New York Yankees outfielder and first baseman Jay Bruce is retiring from baseball after a 14-year career.
The 34-year-old, who started the season with the Yankees, released a statement on Sunday morning announcing his decision.
“After 14 incredible seasons, I’ve decided to make the very difficult decision to retire from baseball,” he wrote. “All I ever wanted to be ‘when I grew up’ was a baseball player, and to say that I got to live out my dream would be the understatement of a lifetime. This sport gave me more than I could’ve ever asked for.”
The three-time All-Star was a 2005 first-round pick of the Cincinnati Reds, whom he made his MLB debut with in 2008, finishing fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting.
Bruce played nine years in Cincinnati, which included all three of his All-Star appearances before being traded to the New York Mets during the 2016 season where he spent the next year-plus before the Mets traded him to Cleveland during the 2017 season.
He signed with the Mets as a free agent for the 2018 season but was again traded at the end of the season to the Seattle Mariners as part of the deal that brought Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz to New York.
In 2019, Bruce was traded from the Mariners to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he spent the next two seasons before earning a spring training invite to Yankees camp this spring.
In 10 games with the Yankees, Bruce struggled at the plate, going 4-for-34 with a home run and three RBI before being relegated to the bench.
In 14 seasons, Bruce finished with a career slash line of .244/.314/.467, 319 home runs and 1,455 hits. He had five 30-plus home run and 90-plus RBI seasons.
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