Red Sox right-hander Austin Maddox announced his retirement during the offseason, as reported by SoxProspects.com (Twitter link) in March. The 28-year-old Maddox is hanging up his glove after 13 Major League appearances (all with the Sox during the 2017 season) and seven total professional seasons.
A University of Florida product, Maddox was a third-round pick for the Red Sox in the 2012 draft and he pitched almost exclusively as a reliever during his time in Boston’s farm system — 136 of his 151 career minor league appearances came out of the bullpen. After some issues with the home run ball early in his career, Maddox began to post better results in 2015, and then made a three-level jump during the 2016 season. Another strong performance at the Double-A and Triple-A levels in 2017 led to his call-up to the Red Sox roster.
Maddox’s brief MLB career will go into the books as an impressive one by the numbers, as he allowed just a single earned run over 17 1/3 regular season innings. Beyond that minuscule 0.52 ERA, Maddox also recorded 14 strikeouts against just two walks. This was enough to earn Maddox a spot on the Red Sox postseason roster, and he allowed a run in two innings pitched during Boston’s ALDS loss to the Astros.
What looked like a promising start ended up as the entirety of Maddox’s big league career. A shoulder strain limited him to only eight total outings in the minors in 2018, and he missed all of 2019 recovering from rotator cuff surgery. The Red Sox re-signed Maddox to a new minor league deal over the offseason, though he didn’t appear in any Spring Training games.
MLBTR wishes Maddox the best in the next step in his post-playing career.
Retires with a .52 ERA lol
Wanted to go out while the numbers were good
First I’ve heard of him.
I’m sure he is less crushed by your unfamiliarity with him, than your family is at your lack of class.
never really got a chance. sad.
Wow that is so sad! I wish him all the best. J it st when he came into a productive pitcher the injury nightmare strikes! I hope he finds a good path, maybe coaching?
That’s a tough break. I wondered why he didn’t get a chance to pitch the last couple of years, what with all the turnover in the bullpen, but I wasn’t aware he’d injured his rotator cuff. Nevertheless, best of luck to him.
He was hurt, and on the disabled list almost the entire 2018 and 2019.
Clearly I wasn’t paying enough attention, oh well
Good luck Austin!
Have a safe recovery.
.52 ERA and a world series ring.
I don’t think he got a ring. He was in the minors in 2018, and only for a handful of games.
If I remember correctly, he was on the 40 man roster and the major league 60 day DL. Either one of those would qualify him for a world series ring. You’d be really surprised how many people get world series rings. More than you’d think. I know a kid who works in the clubhouse signaling to the bench coach whether or not to challenge plays. He also is part of the scouting department for the astros. He even got one.
I think he gets a ring, I hope do anyways.
There are definitely sadder pro ball stories out there but it still stinks. Got to the bigs at least. Did well while there. Good luck in the future
No offense to Mr. Maddox, but when his retirement gets this big a story it is more indicative of the complete lack of news instead of the importance of his career. In normal times, this would a one to two sentence blurb in a story containing many small blurbs. But I guess these aren’t normal times, so he can get a nice send off. Weird times.
You are wrong: MLBTR had similar farewell reports when other players retired early. Those were simply swept under the rug by new postings, which are scarce now.
Gruß,
BSHH
This website always puts up stories about things of this nature.
Jesus, I can’t call this guy Captain Obvious because it’s too low of a rank for someone with such powers of obviousness. Is General Obvious too high of a rank for him?
Yes, he got the majors, 97 percent of professional baseball players do not make it to MLB. Two percent are like Maddox and only 1 percent have meaningful careers. Hope a gets a college degree in a meaningful profession he enjoys…..
Of every pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball to throw at least 15 innings, Austin Maddox’s 0.52 ERA is the lowest. Pretty impressive feat.
Lol.
Haha that is pretty cool. I’m sure he’d have rather had more ML IPs and not cared so much about setting this “record” but never-the-less that is actually kind of a neat fact.
Sad? Maddox got to pitch in the bigs, he earned that role – an incredibly rare achievement. It’s a matter of perspective.
So the Astros rocked him for one run in two postseason innings in 2017. Oh well.
It could also be that he’s still a minor leaguer during the shutdown being paid piddly. Probably being realistic. He could be back if/when things get rolling again.
…or maybe it’s just time to move on with his life…and earn enough to live on…real life for the 99 percent of pro baseball players who do not make big money in the majors.
.
Not the best way to go out