Retirement Notes: Pelfrey, Capuano, Hinojosa

We’ll use this post to round up some recent news from a few veteran hurlers whose playing days appear to be at an end:

• Right-hander Mike Pelfrey appears to be moving on from his days on the mound, as Wayne Cavadi of NCAA.com reported recently (thanks to alert reader Alex Hudson for the tip). Pelfrey, who played at Wichita State University and is finishing up his degree there, has agreed to join the baseball coaching staff of another local school, Newman University. After a dozen years in the majors, the former ninth-overall pick says that teaching pitching was a natural progression. “After a couple of surgeries and I felt like the last couple of years that my abilities were declining, I got more into that mentor role,” says Pelfrey. Assuming this is indeed the end of the line, Pelfrey will finish his big-league run with 1,476 1/3 innings of 4.68 ERA pitching. After a long stretch with the Mets, the sinkerballer spent three seasons with the Twins before finishing things off with the Tigers and White Sox over the past two campaigns. The above-linked post features an extensive chat with Pelfrey and is well worth a look for those with interest in the big righty.
• It seems that another dozen-year big-league veteran, southpaw Chris Capuano, is in the same boat. In an interesting chat with Garry Brown of The Republican earlier this year, the southpaw indicated that he’s finished with his pitching career. Instead of continuing the grind, as had previously seemed possible, Capuano plans to pursue a master’s degree and perhaps ultimately work with the MLB Player’s Association in some capacity. Like Pelfrey, Capuano tossed over fourteen-hundred frames at the game’s highest level. Even as he battled through injuries and bounced between six organizations, Capuano was a model of stability on the mound. He compiled a solid lifetime 4.38 ERA and rarely strayed too far from that level of pitching. Capuano will no doubt be best remembered for his six seasons with the Brewers; the lefty found early-career success in Milwaukee and finished his playing career there in 2016.
• It seems that another former MLB hurler, Dalier Hinojosa, is also finished with his playing career, as he recently told Francys Romero of Ciber Cuba. Hinojosa, 32, long played for the Guantanamo entrant in Cuba’s Serie Nacional. He came to affiliated ball in 2014, reaching the majors in each of the next two seasons. While he only has thrown 35 2/3 MLB innings, most of them with the Phillies, Hinojosa will finish his brief MLB career with a shiny 1.51 ERA. Despite posting those solid numbers, bringing a fastball that sat at 94 mph, and getting swings and misses with about one out of every ten pitches, Hinojosa was outrighted by the Phillies after the end of the 2016 season and was later released. He did not appear in 2017 after shoulder issues arose.