Adrian Beltre Retires: “It’s been one hell of a ride.”

On Monday, future Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre officially announced that he will retire from baseball via twitter.

With Adrian Beltre deciding to retire from baseball on Monday, baseball loses one of its best players. Beltre announced the decision in a statement via Twitter:

In 21 big league seasons, the kid from Santo Domingo spent time with four different teams (Rangers, Dodgers, Mariners, and Red Sox). Although Adrian Beltre is primarily known for his glove – he did after all secure five Gold Glove awards – in 2004, he was the MVP runner-up. That season, Beltre smacked 200 hits, 48 of them HR. He hit .331 with a 1.017 OPS. Unfortunately for Beltre, a little known man by the name of Barry Bonds won the award that season.

What makes Beltre so great, however, isn’t his performance in individual seasons, it’s how quietly he’s put together one of the greatest careers of all time. Anyone that shares the field with Beltre raves about how great of a teammate he is… so long as you keep your hands off of his head. Just ask teammate Elvis Andrus.

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Adrian Beltre entered the 3,000 hits club in 2017 while with the Texas Rangers. It was then that pundits and analysts began to notice just how great Beltre actually is. In fact, if we compare Beltre to a player most feel will be inducted in to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot – i’m talking about Derek Jeter – there’s no question that Beltre will eventually be right there alongside him.

For their respective careers, this is how Beltre (12,130 PA) compares to Jeter (12,602 PA):

• Hits – Beltre (3,166) / Jeter (3,465)
• OBP – Beltre (.339) / Jeter (.377)
• SLG – Beltre (.480) / Jeter (.440)
• OPS – Beltre (.819) / Jeter (.817)
• WRC+ – Beltre (115) / Jeter (119)

Jeter edges Beltre in terms of ability to hit for contact. In contrast, Beltre edges Jeter out in terms of power production. In fact, Betre is only 23HR short of 500, where Jeter only has 260 HR.

The bottom line is, we’ve been lucky to have witnessed Adrian Beltre play over the last 21 years. To use Beltre’s own words: “It’s been one hell of a ride.”