Former Cubs Pitcher Jesse Chavez Announces Retirement originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
It doesn’t look like veteran starting pitcher Jesse Chavez will be resigning with the Atlanta Braves anytime soon.
Chavez, a journeyman whose MLB career spanned 18 years, announced his retirement from professional baseball on Thursday.
“This has been a great ride – way more than I expected to as a 42nd-round draft pick,” Chavez said in a video posted by Foul Territory TV on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I was given a gift early on. I understood it, but it was, ‘How am I going to make it last? How can I keep it going for this long?
“I always said, ‘I want to go out the way I came in: being able to roll out of bed and throw a baseball. And, fortunately, I’m still able to do that.”
Chavez had two separate stints with the Cubs. The first time he played for the North Siders, he joined the team in a mid-season trade in 2018 and pitched to a 2-1 record, 1.15 ERA, 0.79 WHIP, and 42 strikeouts to just five walks in 39 innings across 32 relief appearances. Chavez’s contract expired at the end of the season, and he ended up signing with the Texas Rangers, the team that dealt him to the Cubs the year before, in free agency.
He joined the team again in 2022, this time signing a minor-league contract in spring training. He pitched just three times for the Cubs that year, allowing seven hits and four runs in 5.2 innings of work before being traded to the Braves for pitcher Sean Newcomb.
In addition to playing for the Cubs, Braves, and Rangers, Chavez suited up for six other major-league teams: the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals, Athletics (then in Oakland), Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Los Angeles Angels. He also spent time in the Tampa Bay Rays, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago White Sox organizations, but never pitched in a regular-season game for any of those teams.
Chavez finishes his professional career with a 51-66 overall record, 4.27 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, and 1,044 strikeouts across 1,142 innings pitched. A World Series champion with the Braves in 2021, he appeared in 657 big-league games, making 85 starts on the mound.
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 24, 2025, where it first appeared.