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Former Padre Cameron Maybin has announced his retirement from Major League Baseball after a long career that spanned across 15 seasons and ten teams. He made a statement via Twitter on Monday:
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. pic.twitter.com/oSSX5WZ83F
— Cameron Maybin (@CameronMaybin) January 3, 2022
Maybin is one of the really good guys in baseball, as he has been at the forefront of the Players Alliance, which helps provide equipment and opportunities for young kids to play baseball, among other things.
In terms of his Padres career, it looked like he was going to be the center fielder of the future at one point around 2011. He played 137 and 147 games in 2011 and 2012 respectively for San Diego, stealing a combined 66 bases and hitting 44 doubles but then only was able to stay on the field for just over 100 games over his last two seasons at Petco Park.
Maybin’s Padres career ended when he was dealt to the Atlanta Braves in the Craig Kimbrel deal in 2015, which hasn’t turned out great for the Padres in hindsight. It isn’t clear if Maybin was going to end up being a Padre for a long time if he stayed but there’s no doubt that what happened after he left wasn’t great.
The 2015 offseason that made Preller a “rockstar GM”, according to Matt Kemp, probably ended up setting the franchise back a few years, as Preller went into a full rebuild after the club went 74-88 despite having Kemp, the Upton brothers, Wil Myers, Kimbrel, Derek Norris and James Shields all on the team.
I know it’s easy to say now but if Preller didn’t make all of these splashy moves for veteran players who were probably a little overrated at the time, the Padres likely wouldn’t have been in their rebuild for as long as they were. In those deals, Preller gave up Yasmani Grandal, Zach Eflin, Trea Turner and Max Fried, among others. I think we’d all like to have at least Turner and Fried right now.
Getting back to Maybin though, I leave you with one of his fun Padres moments—a 2014 walk off against current Padre Craig Stammen. Seeing Chris Denorfia and Yonder Alonso in this clip gave me some flashbacks...