Jered Weaver is in the last year of his five-year, $85 million contract with the Angels. He’s also just barely hanging on. To the extent he is succeeding -- and he has had his moments -- it’s almost all on guile given that his velocity has almost completely abandoned him. Could he hang on a while longer? Probably. Guile aint’ nothing and there are worse pitchers than Weaver, but if he’s going to keep going it will almost certainly be as a year-to-year guy fighting for a job every winter and fighting for a roster spot every spring.
Some guys, especially guys who have made their money, may want to retire at that point. Weaver isn’t necessarily ruling it out, but he isn’t making any final decisions about it. Over the weekend he said “There’s still a lot of season left. When the time comes to answer those questions, I will.”
Weaver is a fascinating pitcher who has gone from dominant to pedestrian in an astonishingly short period of time. I presume that, on some level, all players have the normal aging curve in mind as their careers unfold, but I doubt many of them are as prepared for what has happened to Weaver or, say, Dale Murphy before him. I’m genuinely curious to see what Weaver does.