Quote:
Originally Posted by Samonadreau
Crazy you can just retire and keep getting paid your contract.
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I don't believe you can just retire, If a player walks away from the sport because he no longer has interest in it, he walks away from the contract as well. If a player is forced to retire due to injury incurred on the baseball field, he is entitled to the full amount of the contract. The team is free to argue that it was a combination of things that include activity outside of baseball that forced his retirement, in which case they would settle.
Strasburg has had countless surgeries, muscles trimmed from his neck and a rib removed in order to keep pitching. He can no longer hold his children without feeling numbness to the point he has to lay down. He will not have to settle.
The Nationals problem is that they couldn’t find an insurance carrier to back the contract. For example: Albert Belle was forced into retirement, and he got paid the remainder of his deal. The contract was insured though, so despite the fact Peter Angelos tried to use that as a cudgel against signing monster contracts, he wasn’t on the hook for it.