Nelson Cruz, Slugger In MLB For 19 Years, Announced Retirement
Outfielder and designated hitter Nelson Cruz played his last season in 2023. This past Thursday on “The Adam Jones Podcast,” the 19-year MLB veteran, who was most recently with the San Diego Padres, shocked and mostly stunned former colleague Cruz by announcing his retirement from baseball.
After signing a contract in 1998, Cruz, now 43, played for six major league clubs over the course of the following 20 years, starting with the Milwaukee Brewers as a late-season call-up. He would play for eight different teams overall.
After sending Cruz to the minor leagues at the beginning of the season, the Brewers traded him to the Texas Rangers on July 28, 2005. Three days later, he launched a career-defining home run, his first in major league baseball.
Cruz has a career triple-slash of.274/.343/.513 overall. Throughout his career, he totaled 2,053 hits, including 464 home runs and 372 doubles. In his more than seven years with the Rangers, he hit 157 home runs, six less than he did in his brief four years with the Seattle Mariners.
Six times—three with the Mariners, twice with the Rangers, and one each with the Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins—he was named an All-Star. He also earned four Silver Sluggers. Additionally, in 2011, he was selected ALCS MVP.
Nelson Cruz had the most seasons of any player in his career—nearly eight—with the Rangers, but things didn’t work out when he left. In August 2013, Cruz received a 50-game suspension after being made public as part of the Biogenesis PED controversy. He finally declined the Rangers’ $14 million qualifying offer, missing the remainder of the season.
In an attempt to regain his worth, Cruz gambled on himself that summer and inked a $8 million, one-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles. It paid off as he had an MLB-high 40 home run season and, in December of 2014, inked a four-year deal with the Mariners.
Even though he was 38 years old when that deal expired, Cruz continued to play in the major leagues for an additional five seasons. He played for the Twins for more than two seasons, the Tampa Bay Rays for a half season, the Washington Nationals for one, and the Padres for the conclusion of his career.
Apart from the field, Cruz is also recognised for his philanthropic work. Particularly in his homeland of Las Matas de Santa Cruz, he has returned favours to the Dominican Republic.
Cruz organized a campaign that earned almost $400,000 for his neighborhood during the COVID-19 outbreak and made donations to the police and fire departments. In 2020, he was chosen by his teammates as the Marvin Miller Man of the Year, and in 2021, he was awarded the Roberto Clemente Award.
