I was inspired by the thread on 40+ year old batting leaders, for reasons that will soon be obvious.
What individual had the best final season, where their retirement was announced before the season? So leave aside the Bo Jacksons who had Hall of Fame seasons with a career-ending injury, and the boxers (and alternate universe ‘no Wizards experience’ MJ) who decided to retire on top after winning, and stick with the players who said “yup, this is it” ahead of time and then proceeded to have superlative seasons.
Because, back to 40 year old hitters, David “Big Papi” Ortiz just went through his retirement tour of a season. At the end of that season, he led the majors in Slugging%, doubles and extra-base hits, and OPS, and was second in Adjusted OPS+.
Now fancier measures like WAR don’t rank him as high, but still, according to the best simple statistic (OPS), he was the best hitter in the world this year.
Can any players top that for their retirement tour seasons?
What, there’s some other baseball topic to talk about now?