Mookie Betts may be piling up World Series championships, but that won’t derail him from his retirement timeline.
The 33-year-old Betts has four World Series championships, the most of any active player in Major League Baseball. Betts has won three with the Los Angeles Dodgers and one with the Boston Red Sox and could very well win multiple rings moving forward. The Dodgers currently have the best record in baseball coming out of the All-Star break and are the back-to-back World Series champs.
Betts is a key cog of this team, serving as the team’s starting shortstop and their cleanup hitter. The eight-time All-Star is currently in the midst of a 12-year, $365 million contract that he’s tied through to the 2032 season, when he’ll turn 40 years old. Betts reveals that he probably has “five or six years left” in his career.
“I got like five or six years left,” said Betts while speaking on behalf of his partnership with Corona. “It seems like it gets longer and longer every year. It seems like I’ve signed another five-year deal every year I play. But no, I don’t have a target age or anything. I just will take the jersey off when I feel like it’s time. I don’t want to go. I want to go out on my own terms and not because somebody else took it off.”
Dodgers’ Dynasty Won’t Impact Mookie Betts’ Retirement Timeline
If Betts’ retirement timeline is accurate, he would retire right around the time his contract ends or a year before his deal ends. That would carry him through his late 30s or age 40.
The Dodgers are clearly not going away anytime soon as the MLB’s top threat as their record this year shows. While there are some players that are older in the tooth such as 36-year-old Freddie Freeman and 35-year-old Max Muncy, there are younger core players such as 25-year-old Andy Pages and starting pitchers still in their 20s such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Justin Wrobleski. Furthermore, Shohei Ohtani remains in the thick of his prime, coming off of his fourth NL MVP and turning in a pitching season worthy of Cy Young votes.
When asked if the Dodgers’ dynasty will get in the way of any potential retirement plans, Betts shut down that notion.
“That’s not true,” said Betts. “It’s fun to be a part of. It’s fun to be a part of and to have that expectation. Being on this team is a blessing. Not everybody gets that expectation. Not everybody gets to play with that expectation, so that is a blessing that I will never take for granted, and I will always cherish. But it’s not going to hold me. It’s not going to keep me from retiring.”
Dodgers Not Reliant on Any Single Player for Team’s Success
Betts isn’t having his best season — .235 batting average, 11 home runs and 31 RBIs — but he remains a premier player in the field. Furthermore, due to how stacked the Dodgers’ roster is, they don’t rely on a single player for their success. Betts wasn’t having his best season last year — .258 batting average was the lowest of his career — and the Dodgers still won the World Series.
We’ll see how many World Series Betts ends his career with, but it’s pretty clear that the Dodgers’ dynasty won’t impact his retirement timeline.
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