Earlier this week, the New York Mets designated Miguel Batista for assignment.
Mets Release Miguel Batista
Miguel Batista was let go by the Mets, and with that, a little bit of baseball trivia leaves the game.
Thursday, the team announced they were letting him go:
Miguel Batista has been released by the Mets.
There was some expectation Batista would have pitched in Triple-A Buffalo’s rotation.This wouldn’t ordinarily be big news, but Batista has had quite the odyssey in an 18-year, 10-team career that took him from Pittsburgh to Florida to Chicago to Montreal to Kansas City to Arizona (where he earned a World Series ring) to Toronto, back to Arizona, to Seattle, then Washington, and finishing up with stints in St. Louis and New York. In the minors, he pitched in the Gulf Coast League before stops in Rockford, West Palm Beach, Harrisburg, Charlotte, Des Moines, Ottawa, Omaha, Buffalo and Binghamton.
Just think of the frequent-flyer miles.
Batista was the last active player to have played on a Pittsburgh Pirates team that finished with a winning record; he pitched in one game for the 96-win 1992 Pirates, who lost that year's NLCS to the Braves.
Then there’s this:
Mets release Miguel Batista into the wild.WHO strongly recommends quarantines and vaccinations to protect other 29 pitching staffs.
— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) July 26, 2012
At 41, Batista is reasonably certain to be done with baseball. He did, however, have some decent years. He was a 3-WAR player for the champion Diamondbacks in 2001, had 4 WAR for them in 2003 and saved 31 games for the 2004 Blue Jays.
Batista never made an All-Star team and was never more than a No. 3 starter. But he hung around for 18 years and pitched in two postseasons, and most major-league players never get to do that. For that, he’s at least worth remembering as he heads into likely retirement.
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