Often we hear how special it is when a player finishes their career with just one team. But there’s something to be said for playing for more than one team. Home is where your heart is, so goes the saying, but who is to say a heart can’t have two homes? Nick Markakis’s did. Markakis (and his heart) played almost 800 games for the Atlanta Braves after playing almost 1,400 games for the Baltimore Orioles. That’s a man with two homes. The dual-homed man officially retired on March 12, after 15 years in major league baseball.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
Perhaps it’s odd for a Baltimore-themed site to specifically note the retirement of a player like Markakis who hasn’t played for the Orioles since 2014. But when he was here, Markakis was a big part of the Orioles organization, and that didn’t go away just because he decided to spend the back half of his career in Atlanta.
Markakis was drafted three times, twice by the Cincinnati Reds, in the 35th round of the 2001 draft and again in the 23rd round of the 2002 draft, and then, in 2003, the Orioles spent the seventh overall pick on him. Markakis peaked at the 21st best prospect in baseball coming off a 2005 season that saw him reach Double-A and post a .992 OPS as a 22-year-old. In an event that would never happen today, Markakis began the 2006 season in Baltimore, having won a job out of spring training. He wasn’t in the lineup on Opening Day, but he started in left field against the Devil Rays for the second game of the season two days later. He went 1-for-3 with three walks in the Orioles 16-6 win that day. It’s worth noting the hit was a home run to lead off the eighth inning. It was the first homer of what would be 16 in total that season, with 188 more to come over the course of his career.
That season, 2006, he hit .291/.351/.448 and finished seventh for the AL Rookie of the Year award behind winner Justin Verlander, though Markakis was one of just three players to receive a first place vote.
Markakis was even better in 2007, putting up a four win season, and improving on all three of his slash lines. He also hit 23 homers, a mark that would turn out to be his career high. And he was even better again in 2008, putting up his best season, a 6.1 WAR campaign that saw him post a .406 on-base percentage and a .491 slugging percentage, with a wRC+ 38 percent above league average.
Markakis would spend the next six years as an Oriole, all covered in a six year, $66 million contract extension he signed. Unfortunately for Markakis and the Orioles, the stardom that seemed imminent following the 2007 season never quite arrived. From then on, with the exception of an injury shortened 2012 season, Markakis hovered just above a league average hitter, though with good defense in the outfield corners, winning a Gold Glove in 2011 and 2014, his final season in Baltimore. He was, in essence, a good professional baseball player, and more specifically, he was Baltimore’s. Markakis consistency gave maximum effort, played great defense and was the franchise’s star player.
Following the 2014 regular season, Markakis helped the Orioles get to the ALCS by sweeping the Detroit Tigers in the Division Series 3-0. The Orioles beat, in order, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and David Price to claim the series victory. Then, perhaps even more improbably, they were swept by the Kansas City Royals, losing Game One in extra innings, and losing games three and four by the identical score of 2-1. Markakis’s final at-bat as an Oriole came in the eighth inning of Game Four, where, with two outs and his team down by one, he singled hard through the left side. It was the Orioles second hit since the third inning, but sadly it was followed up by future World Series MVP Steve Pearce grounding out to third base.
That off-season Markakis signed a four year, $44 million deal with the Atlanta Braves because, I guess, he loved symmetry. The final six years of his career were uneventful from an Orioles fans perspective. He never recaptured his early career magic in Atlanta, as his best non-Orioles season was a 2.6 WAR 20018 season.
Markakis’s career wasn’t as much about pure numbers though. He was a fan favorite, in a city that loves guys who play every day, Markakis did just that. He wasn’t Cal out there, but he did play every day the manager put him in the lineup until he suffered a broken hamate bone in June of 2012. Of a possible 1,458 games over nine seasons with the Orioles, Markakis took the field for 1,365 or 94 percent of them.
Mostly though Markakis was an Oriole. He was drafted by the organization, he played in their minor leagues, he came up and won Rookie of the Year votes for the Orioles, and he played in Camden Yards for nine years. You don’t get to do all that without meaning something to the fans in Baltimore. Markakis was born in New York and he grew up in Georgia, but his career will always be centered around Baltimore. He was a homegrown guy in an era of Orioles baseball when they didn’t really have homegrown guys. Between drafting Brian Roberts in 1999 and Matt Wieters in 2007, that’s 12 first round picks, Markakis was the only Orioles first round pick to make any kind of even minor impact with the club. But he did make an impact.
Markakis announced his retirement a few days ago. He may be a Georgia boy at heart, but he’ll always be an Oriole.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.