Minor league pitcher gives up 14 runs in 3 innings, immediately retires
Sometimes life deals you an unavoidable sign that you’re in the wrong line of work.
After all, not for nothing did the old demotivational poster with the picture of the order of fries and the caption “Not everyone gets to be an astronaut” get so popular in the early days of the Internet.
For 33-year-old Aaron Laffey of the Las Vegas 51s, the Mets’ Triple-A minor league affiliate, that moment came Wednesday night.
Laffey gave up 14 runs in three innings of work against the New Orleans Baby Cakes, Miami’s AAA squad, and this wasn’t a case of giving up a bunch of gopher balls either.
According to the box score, Laffey only gave up one homer. The rest was a Gashouse Gorillas conga line, one hit after another, 15 of them in fact.
Sadly for the 51s, they couldn’t just sub in Bugs Bunny at every position.
Laffey, who gave up seven and eight runs in his first two starts in Triple-A after starting the season in the independent minors, finally decided he’s seen enough, and retired.
“He just felt it from inside that he gave it everything he had after 16 years,” 51s manager Tony DeFrancesco told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Plus, the results weren’t very good so that could have been part of it. But at times, you lose your fire, and that’s where he’s at.”
Laffey spent parts of eight seasons in the majors, playing for the Indians, Mariners, Yankees, Blue Jays, Mets and Rockies and compiling a combined major league record of 26-29 with a 4.44 ERA in just shy of 500 career innings pitched. Thanks to that major league service, he retires with a decent chunk of change to his name; even at the league minimum, eight big-league contracts are worth about $4 million.
Laffey even got to experience some October baseball in his career; his lone postseason appearance came with Cleveland in the 2007 playoffs, where he pitched 4.2 innings of one-hit ball in relief in Game 6 of the ALCS, which the Indians lost 12-2.
DeFrancesco explained the reasoning behind leaving Laffey in to get shelled like a bag of peanuts in Wednesday’s game, citing his veteran’s game willingness to preserve the bullpen arms.
“We just don’t have enough bullpen depth,” DeFrancesco said. “After yesterday’s game, there’s only three relievers down there. If I use them all in the game today, there’s nobody to pitch tomorrow so that’s part of Triple-A — you have to sacrifice a game for the next two or three games.”
Indeed, with what an injury-riddled unholy mess the Mets have become, anyone in their farm system with an ounce of promise is in New York trying to salvage their nightmare of a season.
Eric Campbell, who went 4-for-4 for the Baby Cakes, spoke to the hitters’ delight that was Laffey’s pitching in this one.
“I think he was probably leaving the ball up a little more than he wanted to and we did a really good job with guys in scoring position,” Campbell said. “Guys on third with less than two outs, moving guys over, we just did everything well it seemed like tonight.”
The Baby Cakes could use the highlights for their big-league audition tape; come September, the hapless Marlins are going to be trying out just about anyone with a pulse on their 40-man roster in hopes of finding some way of moving forward after the fire sale they had last offseason, and getting good wood on the ball against a guy who’s got nothing left is essential to standing out from that pack.
Campbell spoke to the overall vibe of the game when he said, “It just seemed to be one of those nights where everything we hit was falling. Guys got more confidence so it’s easier to hit when you’ve got a hit on the board already and we just kind of kept the line moving.”
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