Jun 16, 2016; Minneapolis, MN, USA; New York Yankees designated hitter Alex Rodriguez (13) looks on during pre game batting practice before a game against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Top 10 list of the most disappointing final seasons in MLB history containing many of the game’s all-time great players.
The 2016 season may be remembered for some of the most disappointing final seasons in MLB history for some once-great ballplayers. Mark Teixeira is straddling a .200 batting average and has announced he will retire at the end of the year. Alex Rodriguez was given one final week to mostly languish on the bench before he was released from his player’s contract with the New York Yankees even as he’s four home runs short of 700.
Prince Fielder’s body won’t allow him to continue to play, despite being just 32 years old, which is still relatively young in the “real world” but already in the decline phase of a baseball player’s career. Fielder’s very emotional press conference was heartbreaking to watch.
All three of these players are having disappointing seasons. This is not uncommon in baseball, but sad for the player and fans just the same. We would all love to see players go out like David Ortiz, currently having one of the best seasons of his career. Sandy Koufax went out at the very top of his game. His final season was 1966, when he was 30 years old. He won the Cy Young Award for the third time in four years, led the league in wins, starts, complete games, shutouts, ERA, innings pitched, and strikeouts. He was 27-9 with a 1.73 ERA. The he hung up his spikes because the pain in his arm was too unbearable to continue to pitch.
Ty Cobb hit .323/.389/.431 as a 41-year-old in his final season. Barry Bonds hit .276/.480/.565 in his final year. Even at 42 years old, Bonds led the league in on-base percentage and intentional walks. Of course, the poster child for great final seasons is Ted Williams, who hit .316/.451/.645 as a 41-year-old for the Red Sox in 1960. Williams’ home run in his final at-bat inspired John Updike to write “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” for The New Yorker, with the famous lines regarding Williams’ career-long refusal to tip his cap to the fans—“The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”
Very few players go out the way Ted Williams went out. Most players finish their career as a shell of their former selves. The better the player was, the more disappointing his final season can be.
Expectation always plays a role in disappointment. Joe Posnanski has a plus-minus system for rating movies he’s seen. If you go into a movie expecting it to be a 1 and it is a 1, you’ve received what you expected. If you go in expecting a movie to be a 5 and it’s a 2, that’s a -3. That makes it much more disappointing than the one movie even though it is objectively a better movie (2 is better than 1). Expectations matter. Someone like Willie Bloomquist (.159/.194/.174 in his final year) won’t qualify for any most disappointing final season’s list because expectations for a 37-year-old Willie Bloomquist were low to begin with. With this in mind, I rank the 10 players with the most disappointing final seasons in MLB history.
Ken Singleton, 1984 Baltimore Orioles, .215/.286/.289
Ken Singleton makes this list mainly because there was such a huge dropoff from the previous season to this one. His career fell off the proverbial cliff. Singleton had been a big part of the 1983 World Champion Baltimore Orioles when he hit .276/.393/.436 in 151 games as a 36-year-old DH. Even with the penalty associated with being a DH, Singleton was worth 2.5 WAR in 1983, according to Fangraphs. It was the 14th straight year that Singleton was an above average hitter (every season of his career, in fact, until his final season).
He was 37-years-old during the 1984 season, but no one expected Singleton’s production to plummet the way it did. He came into the season with a career on-base percentage of .393 and slugging percentage of .444. Then he went out and hit .215/.286/.289. He started slowly in April, was bad in May and June, was terrible in July (.139/.205/.139), and wasn’t much better in August. He came around a bit in September, but his season was a lost cause at that point. The Orioles went from World Series champions to fifth place in the seven team AL East.
Age-related regression hits some players gently and their performance gradually goes down. Others it hits like a tidal wave. Singleton was hit by a tsunami.
Bob Gibson, 1975 St. Louis Cardinals, 3-10, 5.04 ERA, 1.67 WHIP
Bob Gibson is famously known for a few things—his two MVP awards in the World Series, including a 3-0 record in the 1967 World Series victory over the Boston Red Sox; his record-setting 1.12 ERA in 1968, and his indomitable competitive spirit. To illustrate this point, Roger Angell wrote in The Summer Game that Gibson said about his desire to win, “I’ve played a couple hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter and she hasn’t beaten me yet. I’ve always had to win. I’ve got to win.”
Gibson won 251 games in his career, including five seasons with 20 or more victories. He won two Cy Young Awards and one MVP Award and led the league in shutouts four times.
The end of Gibson’s career came quickly. Gibson had a 2.77 ERA as a 37-year-old in 1973, then went 11-13 with a 3.83 ERA in 1974. He routinely had swelling in his knee during the ’74 season, but came back for another season in 1975. He had recently divorced from his wife and admitted to using baseball to help cope with the failed relationship.
The 1975 season did not go well as Gibson started 14 of his first 15 games but went 2-8 with a 5.13 ERA. He was moved to middle relief and had some success, allowing no runs in five of his first six outings out of the bullpen.
The end was ugly. Facing the Cubs on September 3, Gibson came into the game with the score tied 6-6 in the top of the seventh inning. He got Bill Madlock to fly out, but walked Jose Cardenal, gave up a single to Champ Summers, and walked Andre Thornton to load the bases. Gibson induced Manny Trillo to ground into a force at the plate for out number two, but a wild pitch to Jose Morales scored a run. Morales was then intentionally walked and Pete LaCock came up and hit a pinch-hit grand slam that blew the game wide open. Gibson got Don Kessinger to ground out to end the inning. It was the last inning of his career. Gibson said later, “When I gave up a grand slam to Pete LaCock, I knew it was time to quit.”
According to a story in Joe Posnasnki’s book about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds (The Machine), Gibson eventually got his revenge: “Many years later, he [Gibson] was pitching in an old-timers game. And Pete LaCock was playing too. LaCock stepped up to face Gibson, who was well into his fifties. Gibson stared him down and promptly hit LaCock in the back with a pitch. ‘Ow Bob, what gives?’ LaCock asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for years to do that,’ Gibson said.”
Pete Rose had a long, distinguished career marked by batting titles (three) and league-leading hit totals (seven). In his prime, he had enough power to hit between 10 and 16 home runs for seven straight seasons from 1965 to 1971. He was a perennial All-Star.
By the end of his career, Pete was a shell of his former self at the plate. Over his final five seasons, Rose hit .261/.348/.315. His power was almost gone, with just 5 home runs in 2,469 plate appearances during this stretch. Based on Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement, Rose was the ninth-worst everyday player in baseball from 1982-1986.
Despite his lack of production, particularly in the power department at a premium hitting position, Rose made two All-Star teams and was part of the “Wheeze Kids” Philadelphia Phillies that went to the World Series in 1983. He was still highly regarded and much loved by baseball fans as he pursued Ty Cobb’s record for career hits.
Rose got his record-breaking hit on September 11, 1985, in front of his hometown fans in Cincinnati. It was the moment he had worked so long for. After his line drive single to left off of Eric Show, the game was stopped and Rose celebrated with the fans, his teammates, owner Marge Schott, and his son, Petey. Rose was moved to tears by the moment.
Pete picked up 12 more hits to run his total to 4,204 hits by the end of the year. Had he retired after this season, he wouldn’t be on this list. Instead, he came back to play in 1986 and was terrible. As player-manager, Rose could insert himself into the lineup whenever he liked. He did so much too liberally, getting 272 plate appearances and hitting .219/.316/.270. The Reds were a second-place team that year and had 26-year-old Nick Esasky available to play first base. Esasky hit .230/.325/.403. That was slightly below league average (99 wRC+), but was much better than Rose (66 wRC+), who should have hung up his spikes after the 1985 record-breaking year.
Ken Griffey, Jr., 2010 Seattle Mariners, .184/.250/.204
Recent Hall of Fame inductee Ken Griffey, Jr. came up with the Seattle Mariners as a 19-year-old in 1989 and had one of the greatest stretches of play for any player in history through the age of 29, Griffey’s final season as a Mariner. During this 11-year stretch, Griffey hit .299/.380/.569 and averaged 36 homers and 105 RBI per season. According to Fangraphs’ WAR, only 12 position players in history were more valuable than Griffey through the age of 29.
The second half of Griffey’s career was not nearly as successful. After being worth 68.5 WAR in his first 11 seasons, Griffey was worth just 9.2 WAR over his final 11 seasons (per Fangraphs). Griffey had some years in the last half of his career that looked impressive offensively (35 homers in 2005, 30 in 2007), but his defensive numbers were terrible and cut significantly into his value. Injuries played a factor as well. Griffey averaged 140 games played in the first 11 seasons of his career, but just 103 games per year in the last 11 seasons of his career.
Most of Griffey’s decline years were with the Cincinnati Reds, the team he was traded to prior to the 2000 season. At the trade deadline in 2008, the Reds traded him to the White Sox for Nick Masset and Danny Richar. Prior to the 2009 season, Griffey signed with the Seattle Mariners.
Griffey’s second-to-last season in Seattle wasn’t great, but not that bad either. He didn’t play much in the field anymore because he was no longer the outfielder he’d once been. He wasn’t a great hitter (.214/.324/.411), but did manage 19 home runs and 57 RBI, including this, the 630th and final home run of his career:
Had he known what was to come, perhaps Griffey would have packed up his gear and retired after that home run, which came in the second-to-last game of the season. Instead, he stayed on to play another year, with ugly results.
Griffey was exclusively a DH in 2010, with almost all of his plate appearances coming against right-handed pitchers. Even that didn’t help him, though, as he hit .184/.250/.204 to close out his career. He didn’t hit a single home run in 108 plate appearances and played just once in the team’s final seven games before slipping out the back door and heading for home in the middle of the night after a pinch-hit groundout in the ninth inning of a 5-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins on May 31st. He formally announced his retirement on June 2nd.
Willie Mays came up with the New York Giants in 1951 and was a success early, as he won the Rookie of the Year Award as a 20-year-old. He then missed part of the 1952 season and all of 1953 while serving in the military during the Korean War. He came back in 1954 to win the NL MVP Award, leading the league in average and slugging percentage and making one of the greatest plays in baseball history in the 1954 World Series, a play known simply as “The Catch.”
When the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco prior to the 1958 season, Mays and his teammates took their talents to the west coast. Mays led the league in home runs three times with the San Francisco Giants, including in his MVP year of 1965, when he hit .317/.398/.645. He continued a streak of All-Star game appearances that started in 1954 and lasted through to the end of his career, in 1973.
Mays played his last full season in San Francisco in 1971 and hit .271/.425/.482. That .425 on-base percentage led the National League. He got off to a terrible start the next year and was hitting .184/.394/.224 when he was traded by the Giants to the Mets for Charlie Williams and cash. He was rejuvenated back in New York with the Mets, hitting .267/.402/.446 in 69 games after the trade. In hindsight, he should have retired after this nice, final stretch of good hitting.
The 1973 season was an odd one in the National League. The NL West had two teams with 95 or more wins and two others that finished above .500. Mays’ Mets won the NL East with a record of just 82-79. Unfortunately, the 42-year-old Mays had the worst season of his career. He hit .211/.303/.344 and it was all too apparent that he was no longer the centerfielder he’d once been. The Mets made the World Series that year, which they lost in seven games to the Oakland Athletics. Mays had two hits in seven at-bats, but had a memorable moment when he fell down trying to make a play in the outfield. He would later say, “growing old is just a helpless hurt.”
The greatest player in the history of the game was yet another of many players to have a disappointing final season. In the case of Babe Ruth, even in a disappointing season he was an above average hitter. He managed to be above average despite a .181 batting average thanks to a .359 OBP and .431 slugging percentage.
Babe Ruth played his first six years with the Boston Red Sox, primarily as a starting pitcher, winning 89 games with a 2.19 ERA. He didn’t start playing in the field until his fourth year in the big leagues, but made up for lost time by leading the league in home runs in his final two seasons with the Red Sox. Before the 1920 season, he was famously sold to the New York Yankees for $125,000. With the Yankees, he would lead the league in home runs 10 times in his next 12 seasons. He also routinely led the AL in on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Ruth last led the league in home runs in 1931, when he was 36-years-old. As he aged into his late 30s, he was still very productive with the bat, but started to miss about 20-25 games per year. His final two seasons with the Yankees coincided with the establishment of baseball’s All-Star Game in 1933 and Ruth was an All-Star both years. At the age of 39 in 1934, Ruth hit .288/.448/.537 with 22 home runs in 125 games. He had a wRC+ of 157, meaning he was still 57 percent better than the average hitter after adjusting for league and ballpark.
Despite his continued high level of play, the Yankees no longer wanted Ruth. He was the highest paid player in the game, at $35,000. According to this article from SABR, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert worked out a secret deal with Boston Braves owner Emil Fuchs to have Fuchs offer Ruth a contract that included the title of “Assistant Manager” and “Vice President”. Ruth jumped at the chance to join the Braves, hoping to someday become a Major League manager.
Ruth hit .240/.441/.480 in April of 1935, but started to slump in May. He had one final, great moment of glory on May 25 in a game in Pittsburgh when he hit three home runs and had six RBI. His 714th career home run was the first time anyone had hit a fair ball completely out of the stadium. It was the longest home run ever hit at Forbes Field. That would have been a nice game to end on, but Ruth played for another week and ending his career by going 0 for 9 in his last five games. He hung up his spikes at the end of May.
Ron Santo had the misfortune of playing in the wrong era. The bulk of his career was spent in the low-offense environment of the 1960s, which suppressed his raw numbers. He was also a big on-base percentage guy before on-base percentage became appreciated like it is today. Santo played almost his entire career for a Cubs franchise that hasn’t won a World Series since 1908, including the 1969 Cubs that went 8-17 in their final 25 games to lose the division to the upstart “Miracle Mets”.
Santo played the first 14 years of his career with the Cubs, was an All-Star nine times, and won four Gold Gloves. The Cubs wanted to trade him to the California Angels in 1973, but Santo vetoed the trade and became the first player to use the ten-and-five rule that had been negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement after the 1972 baseball strike. He didn’t want to move away from Chicago to play on the west coast. Santo hit .267/.348/.440 in 1973 and made the All-Star team.
Prior to Santo’s final season, the Cubs worked out a trade with the Chicago White Sox and Santo agreed to be moved across town. Unfortunately, the White Sox had a regular third baseman, Bill Melton, so Santo was to be used often at DH, which he disliked immensely. The White Sox also played him at second base, a position at which he had played just three games in his entire career before 1974. Santo hit .221/.293/.299 in his final season on the wrong side of Chicago wearing the wrong colored uniform.
Mike Schmidt, 1989 Philadelphia Phillies, .203/.297/.372
Schmidt had a rough start to his career.
He hit .197/.324/.367 in 145 games during his first two years in the big leagues. He finally came into his own in his third year and was a dominant hitter in the NL for the next 14 seasons, averaging 99 runs, 36 homers, and 104 RBI during this stretch. Schmidt led the NL in home runs eight times, in on-base percentage three times, and in slugging percentage five times. He was also good on the other side of the ball, winning nine Gold Gloves for his defense at third base. Oh, and he won back-to-back NL MVP Awards in 1980 and 1981, then won a third NL MVP in 1986, at the age of 36.
Schmidt was good again in 1987, when he hit 35 homers and had 113 RBI. He slowed down in 1988, hitting .249/.337/.405, and missing the last month-and-a-half of the season with an injured rotator cuff. He returned at the age of 39 and was supposedly healthy. Fans were optimistic about Schmidt, even as the team was coming off a terrible 65-96 season.
Schmidt’s final year got off to a good start. He hit .275/.343/.549 with 6 HR and 21 RBI in his first 24 games. He looked like vintage Mike Schmidt. Then, all of a sudden, it was gone. Over the last 18 games of his career, Schmidt hit .088/.229/.088. Mired in a horrible slump, he abruptly announced his retirement on May 29th. His retirement announcement to reporters was heartbreakingly emotional, as Schmidt broke down in tears.
Despite his poor numbers and already being retired, Schmidt was voted to be the starting third base for the NL All-Star team. He declined to play in the game, but was honored in a pre-game ceremony.
Nolan Ryan had one of the most remarkable careers of any player in the history of baseball. He struck out more batters than anyone, including leading the league 11 times, but he also walked more batters than anyone, leading the league in walks eight times. He was one of the most difficult pitchers ever to get a hit off of, allowing just 6.6 hits-per-nine innings, and he gave up few home runs, just 0.5 home runs allowed-per-nine innings.
Despite being such a dominant pitcher, Ryan moved around a bit during his career. He started out with the Mets, then pitched for the Angels, Astros and Rangers. He won over 300 games (324) and lost nearly 300 games (292), while also leading the league in ERA twice. As good as he was, he never led the league in wins and never won a Cy Young Award.
At the age of 42 in 1989, Ryan signed a free agent contract with the Texas Rangers. In his first four years in Texas, Ryan was 46-34 with a 3.30 ERA and 1.10 WHIP. He struck out 893 batters in 773 2/3 innings. His 10.4 K/9 during this stretch was the highest by any starting pitcher in baseball and it wasn’t particularly close. David Cone was second, with 9.1 K/9.
As good as Ryan was in his 40s, he was often slowed because of back and leg problems. His arm never seemed to age, but the rest of his body did. Before the 1993 season, Ryan announced it would be his final year. He pitched two games in April before missing three weeks and pitching again in May. He then missed 10 weeks before returning to the rotation in July. Ryan had a nice stretch of games in August in which he won three straight decisions and had a 1.80 ERA over 20 innings. This stretch included the epic takedown of Robin Ventura when the 26-year-old Ventura charged the 46-year-old Ryan after being hit by a pitch. Nolan taught the youngster a lesson:
As the season wound down in September, Ryan had one more good game still left in him. On September 17, he tossed seven scoreless innings against the California Angels that included five strikeouts and no walks, a rarity for Ryan. If the schedule held, Ryan would have one start in Seattle on the 22nd, then one or two home starts in front of the Rangers fans to close out his career.
Ryan’s final game would be the depressing culmination of a disappointing season. With the game scoreless in the bottom of the first, Ryan allowed a single to Omar Vizquel, then walked Rich Amaral and Ken Griffey Jr. to load the bases. Jay Buhner followed with a walk that forced in a run. Ryan had faced five batters and had yet to get an out.
Stepping to the plate was Dann Howitt, a guy who played 115 games in the big leagues and hit .194/.243/.326 with five home runs. One of those five home runs came in this at-bat, a grand slam for Howitt off of Nolan Ryan. Ryan stayed in to throw a couple of pitches to the next batter, but was removed mid at-bat. Reliever Steve Dreyer ended up walking the batter, which was credited to Nolan Ryan. It turned out that Ryan had torn a ligament in his arm. Even with the torn ligament, his final pitch was clocked at 98 mph. It was the worst start of his career and a very sad game to end on.
It can be easy to overlook just how good Lou Gehrig was because he was a longtime teammate of the legendary Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth was larger than life, both in production on the baseball diamond and personality off the field. Gehrig was the quiet assassin, almost as deadly with the bat, but far less audacious when the game was over.
Gehrig’s career ended at a younger age than nearly all of the great players in baseball history. His last full season came at the age of 35, when he hit .295/.410/.523, with 115 runs, 29 homers, and 114 RBI. For all position players in baseball history through the age of 35, Gehrig ranks fifth in Fangraphs WAR. The players above him are Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, and Willie Mays. Ruth, Cobb, and Mays all added at least 23 WAR after the age of 35, while Gehrig’s total dropped by 0.3 (Hornsby only gained about 2 WAR).
Gehrig’s age 35 season was the second-to-last season of his career. It was a good year for mere mortals, but not to the level that Gehrig had established for himself. In fact, his 4.9 WAR in 1938 was his lowest season total since 1925, the year he started his 2,130 consecutive games played streak.
Something seemed off with Gehrig in Spring Training of 1939. He didn’t hit with the power he’d once had and collapsed on the base paths at one point. Once the season started, he struggled mightily in April, hitting .143/.273/.143 with no extra base hits. In the field, he made two errors in his first eight games.
Gehrig’s last game was a 3-2 loss to the Washington Senators in which he was 0 for 4 at the plate. After a day off, Gehrig went to manager Joe McCarthy and said, “I’m benching myself, Joe.” He took the lineup card out to the home plate umpire himself and the announcer at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium told the fans that Gehrig was not in the lineup. The fans gave him a standing ovation as he sat on the bench with tears in his eyes.
Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS on June 19, 1939, on his 36th birthday. The Yankees announced his retirement two days later. They held “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” at Yankee Stadium on July 4th and Gehrig gave the memorable speech in which he said, “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
It’s hard to imagine any player having a more disappointing final season than Lou Gehrig. The year before, he was a 29-homer, 114-RBI guy still continuing a consecutive games played streak that would last for 2,130 games. In his final season, a devastating disease limited him to eight games before he took himself out of the lineup forever, knowing he was not the player he had once been.
Next: What About A-Rod?
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Alex Rodriguez, 2016 New York Yankees, .200/.247/.351
It’s hard to know where to place Alex Rodriguez on a list of most disappointing final seasons because of all of the twists and turns of his career. In his early years with the Seattle Mariners, he seemed to have it all. He was young, attractive, well-spoken, and incredibly talented. His 1996 season looks like something out of a video game: .358/.414/.631 with 141 R, 36 HR, 123 RBI, and 15 SB. He did all this while playing shortstop, which makes those numbers even more amazing.
Then he signed a stunning 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers and the demonization of A-Rod began. Fans of the Seattle Mariners hated him for signing that contract (irrationally, I would say, because who could pass up that contract?). For years, when he returned to Seattle he was severely booed. Early on, fans would throw dollar bills from the upper levels when A-Rod came to bat. If a Mariner pitcher struck him out, the fans would cheer passionately.
A-Rod played three years in Texas and hit .305/.395/.615 with 156 home runs. He was the AL MVP in 2003 and runner-up in 2002. He was about as good as a free agent can be, but the team wasn’t, as they finished in last place all three years he was with them. Before the 2004 season, he was traded to the Yankees for Alfonso Soriano and Joaquin Arias. Now, two fanbases hated A-Rod.
A-Rod’s time with the Yankees has been a roller-coaster. He infamously slapped Bronson Arroyo’s glove in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS, which earned him ridicule across the country.
He was demoted to eighth in the batting order in the 2006 playoffs against Detroit. In 2007, he yelled, “Ha, I got it!” as he ran from second to third to distract the Blue Jays infielders.
After being a big part of the Yankees 2009 World Series team, A-Rod was benched twice in the 2012 AL playoffs by Joe Girardi. He was constantly in the gossip pages in New York and dated a string of celebrities. After meeting with MLB officials during hearings on the Biogenesis situation, A-Rod had an angry, bitter appearance on WFAN radio. He would eventually file multiple lawsuits against MLB and Yankees team officials, all of which he would later drop. He ended up being suspended for the entire 2014 season. By this time, he had replaced the retired Barry Bonds as baseball’s biggest villain.
A-Rod came back in 2015 and tried to salvage his reputation. He had a good season at the age of 39, when he hit .250/.356/.485, but there was a stark difference between the first four months of the season—.282/.386/.544—and the final two months of the season: .191/.300/.377. The Yankees made the playoffs but lost the one-game wild card contest.
Heading into this season, there was still hope that A-Rod could be productive over the final two years of his contract. He needed 13 home runs to reach 700 and 27 to reach Babe Ruth’s 714. Those hopes never materialized. A-Rod hit .185/.274/.400 in April, then went on the DL in early May. He came back on May 26, but continued to struggle.
When the Yankees traded away Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Carlos Beltran before the trade deadline, it looked like the handwriting was on the wall. Mark Teixeira announced he would retire at the end of the year. A-Rod was the next domino to fall. It was announced that he would play his last game on Friday, August 12. He was 1-for-4 with an RBI in that game and was then released by the Yankees. He finished his career with the Yankees still four home runs short of 700 and 18 away from the Babe.
If you’re a fan of A-Rod, this was a very disappointing final season. Of course, there are many baseball fans who are not fans of A-Rod. Those fans are probably delighted that it ended like this. It all depends on your point of view whether A-Rod’s 2016 season was one of the most disappointing final seasons in MLB history or a well-deserved ending for one of baseball’s most despised players.
