He’s not officially retired, but Jose Molina is 39 years old, was released by the Rays, and is sidelined following knee surgery. And now he’s joined the Cardinals as a special guest instructor for spring training.
Molina’s younger brother, Yadier Molina, is the Cardinals’ starting catcher and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that the team is hoping Jose has a good enough experience this spring that he’s willing to take on a full-time role coaching catching throughout the organization.
Molina was always terrible offensively, hitting .233 with a .608 OPS for his career, but he stuck around in the majors for 15 seasons, earned $15 million, and played on a lot of good teams because he excelled defensively and was particularly great at framing pitches.