Astros first baseman José Abreu, 37, signed a three-year deal with a $58.5 million dollar guarantee last year that goes through the 2025 season. It was a risky free-agent signing: baseball position players peak at ages 27-29, and by 30, virtually all of them are declining unless they take the Barry Bonds route and cheat. Most are no longer MLB-worthy by age 34, though the better a player was, the more he can decline and still be valuable. (Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski had almost exactly the same season in his last year as he did as a rookie 22 years before: a perfect bell curve.) In the first year of his Astros deal, Abreu showed unmistakable signs that the jig was up. He had career lows in batting average, on-base pct., slugging pct., OPS (obviously: it’s slugging plus on-base average) and home runs. He was a below-average batter after a career of being All-Star caliber.

This season Abreu has been even worse. As the perennial World Series contender Astros have looked old, hurt and busted, he has been the worst of the bunch. He currently is batting .099 in 71 official at bats, with no homers; in fact, he ranks as the worst hitter in baseball right now.

Today came the stunning news that Abreu has agreed to go to the minors. As a veteran with over five years of major league service time, Abreu could not be optioned to “the bushes” without his consent, and veterans almost never give their consent. For an established star player to go to the minor leagues is like moving from the Ritz Carlton into a Motel 6. Abreu is a particularly unlikely exception, for he never played in the minors, coming directly to the major leagues as a refugee Cuban player.

Most players in his circumstances, indeed every one I’m aware of, would force his team to keep paying him while he languished on the bench, trade him to a desperate team while paying most of the money owed him to that team as part of the deal, or release him, meaning he could collect all of his contractually-guaranteed millions while staying at home.

Abreu says that he has been embarrassed by his poor play this season, and is willing to go to the minors so he can work on what isn’t working anymore. That’s admirable, but he’s kidding himself. In the past, before players had long-term contracts, stars who hit the metaphorical wall would quit as soon as they realized age had robbed them of the skills that made them outstanding. They sometimes quit mid-season, even mid-game in some cases. They did this out of respect for their fans, the team, and themselves. “I can’t hit, I can’t run, I can’t field: I’m quitting,” former American League MVP Jackie Jensen, then 34, said as he announced his retirement at the end of his 1961 season with the Red Sox. Jensen’s season was still was much better than Abreu’s 2023 season, and Jose could never run or field.

The chances that Abreu will be able to return to anything close to his previous level of performance are slimmer than slim. I admire his willingness to humble himself in search of the Fountain of Youth, but what he would have to do to rate full Ethics Hero status is to relieve his team of having to pay the nearly $39,000,000 due him, since he can no longer earn it. That’s integrity. Nobody in baseball has that kind of integrity today.

Nonetheless, it is still the right thing to do. (Earlier posts on that topic are here, here and here.)