MLB News: After 13 seasons, reliever with nearly 150 saves opts to hang up glove, ball and spikes

The relief pitcher Steve Ryan ‘Speedpass’ Cishek, 1.98 meters tall and 99 kilos, retires at 36 years of age. “It’s time,” the tall Cishek tells popular journalist Rich Maclone of The Bourne Enterprise.

It has become more difficult for me to recover from game to game. The ball wasn’t coming out as clean as before, and I felt like I had to shoot differently. I know I’ll get the bug and want to get back out there, but I don’t think I’m doing Tom Brady.”

Cishek was drafted by the then Florida Marlins in 2007 and finally made his major league debut with them in 2010. He was only able to pitch 4 1/3 innings that year, but turned in a more substantial performance the following season. He made 45 appearances in 2008, pitching 54 2/3 innings with a 2.63 ERA, 24% strikeout rate, 8.3% walk rate and 56.8% ground ball rate.

Cishek worked his way up to places of great influence, recording three saves and a pair of retentions in that 2008 season. He followed that with 15 saves in 2009 and then notched 34 and 39 over the next two years. Unleashing hitters with his lateral pitch, Cishek was able to strike out and ground out at above-average rates, a difficult combination to pull off.

You can also read: MLB Angels bolsters bullpen with veterans Steve Cishek and Tony Watson

In Cishek’s career, he appeared in 737 games, pitching 710 2/3 innings with a 2.98 ERA. He struck out 24.8% of the batters he faced and grounded on 48.3% of the balls in play. Recorded 133 saves, 109 retentions (holds) and 33 wins. Al Bat congratulates him on an excellent career and wishes him the best in his future endeavors.

Raphael Martinez

I am a fan of the King of Sports, especially the Boston Red Sox in MLB and in general all of Mexican baseball. This profession has given me the opportunity to cover big events such as the Caribbean Series, LMB All Star, LMP (uninterrupted since 2009), important players’ signatures. I had the chance to attend the 2013 World Classic in Arizona, USA, albeit as an amateur. Apart from this beautiful sport, I love basketball, where I have also narrated games and even an NBA friendly 10 years ago, but baseball is in my veins. Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS). , from which I graduated in 2011. I was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa and started in the world of sports journalism in 2004 in the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán, where I was a baseball columnist and reporter at the same time. In January 2009 I arrived at El Debate as a journalist reporter and it took almost six years (in the first stage), until in November 2014 I emigrated to radio, providing my services at Línea Directa-Grupo RSN. My cycle there ended in July 2019 and a few days later, El Debate gave me another opportunity to work and opened the doors for me again. That is how I came to Al Bat, where I have been since 2019 as a web journalist.

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