Right-hander Dillon Gee took to Instagram on Monday evening to announce that after a professional career that spanned more than a decade and included parts of eight MLB seasons and a season in Japan, he is retiring from the game.
Gee, who’ll turn 33 in April, spent the 2018 season with the Chunichi Dragons of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball but, prior to that, appeared in eight consecutive MLB seasons with the Mets, Royals, Rangers and Twins.
Gee’s most prominent role came with the Mets, his original organization, from the 2011-14 seasons, during which he was largely a fixture in the team’s rotation. Gee appeared in 101 games, 98 of them starts, across that four-year stretch and gave the Mets a fairly steady stream of reliable innings. While he was oft overshadowed by a series of vaunted arms who were emerging on the scene around that same time (e.g. Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler), Gee turned in 606 2/3 innings of 4.01 ERA ball in that four-year period.
Unfortunately, as is the case with so many pitchers, injuries took their toll on Gee following that run. Gee dealt with a blood clot that required surgery in 2012 and perhaps even more detrimentally underwent the dreaded thoracic outlet surgery following the 2016 season. He’d go on to return with better results than many TOS patients, pitching to a 3.47 ERA through 49 1/3 innings between the Rangers and Twins in 2017, though that also proved to be his last MLB action.
In all, Gee will retire with a career 51-48 record, a 4.09 ERA, 6.5 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and 1.2 HR/9 over the life of 853 2/3 Major League innings. Though he’ll retire at a relatively young age, Gee still did quite well for himself in baseball, taking home north of $13MM in player salaries — a sum that most 21st-round selections can scarcely fathom.
Golly
Gee wiz
That TOS is a disaster.
Gee, it’s about time!
This is nothing but a Gee thing.
How did he do in Japan?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=gee—001dil
Gee spelled backwards is Electroencephalography.
His hitting streaks were Gee-strings.
Hmm, a fellow intellectual
Wait I thought Gee spelled backwards was Eeg. This American English is really hard. I will go back to grand parents now. The Donger need food.
You have all been Donged
Hopefully he has built a substantial portfolio from that $13M earned…
Yes! Mets management turned him on to an excellent investment advisor!
Too bad that resident genius “TC” didn’t run his shoulder into the ground or he would have had a much more successful career.
Didn’t? Nice try.
Still bitter about Feliciano?
Lived his dream. Made plenty to last a few lifetimes, lived and experienced another culture.
Best of luck in his next chapter.
So, every time he threw a strike, was he hitting his Gee spot?
Best of luck in your next career. As a Met you had one really good season and the next year they never gave you a chance. Out of options was part of the problem. The American League wasn’t kind. Enjoy your retirement.
Was always under appreciated as a Met. For a hot second looked like he could be a steady fixture in the rotation but then the moment passed. Wish him nothing but the best.
Gee always felt like a pitcher out of time; guys like him tended to manage longer careers in the 70s and 80s, but his contact-oriented approach and lack of velocity aren’t valued as much anymore. It would be interesting if a team could figure out a way, using statcast data and other analytics, to exploit a market inefficiency w/r/t pitchers with below-average velo like this, but so far it’s been pretty difficult in this era.
This matters to no one.
So you’ve written your epitaph already?
Gee that’s gotta hurt
Tommy Milone hit a home run off Dillon Gee in his first career AB.
Ya’ll need to find better things to do with your time.
MLBTR wishes Gee the best of luck in his future endeavors? Or is Gee not important enough to wish that and Ricky Romero is?
They’re just trying to smash the white patriarchy, so Romero got twice the luck in his future endeavors.
Meh
Geez does MLBTR have the saltiest members ever? This is hilarious!!
Please be the real Dillon Gee and not an account someone made just for the comment
best of luck to his adventures…gee, screw all the jokes here…in the end you made it to the bigs. hopefully a big horizon for you next
No “Gee your hair smelled terrific” comments. [walks away disappointed]
Why were you smelling Dillon’s hair?
Good luck Dillon.
You supplied a lot of good innings for the Mets. I never thought the organization appreciated you enough.
Too often that is how life is. The fans did appreciate you and what you brought with you to the mound. Best of luck in the future.
I thought he was gonna he a solid pitcher when he came up. He was always tough. But injuries crushed him
His retirement is the worst news of the year. How will the Mets survive without him. He was a main cog and provided the spark plug needed to ignite the engine. We are all sad and morose over this horrible news
Who crapped in your cereal this morning?
He hasn’t even played for the Mets in 4 years but ok
Captain Crunch left him a breakfast present.
Gee, that’s gross!