"Why am I making a post about LaTroy Hawkins?", some of you may be wondering. Others may be wondering "Who's LaTroy Hawkins?" I suspect that he is someone who doesn't get blogged about much.
He played with the Astros in 2008-2009 so I'm familiar with his name. When I pulled his card from 2015 Topps, my first thought was "This guy is still playing?". The last LaTroy Hawkins card I had seen was 2011 Topps.
At 42, Hawkins is the oldest player in MLB. He's in his 21st year in the majors. He's the only active player in the 1,000 innings pitched club. All of these are major accomplishments. He may have a career record of 73-94 record and after spending most of his career as a reliever he has only 126 saves, but he's still working. Teams are willing to pay him real money to pitch. The Rockies are paying him $2.5 million this year. And he saved 23 games for them in 2014 in 26 tries.
Hawkins was the 7th round draft pick by the Twins way back in 1991 when he was 19 years old. He broke into the majors with the Twins in 1995 and played 9 seasons with them. Since then he's played for the Cubs, Giants, Orioles, Rockies, Yankees, Astros, Brewers, Angels, Mets and now back with the Rockies. Whew!
In December he had said that 2015 would be his last year. He is currently on the DL.
1 comment:
Although currently the oldest MLB player he actually doesn't have the longest service time. I believe that is Alex Rodriguez. Hawkins made is ML debut on 4/29/95. A-rod made his on 7/8/94.
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