After 18 seasons in the big leagues, Trevor Hoffman has finally decided to hang up his cleats.
Baseball's all-time saves leader, who many consider to be the National League's all-time greatest closer, is trading Hells Bells for a cushy desk job with the San Diego Padres front office. He had this to say during his retirement announcement at the podium atop Petco Park's home plate Wednesday:
Really, the one word that kept recurring was how thankful I was to be a part of major league baseball, how thankful I was to be able to put a uniform on and be a kid until I was 43, to be a part of the baseball family.Over his illustrious career, Hoffman converted an incredible 601 saves in 667 opportunities, including 552 in more than 15 seasons with the Padres. The seven-time All-Star was runner-up for the NL Cy Young Award on two different occasions as well, but lost to Randy Johnson in 1998 and Brandon Webb in 2006.
Hoffman's long stint with San Diego ended rather abruptly before the 2009 season when talks cooled with the club and he moved to Milwaukee to save Brewers games for a couple years.
Upon a less-than-successful 2010 season with the Brew Crew, Hoffman has decided to call it a career. It's rare and good to see an old schooler know when to say when.
In your opinion, is Trev a first-ballot Hall of Famer?
[MLB]
3 comments:
Tough to say whether he'll be a first-ballot HOFer... but I'd vote for him. Relievers are incredibly important to the game these days, so I think they should get more attention.
Definitely not a first ballot Hall of Famer. He converted most of his save opportunities, but only pitched a total of 1089 innings.
I agree with anonymous, he will be remembered as a good closer. A Hall of Famer he is not.
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