In the minutes following the Los Angeles Dodgers’ championship-clinching win on Wednesday night, veteran reliever Daniel Hudson did pretty much the coolest thing a player can do after winning the World Series: he announced his retirement.
“This was the only reason I came back — to go out on top,” the 37-year-old Hudson told Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “And that’s what’s happening.”
It’s a storybook ending to a career that was often anything but — not every pitcher has as many World Series rings as they have Tommy John surgeries.
Hudson, a Virginia native, was taken in the fifth round of the 2008 draft by the Chicago White Sox following a college career pitching for Old Dominion University. He made his MLB debut just 15 months later in Sept. 2009, and the following year he was starting full time for the White Sox — until they traded him to the Arizona Diamondbacks at the trade deadline.
But Hudson blossomed in Arizona. He turned in a fantastic 2011 season as a 24 year old, pitching 222 innings over 33 starts with a 3.49 ERA. But then the troubles began. He tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm and had Tommy John surgery in July 2012, which required a full year to rehab. And as he was nearing his comeback in June 2013, he re-tore his UCL during a rehab start and needed to have a second Tommy John surgery.
Hudson spent over two full years off the mound for the D-backs. He was finally able to return in late 2014, no longer as a starter but as a full time reliever.
Returning from one Tommy John surgery is hard, which is why you hardly ever hear of pitchers coming back and being successful after two Tommy John surgeries. Hudson came back from two TJs, but he didn’t find that success until a few years later.
After some serviceable but unspectacular stints with Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, Hudson found himself unemployed in March 2019. He decided to sign a one-year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays, which changed the trajectory of the last five years of his career. He pitched like gangbusters for the Jays, who engineered a trade that sent him to the Washington Nationals.
And it’s with the Nationals that Hudson found the success he’d been looking for. He had a 1.44 ERA over 24 appearances with the Nats, then joined them for their wild postseason ride that ended with the franchise’s first World Series championship. Hudson even made postseason headlines when he missed Game 1 of the NLCS to attend the birth of his third daughter, a decision that was fully supported by his teammates and coaches despite drawing ire from some fans and analysts.
Hudson returned to the Dodgers in 2022 and remained with them for the rest of his career. He tore his ACL in 2022 and battled knee issues in 2023, but the Dodgers invited him back in 2024 and he decided to return. He said the only reason he wanted to was to win the World Series and go out on top, and he has managed to be one of the few MLB players to actually fully live that out.
