This post wasn’t supposed to be sent out during spring training in 2025. No, no. Lucas Luetge’s farewell to baseball was supposed to come much earlier. Before the Yankees ever called. Before he ever suited up in pinstripes. Before he was called on, time and again, to bedevil Andrew Benintendi or soak up the final three innings of a somewhat comfortable win and earn a mega-save for his troubles. His fond goodbye was supposed to go live before any of that.

But Luetge wasn’t ready to hit “send” quite yet.

Last Thursday, Luetge revealed in an Instagram post that he was finally content with his career and would be hanging up his spikes after they’d boosted him through a fairytale-like late-career resurgence.

The lefty pitched for the Yankees in 2021 and 2022, but when he toed the rubber in the Bronx on April 3 — in a game that was very much still up for grabs — he’d ended a 2,170-day gap between big-league appearances. Mariners, 2012-2015. Yankees, 2021-2022. A whole lot of life in between.

Former New York Yankees left-handed reliever Lucas Luetge retires

After a promising first season in Seattle in 2012 (3.98 ERA, 38 Ks in 40 2/3 innings), Luetge struggled a bit in his sophomore campaign before losing the faith of the front office. In 2015, he made just one appearance, consisting of 2 1/3 shutout frames on April 25. By and large, he was relegated to Triple-A, where he threw 62 1/3 innings in 2014 and 50 the next year.

The Mariners then moved on. So did the Angels, who used him as a phantom MLB player for a series in 2016, but nothing more. He moved in and out of the clubhouse like a substitute ghost. The Reds and Orioles both experimented, but couldn’t find the thread. He lost the 2018 season to Tommy John, because of course he did. The Marlins, Diamondbacks, and A’s during COVID never gave him the bump he was yearning for; in 2020, he toiled at the alternate site in stark silence. Rarely was he injured. Franchise after franchise just opted not to extend their hands.

Until the Yankees in 2021, when Luetge arrived to camp as a longshot and left it undeniable.\

Lucas Luetge says his jaw was hurting at the end of the day after finding out that he made the #Yankees Opening Day roster.

Why? Because he was smiling so much.

— Max Goodman (@MaxTGoodman) April 1, 2021

Over the course of the next two seasons, Luetge defied the DFA odds and survived, posting 2.74 and 2.67 ERAs in 72 1/3 and 57 1/3 innings apiece. He was mostly used in lower-leverage opportunities in 2022, as his WHIP ballooned from 1.134 to 1.395, but he still survived as an integral part of the clubhouse and a proven multi-trick pony.

It’s always been strangely hard to find a pitcher capable of coaxing a large lead to the finish line in games that seem decided, but aren’t quite yet. After all, if the pitcher excels enough, he’ll be used in higher-leverage work eventually. If a pitcher struggles, he can’t be trusted with any lead, big or small. But Luetge always managed to thread that needle nicely, handling the long nights with aplomb.

At the end of the 2022 season, the Yankees saw the end of the road on the horizon, trading the lefty to Atlanta for a package that included Caleb Durbin, the eventual centerpiece of the Devin Williams trade. Luetge continued to fight, logging 13 2/3 innings in Atlanta that year, followed by a summer with the Triple-A Woo Sox in Boston’s system.

Now, though, the fight is finally over — and has been successfully won. As Luetge wrote in his farewell, “Every step of this journey has been a lesson in perseverance, faith, and love for the game.” And the best part is, while is career may be over, those lessons will be eternal.