Left-hander Richard Bleier announced his retirement earlier this week, as the 37-year-old Bleier wrote on his Instagram page that he is hanging up his cleats after eight Major League seasons.
“It’s been an incredible journey with plenty of highs and lows that ranged from spending six years in Double A to pitching in the playoffs with the Marlins, the team I grew up watching,” Bleier wrote. “Looking back on my career I don’t think I would have done anything differently. I’m incredibly proud of what I accomplished. I tried to go into every day remembering my childhood memories of interactions with players and recalling how special those times were for me at such an impressionable age. I hope I also positively impacted fans throughout the country and paid forward what was shown to me.”
The Miami Beach native began his pro career as a sixth-round pick for the Rangers back in the 2008 draft, though he didn’t make his MLB debut until just after his 29th birthday, breaking into the Show as a member of the Yankees in 2016. That first season in the Bronx and his 2023 season with the Red Sox were sandwiched around longer runs with the Baltimore and Miami, in almost equal fashion — Bleier appeared in 143 games with the Orioles from 2017-20 and then 142 games with his hometown Marlins from 2020 until the end of the 2022 season.
Besides a pair of pseudo-starts working as an opener, Bleier came out of the bullpen for almost all of his 335 career games in the majors, and delivered a very solid 3.27 ERA over 330 1/3 innings. This success was powered by outstanding control (3.9% career walk rate) and a knack for keeping the ball on the ground, as Bleier had a 60.9% grounder rate. Among all pitchers with at least 300 innings pitched between the 2016-23 seasons, only T.J. McFarland and Framber Valdez had a better grounder rate.
Like most groundball specialists, Bleier’s success was somewhat dependent on batted-ball luck, though he finished his career with roughly average .298 BABIP. The bigger issue was a lack of missed bats (13.6% strikeout rate) and velocity, which kept Bleier in something of a specialist role despite his good bottom-line numbers. Bleier also did a very good job of avoiding the long ball, but that changed in his final MLB season, when he allowed five homers in 30 2/3 innings with the Red Sox en route to a 5.28 ERA in 2023. Boston released Bleier in August of that season, and subsequent minor league deals with the Cubs and Nationals didn’t result in a return to the Show.
We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Bleier on a fine career, and we wish him all the best in his post-playing endeavors.