It’s unlikely that a ton of San Diego Padres fans were watching on Saturday when the Pittsburgh Pirates took on the Detroit Tigers.
But if you were, you would’ve seen an old friend start the game for the Padres — in what on paper was a highly unusual decision, Kirby Yates was given the ball to begin the penultimate game of the regular season.
The reason, in the big picture, actually made perfect sense.
This was going to be the last outing of Yates’ MLB career. The Pirates wanted a clean setup for him to pitch in one last time.
Yates went 1.2 scoreless innings before the Pirates greeted him on the mound and took him out of the game for good.
“This is it,” Yates told reporters afterward.
It was the end to a magnificent career, one that featured maybe its top moments in San Diego.
Kirby Yates With Padres
Yates first joined the Padres in 2017. He didn’t come with a big cost.
He threw one outing for the Los Angeles Angels that season before being placed on waivers, and the Padres claimed him.
Yates ended up throwing 61 games in that first year with the Padres, putting up a 3.72 ERA.
He was even better the next year, with a 2.14 ERA in 65 outings, including 12 saves.
The 2019 season then became his crowning MLB achievement — in 60 games, he had 41 saves and a 1.19 ERA. It was the first of two All-Star nods for Yates (along with 2024 with the Rangers).
Yates had a 12.46 ERA in just six outings in 2020 before Tommy John surgery knocked him out and forced him to miss all of 2021.
By 2022, he had gone elsewhere, but Yates’ time with the Padres had been special.
An Improbable Career
Yates’ journey to MLB was quite the unlikely one.
He grew up in Hawaii, and he was actually a 26th-round draft pick in the 2005 MLB Draft, but he didn’t sign.
Yates instead went to community college in Arizona with the goal of moving up to a bigger program, but he missed both the 2006 and 2007 seasons with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery at that point, too.
After the dust settled, Yates went undrafted in 2009, but the Tampa Bay Rays signed him anyway.
At just 5-foot-10, Yates also didn’t have the prototypical pitcher profile, but he developed a great changeup and just kept getting enough guys out to stick around for a long time.
He pitched for the Rays, Yankees, Angels, Padres, Braves, Rangers, Dodgers, Angels again and Pirates.
Yates’ other All-Star season, with the Rangers in 2024, included a 1.17 ERA in 61 outings with 33 saves.
He also earned a World Series ring by being part of the Dodgers for a portion of their 2025 championship season.
Yates is now 39, and he likely knew for a while that this would be his final go.
The Pirates made a push for the playoffs for a while, and Yates was very good for them — a 1.80 ERA in 15 outings.
Pittsburgh eventually came up short, though, meaning the Pirates knew this weekend would be Yates’ last.
They gave him a solid send-off, a great example of a guy who simply never gave up on his pitching dream and let his right arm take him as far as it could go.
Padres’ All-Star Retiring After 12 MLB Seasons: ‘This Is It’