Josh Donaldson is calling it a career.
The former Oakland Athletics star and 2015 AL MVP retired Monday following a 13-year MLB career, making the announcement during an appearance on "The Mayor's Office with Sean Casey" show on YouTube.
“It’s sad because I’ll be not able to go out there and play the game that I love anymore, but it’s also a very happy time that I get to be around the family and kind of take that next chapter in life,” said Donaldson, who noted that he got married during the offseason.
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Donaldson, 38, was limited to 50 games played last season due to injuries. He previously told The Score in November he was "definitely up for playing one more year" if the right situation came around, adding that 2024 "would be my last season no matter what." He had posted a sub-.700 OPS in each of the last two seasons while playing for the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers.
“As things kind of kept transpiring, I just really felt it had to be a perfect situation for me to go back and play,” Donaldson said Monday. “There were a couple of opportunities out there, but at the end of the day, things weren’t really clicking and meshing for myself to be ready and go into a season mentally and physically ready to play.”
A first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2007, Donaldson was traded to the A's in 2008. He went on to suit up for seven different MLB clubs, including Oakland, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Guardians, Atlanta Braves, Minnesota Twins, Yankees and Brewers.
Nicknamed "The Bringer of Rain," Donaldson made three All-Star Games and won two Silver Slugger awards while patrolling the hot corner. The slugging third baseman's breakout season came with Oakland in 2013, where he finished fourth in AL MVP voting, and he was an All-Star for the first time in 2014, which was the the first of three straight All-Star nods.
Following an offseason trade from Oakland to Toronto, Donaldson captured AL MVP honors in his first season with the Blue Jays. He hit .297/.371/.568 with 41 homers, an AL-high 123 RBIs and an MLB-high 122 runs en route to earning 23 of 30 first-place MVP votes. He then made a strong repeat bid the following season when he finished fourth in voting.
Donaldson helped Toronto reach the ALCS in consecutive seasons in 2015 and 2016. He hit .281/.383/.548 with 116 homers and 316 RBIs as a member of the Blue Jays, with a midseason trade to Cleveland in 2018 ending his four-year Toronto tenure.
After injuries limited him to 113 games in 2017 and 52 games in 2018, Donaldson signed a one-year, $20 million contract with Atlanta and was 11th in the 2019 NL MVP voting after hitting .259/.379/.521 with 37 homers and 94 RBIs.
Donaldson signed a four-year, $92 million contract with Minnesota at age 34 but his play tailed off. He hit .222 with 60 homers, 171 RBIs, a .748 OPS and a 24.3-percent strikeout rate over that deal.
Minnesota dealt Donaldson to the Yankees ahead of the 2022 season, and he hit .142 with 10 homers and 15 RBIs in 33 games last year before being released in late August. He signed a minor league deal with the Brewers two days later, was called up in mid-September and hit .169 with three homers and 11 RBIs in 17 games.
Donaldson finishes his career with a slash line of .261/.358/.489, along with 279 homers and 816 RBIs over 1,383 regular-season games.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.