UPDATE: Yermin Mercedes has announced that he will return and dress for Charlotte tonight. Click here for the story.
This is a shocking story that will likely have even more twists and turns over the next few days.
White Sox designated hitter Yermin Mercedes appears to have announced his retirement from baseball on his Instagram account. The post comes just hours after he deleted all White Sox related material from his profile and hinted at calling it quits on his story earlier in the afternoon. Here’s the post where he made his decision official:
Translated in the Instagram app, the above caption reads: “First of all I want to thank God for giving me life to the fans that without them I was nothing to my family for understanding me and always supporting Daniel Szew for getting me ahead, and by the way ask forgiveness to all members of the radio, television, and press.. to all the teams I participated by not tolerating the decisions of them to everyone who as a human being eh failed I apologize and thus I walked away from baseball for a while God bless you ? it’s over”
Alright, so there’s obviously a lot to this situation that we don’t know about. One can make the assumption that Yermin is going through a tough spot mentally and while we don’t know the extent of it, the decision by the White Sox to demote him to Triple-A Charlotte likely played a factor in his announcement tonight. It’s almost hard to believe the validity of this statement given the timing and unexpectedness of it all, though it is coming from his official verified account so it carries some credibility.
Mercedes, who entered into his rookie season with Chicago, figured to see MLB action again at some point later down the stretch. Since being demoted, he slashed a rather good .298/.365/.632 with 4 home runs and 10 RBI over his last 15 games with the Knights. He even started at catcher in Wednesday night’s game for Charlotte, going 0-for-2 before being replaced by Nate Nolan prior to his sixth inning at-bat.
It was just months ago where in the absence of outfielder Eloy Jimenez, Mercedes provided a massive spark to the Sox offense. The 28-year-old went .415/.455/.659 with five doubles, five home runs, 16 RBI, and 10 runs scored in April alone, earning him Rookie of the Month honors. Obviously, he was not able to keep up the hot start as he struggled mightily pretty much ever since then. After hitting a mere .196/.264/.272 over his last 47 games, the Sox decided they had seen enough and sent him to the minors.
The organization learned of the Instagram post during last night’s game and released the following statement:
Many fans around the league were quick to blame Tony La Russa as a reason for Yermin’s downfall, especially after the ‘3-0 incident’ in Minnesota. Unfortunately, it’s an asinine and baseless argument to make as the two had a good relationship, despite how it may have been painted negatively. The White Sox manager had this to say after the game:
This story is still unfolding and we’ll look to update this article as we learn more.
Featured Photo: White Sox/Twitter
