{"id":2059079,"date":"2025-09-30T05:20:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T05:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2059079"},"modified":"2025-09-30T05:20:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T05:20:22","slug":"former-royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/former-royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Royals outfielder announces retirement at age of 34"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Royals Michael Taylor is congratulated by his teammates after blasting a home run to right center field during the third inning of the 2021 home opener against the Texas Rangers.<\/p>\n


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Michael A. Taylor, who had two of his best Major League Baseball seasons with the Royals, announced Sunday he was stepping away from the game.<\/p>\n

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Taylor, who played this season with the White Sox, made his decision public before Chicago\u2019s finale against the Nationals in Washington, D.C. Taylor played his first seven seasons with the Nationals before signing with the Royals ahead of the 2021 season.<\/p>\n

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Nationals fans gave Taylor a round of applause Sunday.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen my daughter was asking me to be home, asking why I had to leave and things like that, that was \u2014 I love the game, but my family is my priority<\/a>,\u201d Taylor, who has two young children, told MLB.com about his decision to retire. \u201cThere are ways I can stay in the game and still be there for my family.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPlaying 162 (games), it\u2019s tough to do that. If there\u2019s another way for me to stay in the game and be around, I\u2019d like to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Taylor, 34, won a Gold Glove in his first season with the Royals in 2021, and he hit 12 home runs with 54 RBIs. Baseball Reference said he had a 3.0 Wins Above Replacement.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s the second-best of his career. It was topped in Taylor\u2019s second and final season with the Royals in 2022 when he had a 3.4 WAR.<\/p>\n

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Taylor was traded to the Twins ahead of the 2023 season, and he played for the Pirates in 2024 before signing with the White Sox earlier this year.<\/p>\n

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Finishing his career at Nationals Park was special to Taylor, who was part of Washington\u2019s 2019 World Series championship team.<\/p>\n

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\u2018\u2018To be able to play my last games of my career here in this ballpark, in front of these fans, is just the icing on the cake<\/a>,\u2019\u2019 Taylor told the Chicago Sun Times.<\/p>\n

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This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 10:56 AM.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pete Grathoff<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n

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From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining The Kansas City Star in 1997. <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Royals Michael Taylor is congratulated by his teammates after blasting a home run to right center field during the third inning of the 2021 home opener against the Texas Rangers. File photo Kansas City Star Michael A. Taylor, who had two of his best Major League Baseball seasons with the Royals, announced Sunday he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[383708,383709,383706,383707],"class_list":["post-2059079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-former-royals-outfielder","tag-gold-glove-winner","tag-michael-a-taylor","tag-mlb-retirement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Former-Royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}