El Titan

On February 5, 2022, Adrian Gonzalez announced on Instagram that he’s officially retiring from professional baseball. Several years ago, I went to watch a game at Dodger stadium. Before the game started, Adrian Gonzalez was in front of the dugout to receive the NL Player of the Month award.

  Looking back at Adrian Gonzalez’s career, he won the player of the month award twice. One was in 2011 when he played for the Red Sox and the other was in 2015 when he was in the Dodgers uniform. Back in 2011, he had a great June in which he slashed .404/.478/.707 with 6 home runs and 25 RBI in 25 games. Moreover, Gonzalez heated up at the beginning of the season in 2015, he hit .383/.432/.790 with 8 home runs and 19 RBI in April. In addition, Adrian Gonzalez was selected to the All-Star game 5 times. In particular, he was selected to be an All-Star four consecutive times from 2008 to 2011. Now, let’s go deeper with some numbers in his career. Adrian Gonzalez played 15 seasons in the majors. He was selected by the Marlins with the first overall pick in 2000, but in July 2003, he was traded to the Rangers. He made it into the big league with the Rangers in 2004. However, in the first two seasons of his career, he didn’t have too many opportunities. He only played 59 games for the Rangers, hitting .229/.272/.401 with 7 home runs and 24 RBI. In January 2006, Gonzalez was traded to the Padres and he began to become a dangerous hitter in the league. In his first season with the Padres, he batted .304/.362/.500 with 24 home runs and 82 RBI. In total, Adrian Gonzalez spent 5 seasons with the Padres. He slashed .288/.374/.514 with 161 home runs and 501 RBI over 799 games. Then, he was sent to the Red Sox in December 2010. Gonzalez only played 282 games for the Red Sox and he hit .321/.382/.513 with 42 home runs and 203 RBI. Then he was traded to the Dodgers in August 2012. In total, he spent 6 seasons with the Dodgers and slashed .280/.339/.454 with 101 home runs and 448 RBI over 735 games. His last MLB game was on June 10, 2018 when he was playing for the Mets. In his 15 years in the majors, he had 7 seasons with at least 100 RBI. And, there were 4 seasons that Adrian Gonzalez crushed 30+ home runs. He hit 30+ home runs four consecutive seasons from 2007 to 2010. He hadn’t crushed 30+ home runs in a single season since 2010. He underwent shoulder surgery in 2010 and that might be a possible reason for his power decline. It was great to watch Adrian Gonzalez play at Dodger stadium. Unfortunately, I didn’t see Gonzalez blast a home run. But, when we look back at his career, it seems that his career was impacted a lot because of that shoulder surgery. He never hit 30+ home runs in a single season since that shoulder surgery. That shoulder surgery might have caused his power outage, nonetheless, there’s no doubt that he’s a great hitter. In total, he hit .287/.358/.485 with 317 home runs and 1202 RBI over the 15 years in his career.