Right-hander Trevor Cahill has officially retired after 18 professional seasons, agent John Boggs told Newsweek’s Jon Paul Hoornstra. Cahill’s retirement was initially noted by the Gastonia Ghost Peppers of the independent Atlantic League, after the 37-year-old Cahill made two appearances in a comeback attempt this summer.
Before his Atlantic League work this year, Cahill’s last appearance in pro ball came when he tossed 20 2/3 innings in the Mets farm system in 2022. That stint in New York’s organization came on the heels of a 13-year run in the majors that saw Cahill toss 1507 2/3 innings with nine different clubs.
A second-round pick for the Athletics in the 2006 draft, Cahill broke into the Show by throwing 178 2/3 innings in his 2009 rookie season, and then followed up that workhorse year with a 2.97 ERA over 196 2/3 frames in 2010. The latter performance earned Cahill an All-Star nod, a ninth-place finish in AL Cy Young Award voting, and a five-year, $30.5MM contract extension in April 2011. Cahill’s five-year pact stood as the longest guaranteed deal the A’s gave to any player until this year, when the club inked long-term extensions with Lawrence Butler (seven years) and Brent Rooker (five years).
Despite the seeming contractual security, Cahill found himself on the move by December 2011, when he was dealt to the Diamondbacks as part of a five-player swap. He posted decent results in Arizona’s rotation in 2012-13 before running into struggles during the 2014 season that carried into 2015, and after bouncing around from the D’Backs to the Braves to the Dodgers to the Cubs all within a five-month span, Cahill reinvented himself as a reliever in Chicago. Cahill worked out of the pen in 60 of his 61 appearances with the Cubs over the 2015-16 seasons, posting a 2.61 ERA and earning a World Series ring for his work with the streak-busting 2016 squad (though Cahill didn’t see any action during Chicago’s playoff run).
Cahill returned to rotation work after signing a free agent deal with the Padres during the 2016-17 offseason, and that kicked off a stretch of Cahill pitching for six different clubs (including a return stint with Oakland in 2018) over his final five Major League seasons. The results were very inconsistent, as Cahill started to run into some problems with the home run ball, and his usual grounder-heavy approach had some built-in variance depending on his defenses and batted-ball luck.
For his career, Cahill finished with a 4.26 ERA in 361 games (233 of them starts). While only posting a 17.8% career strikeout rate, Cahill had a knack for keeping the ball on the ground for much of his career, with a 54% groundball rate.
We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Cahill on a fine career, and wish him all the best in his post-playing days.