Retirements are often sad affairs in sports. A beloved player says a final goodbye to the fans and the game that he loved so much. Fans are often left with a sorrow that they won't see their hero take the plate or make the big play just one more time.
And then, there's Vernon Wells.
The left fielder told a group of reporters on Monday that he plans to retire when his contract ends after the 2014 season. He's been with the Los Angeles Angels since a 2011 trade with the Toronto Blue Jays. It was a trade that mystified sports fans and executives alike at the time. Wells was only 3 years into a seven-year, $126 million contract. The trade netted the Blue Jays Juan Rivera and popular catcher, Mike Napoli, who they would later move to the Texas Rangers.
The Angels had a reputation for going the extra mile (and overpaying) to get a big name or a big bat to play for them and believed it was a coup to receive the powerhitting Wells, despite the toxic contract. Wells had just come off of a 2010 season where he batted .273 and hit 31 homers. The Angels believed he would continue his hard-hitting ways and give them the power they've always needed.
They were wrong. The kind of wrong that makes him a cautionary tale and makes fantasy GMs think they're qualified to do it in real-life.
In 2011, he showed that he still had power by hitting 25 homers, but he defined the term "hit-or-miss" batting a woeful .218 for the season. Injuries and the emergence of talented young Angels such as Mike Trout, Mark Trumbo, and Peter Bourjos began to take away from his time at the plate and in the outfield. In 2012, Wells hit only .230 in 77 games. Despite roughly $42 million remaining on his contracts, the 34 year-old is expected to be little more than DH during the remainder of his contract. 2014 may seem a long way, but for Angels fans, it can't come soon enough.