Adam Dunn to Retire: Looking Back at Big Donkey's Career

After 14 seasons in the majors, slugger Adam Dunn has decided to call it a career and announced his retirement from Major League Baseball on Twitter Wednesday morning:

The 34-year-old’s decision came on the heels of the Oakland Athletics’ loss to the Kansas City Royals in American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday night. Dunn did not get a chance to play in that game, despite it going 12 innings.

With 462 home runs and 1,168 runs batted in, Dunn has notched 2,001 games under his belt, yet he will finish his career without a single plate appearance in the postseason.

According to Elias Sports Bureau, that would make Dunn second on the list of players with most career homers without a playoff plate appearance, behind only Ernie Banks and his 512 home runs.

Originally selected by the Cincinnati Reds in the second round of the 1998 amateur draft, Dunn has also played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Washington Nationals and the Chicago White Sox prior to his stint with the A’s, but he never came close to playing October baseball until Tuesday night.

Oakland manager Bob Melvin opted to go with speed and defense with Sam Fuld in left field and Stephen Vogt at first base—two positions Dunn has been known to play at apart from DH—instead of the slugger, who hit just .212 with two homers and 10 RBI in the 25 games he has played for the A’s.

While Dunn was never known as the player to hit for average, he was always considered as a power threat in any lineup, and when all of his numbers are put together, one can see just how dominant of a player he has been despite the downside of lack of contact.

A career .237 hitter, Dunn has averaged 37 home runs per year, including six seasons with plus-100 RBI.

Dunn’s breakout season happened in 2002, when he hit .249 with 26 home runs and 71 RBI for the Reds and earned his first All-Star nod in just his second year in the majors.

Dunn’s production dipped a bit the following year, but he responded with arguably the best season of his career in 2004.

In the 161 games he played that year, Dunn set career highs in home runs with 46 and batting average at .266, as well as beginning a stretch of five years in which he hit at least 40 homers in each season.

In 2012, Dunn made his second and final All-Star appearance while playing for the White Sox, and he went on to finish the season with 41 home runs and 96 RBI while leading the league in both the bases on balls and strikeouts categories with 105 and 222, respectively.

Age caught up with Dunn after that year, but even at 34 years old this season, Dunn managed to go yard 22 times. If he decided to continue his career instead, it could have taken him only two more seasons to reach the 500-home run plateau, a benchmark for many Hall of Fame candidates.

Instead, Dunn has chosen to hang up the boots on his own terms and conclude his career with an on-base percentage of .364 and a slugging percentage of .490.

Oh, and his 9.00 ERA as well.

Dunn’s career numbers may not be enough to get him into Cooperstown, there is no doubt that he will go down in MLB history as one of the best power hitters the game has seen, and one of the players with the best nicknames as well.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.