Dillon Gee Announces Retirement

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.