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Hello and welcome to episode 1791 of Effectively Wild. A fan-graphed baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm McRally of Fangraphs and I joined as always by Ben Limberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm alright. Kyle Seeger, huh? I did not seeker that coming.

I don't know that I've been a great influence on you. No. I don't know that I do it as well. See you too, either.

Yeah, how about that, huh? Weird. Yeah. Yeah. Because he got to go out with his nice ovation and everything and a pretty decent season, which is what made it strange and surprising, unusual, right?

That he decided to write off into the sunset after being, what, at least an average major league player, right? All told. And setting career highs in some categories, home runs and RBI.

And even if those aren't always the most telling categories, they usually matter a lot to players and hitting 35 dingers, even in this era is no joke. I saw some stats going around about how I think what he's tied for the second most home runs in what will be a final MLB season with Dave Kingman behind only David Ortiz.

So still a decent hitter, pretty good hitter and at least by some metrics can still handle the club. So surprising. What he just turned 34 last month. Yeah.

Craig Goldstein reminded me of the fact that he is younger than both of us. That's not nice to say. That's not nice thing to say. Yeah. I do not have any special insight here. So it should make that clear. But I imagine that if you've made $100 million and you have young kids, like he and his wife have three kids and they're all, you know, like elementary school aged.

And you're at this crossroads where you're definitely still employable. I imagine that Seeker would have had his share of of options once the lockout ends, but you're probably entering the phase of your career where you're looking at one to two year deals.

And that involves a lot of moving around and you know, I would imagine that there would be teams that would sign him with the understanding that they might trade him at the deadline if he performs well. And so I can, I can imagine saying I have $100 million.

I mean, he probably doesn't have all of that anymore. He probably has bets. I'm a bit, you know, but I have $100 million. Hopefully he invested it. Maybe he has more.

Right. I have, I have young kids who I now get to watch grow up in a more, you know, direct way more every day kind of way than I might otherwise. And I'm good with that. You know, I think it's a very underrated thing to be able to decide you're done with the game.

The game tends to decide it is done with you, you know, people don't often get to pick the moment when they write off. That was part of what made Ortiz's final season so remarkable, right? Not only did he get the retirement tour, but he had this great season.

Like he was just a good year.

I think that the Seekers was sort of across the board, but like, you know, he had this great year and he got to pick the note that he went out on. And I think that when these guys are coming up, you know, they're like young bright things, you know, they're strong, great boys.

They're going to live forever, right? Because that's what you think when you're in your early 20s that you're like invincible and you're going to be strong and fluid and, and capable forever. And, you know, then you roll over when you're 33 and bed and your neck hurts for like two weeks.

So, you know, we are humbled pretty quickly. And so to be able to decide, I've done what I feel I need to and now I get to enjoy life with my family is I think a pretty incredible thing to be able to do.

I would have enjoyed watching Seeker play more. He was definitely a favorite of mine in his era was Seattle. Like I tweeted this, but it's really it's really hard to overstate like how much worse it would have been to watch the mayor.

For the last decade without Kyle Seeker, it would have been a lot worse. So here's a star. I mean, maybe not in terms of name recognition, but value wise in that three or four year peak that he had.

I mean, he was five six win player, at least like he was legitimately really good for a while there. And yeah, even though he had the big power numbers this year, he had a 285 on base.

So he's clearly like past the prime of Kyle Seeker, I think, but he still played almost every game and still could have helped someone. Maybe he wouldn't have like the terms of the contract offers that he got.

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