Freddy Garcia to retire from baseball

According to MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez, veteran pitcher Freddy Garcia will retire after a 21-year professional career, 15 seasons of which were spent in Major League Baseball. The 39-year-old hurler is currently pitching for Venezuela’s Tigres de Aragua in the Caribbean Series final, after which he will close the book on an extensive life in baseball.

Garcia hasn’t appeared in a regular season game since 2013 with the Atlanta Braves, but most fans will certainly know him from one of his stints with seven different clubs over the years. Signed by the Houston Astros as an amateur free agent in 1993, Garcia was shipped to Seattle in the deal that sent future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson to the ‘Stros for the stretch run of the 1998 campaign.

Garcia would make his big league debut for the Mariners a year later, and he quickly developed into an effective major league starter. He went 17-8 with a 4.07 ERA in his first season, finishing behind only the Royals’ Carlos Beltran in the AL Rookie of the Year race.

In 2001 Garcia enjoyed arguably the best season of his career, going 18-6 with an AL-best 3.05 ERA while tossing 238.2 innings, also the league’s high mark that year. He earned the first of two career All-Star appearances and came in third in AL Cy Young voting for his efforts.

If you were still watching at that point, you might recall Garcia as the AL pitcher still on the mound when Commissioner Bud Selig infamously suspended the 2002 Midsummer Classic, ending the game in a 7-7 tie after 11 innings.

While he never quite reached those heights again, Garcia remained a fairly durable and reliable pitcher for many more seasons. From 2002 to 2013, the right-hander posted a 4.34 ERA (102 ERA+) for the Mariners, White Sox, Phillies, Tigers, Yankees, Orioles and Braves. He attempted to make the Braves’ big league roster again in 2014 but was released in Spring Training.

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Over the next two years, Garcia spent time in Taiwan, the Dodgers’ minor league system and Mexico before winding up in his native Venezuela again. He is expected to make his final start today. His manager Eddie Perez (also the Braves’ bullpen coach) expects a fitting end to a long career:

“Knowing that it’s his last game is going to make it very special. We all hope he pitches a really good game so he can retire in a good way and bring the title for Venezuela. Everybody who is rooting for Venezuela expects him to do well.”