{"id":422774,"date":"2026-01-21T03:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/422774\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T03:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:27:08","slug":"red-sox-fan-favorite-hints-at-retirement-rather-than-playing-in-2026-mlb-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/422774\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox fan favorite hints at retirement rather than playing in 2026 MLB season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rich Hill’s MLB career may, finally, be over.<\/p>\n

The well-traveled southpaw, who pitched more seasons with the Boston Red Sox<\/a> than anyone else, may be calling it quits.<\/p>\n

He appeared on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast<\/a> and didn’t use the word retire. But he said, “I don’t have any plans on playing next year.”<\/p>\n

Hill most recently pitched in two games with the Kansas City Royals<\/a> at the MLB level in 2025.<\/p>\n

In his lengthy MLB career, Hill has pitched for the Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, Pirates, Rays, Orioles, Yankees, Athletics<\/a>, Mets, Padres, Twins, Angels and Royals.<\/p>\n

His 74 appearances with the Red Sox are the most he’s made with any team, and he had a 3.34 ERA with Boston.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Carlos Beltran has contentious hat decision for Hall of Fame<\/a><\/p>\n

Hill pitched 69 times with the Dodgers with a 3.16 ERA.<\/p>\n

He made 64 appearances for the Cubs (4.37 ERA) and 63 with Cleveland (6.28 ERA).<\/p>\n

Hill has appeared in 21 MLB seasons overall, including his age-45 campaign in 2024 with the Royals.<\/p>\n

His MLB career includes 1,418 innings and a 4.02 ERA with 1,432 strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Hill was originally a fourth-round pick by the Cubs in 2002 out of the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n

He’ll turn 46 in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for open possibilities to stay in the game of baseball and be a contributory factor,\u201d Hill said on the podcast. \u201cI enjoy the work aspect of whatever it might be that\u2019s next. I think that\u2019s one thing that\u2026 why athletes get hired in other positions and other\u2026 outside of sports is because they are highly-driven people that want to succeed. And that\u2019s something that I\u2019m looking forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’d make sense for Hill to be done, but it also seems like you can never say never with this guy. Somehow, he remained effective as long as pretty much anyone in this modern era. He could probably still get MLB outs if he wanted to.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rich Hill’s MLB career may, finally, be over. The well-traveled southpaw, who pitched more seasons with the Boston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-422774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}