia might sound like a good summer holiday to us peons, perhaps Kipnis has switched to other priorities, like family?

Or diving? What about driving, maybe he wants to work for Uber Eats? [Don't do it, Jason!] Woodworking? Clearing snow out of Glenbrook parking lots in the winter, throwing soft-toss to the HS team in summer? Hey, whatever Kipnis wants to do now, let him do it: it no longer involves trying to hit a 100 mph FB, and probably a secret relief. But he's still got half a lifetime to say "yeah, I used to be able to do that. Was pretty good at it too."

The Athletic has been running a series on the best 30 Cleveland players of the past 30 years, and Kipnis came in at #22, which seems a bit low, but I can't strongly argue for him over some of the others. Maybe Charles Nagy and Michael Brantley, Kipnis probably is more well-regarded than those two. Excerpt from the list:

• No. 25: David Justice
• No. 24: Shane Bieber
• No. 23: Cody Allen
• No. 22: Jason Kipnis
• No. 21: Cliff Lee
• No. 20: Carlos Carrasco
• No. 19: Bartolo Colon
• No. 18: Charles Nagy
• No. 17: Victor Martinez
• No. 16: Sandy Alomar Jr.
• No. 15: Carlos Baerga
• No. 14: Carlos Santana
• No. 13: Travis Hafner
• No. 12: Michael Brantley
• No. 11: Roberto Alomar
• No. 10: Grady Sizemore

[9] Thanks, Moppo. Lots of memories there. For a Canadian who lives a good long day's drive from any MLB park (in a place without a minor league affiliated park for decades) I've actually seen a lot of quality live baseball, and luckily a lot of it was the 90s Cleveland Indians. I was at #455. (By hacking a DirectTV dish [unavailable in Canada, at any price] in the 2000s, I was able to watch even more from my living room.) I've seen all of those guys play at Jacobs, except for Bieber and Carrasco, but that's sometimes the way it goes with pitchers, they're not on the mound the day you drop in for a trip.

As to the list, I'd like to see the rest of it? (That's not an order, Blotto, that's a friendly neighbour request.)

I think Nagy is rightly above Kipnis, but I agree Kip could be ahead of Brantley.
And Bradley, I hope Milton Bradley is not in the top 9?

Without checking BBREF, off the top of my head, keeping with the pitcher idea:
* Kluber
* C.C.
must be still to come. They've thrown Cody Allen on there already, and there's no way Bob Wickman makes a list this great, and I can't think of another reliever besides Andrew Miller who could consistently get anybody out for more than a month or two.

On to the player side...
* Kenny comes to mind first. {That'll tell you what I thought/think of Kenny Lofton.} What a ####### player!
* Thome.
* Manny.
* Fryman.
* Joey.
Then who? Hmm...
* Jose Ramirez. {Full stop. He belongs in this convo.}
But double hmmm...
* Shin-Soo Choo?

That's 9. Alas, that leaves out Lindor, but he probably makes the cut.

So...bye-bye Choo-choo? {That sounds so wrong, in so many of today's ways: it's about 19thC trains full of coal pollution, it sounds racist towards Asians, it's dismissive of the need for all humans to need a solid fibula to walk the earth that they would leave out a guy named "Shin" but them's the breaks...he's OUT!}

* Kenny comes to mind first. {That'll tell you what I thought/think of Kenny Lofton.} What a ####### player!
* Thome.
* Manny.
* Fryman.
* Joey.
Then who? Hmm...
* Jose Ramirez. {Full stop. He belongs in this convo.}
But double hmmm...
* Shin-Soo Choo?

That's 9. Alas, that leaves out Lindor, but he probably makes the cut.

Fryman seems like the obvious drop here - he was only in Cleveland for 5 years and only any good in two of them.

Albert Belle probably beats a couple folks. Perhaps literally. If they are taking the 30 year thing seriously he loses a couple okay years.