[mtw]

After simming a league for 25 seasons over the last few days (a process I still find fascinating), I noticed that there were several players on the Career Leader lists who retired with 2.5+ stars left (not including career-ending injuries). Often they came off an injury or performance-related off-year (including one 5 star player), though a couple of players came off one of their best years. Also, a few players had not reached their decline phase. In any case, with that much game left, wouldn't they all want to keep playing?

I know that athletes in general will on rare occasion voluntarily retire while still being one of the best (or at least better) athletes in their field. But it happens very, very rarely, and many of the examples I can think of "unretired" shortly thereafter. Also, baseball is *not* prone to such retirements. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone in baseball who has voluntarily retired as one of the better players in the game. Sandy Koufax is the most obvious, though I would call his retirement a career-ending injury rather than voluntary, and Ted Williams had a relatively good offensive last season, though he was only a part-time player and very immobile, and only came back for that season out of professional pride after the worst season of his career. Ryne Sandberg (my childhood baseball idol) retired at 34/35 as a below average player, unretired a year later, and retired as a below average player.

I think OOTP needs to look first and foremost at a player's ability when considering retirement, then age/performance. I don't think anyone who has 2.5+ stars left should retire.