Scott Oberg doesn’t officially retire but plans post-playing career
May 5, 2022, 2:18 PM
Scott Oberg last pitched in the majors in 2019, when he was one of the best relievers on the Colorado Rockies.
Oberg’s 2019 season ended on the shelf, due to blood clots. Oberg remains on the Injured List because of his health despite surgery and time.
On Wednesday, Jack Etkin of Rockies Magazine released a new story that caught up with Oberg. He all but officially retired in it, as the right-hander shared he was taking steps towards his post-playing career.
“I’m not really in a rush to pick up a ball again in the near term and give it another go, just in the sense that (I) keep running into the risk of having to go through all of this again,” Oberg said in the story. “Now it’s not really my decision, I don’t feel at this point, really. It’s kind of a family decision just because there’s so much more on the line.”
Oberg has gone under the knife four times in hopes of fixing his blood clots. He said nobody can give him a straight answer on why they keep popping up but that they’re caused by throwing, and he’s at a higher risk of developing them.
When at the top of his game, the bullpen arm was huge for the Rockies during the club’s postseason runs in 2017 and 2018. Oberg has spent his entire career with the Rockies, pitching to a 3.85 ERA over 257.1 innings. After a bumpy start to his MLB career, Oberg turned into a strikeout an inning guy, a mark in line with the better relievers in the game.
It earned Oberg a three-year, $13 million deal going into the 2020 season. He’s never pitched since inking that deal.
“I think that’s kind of the biggest frustration that I might have of all this is that I really felt like I was coming into my prime between what I could do physically and you know learning from all the mistakes that I’d made in the past and all the ups and downs and all the times that I’d failed,” Oberg said in the article. “I think it was really all starting to — I definitely put a lot of good things together in 2019. So I was certainly excited about the prospects of the future. Who knows how long of a run I would have been able to make? But in the same respect, to go out on top is, I guess, maybe the best way to go about it and knowing that something is kind of out of my control. I don’t know if that makes it any better or not.”
Oberg is now trying to get a master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown. He’s also helped in an unofficial role with the Rockies front office, doing scouting and player analysis work.
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