Chris Taylor, former Dodgers All-Star, retires at 35
Former All-Star and two-time World Series champion Chris Taylor has retired from professional baseball, according to Major League Baseball’s transaction log, ending a 12-year career that included a decade-long run of success with the Dodgers. Taylor, 35, was a key member of the Dodgers’ core during their rise to superteam status from 2016-2025. Getty Images Originally acquired in a trade with the Mariners as a reclamation project — famously, in exchange for only reliever Zach Lee — the Virginia native blossomed in Los Angeles after overhauling his swing and becoming a versatile utility threat.
He played 1,007 of his 1,123 career big-league games in Dodger blue, collecting 790 hits, 108 home runs, 423 RBIs and plenty of highlight moments to go with it. “He’s had a great career,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was in his first season with the club when Taylor arrived in June 2016. “He got everything out of his ability.
” In 2017, Taylor was named co-MVP of the National League Championship Series, helping lead the Dodgers to their first World Series appearance in 29 years by batting . 316 with two home runs in a five-game elimination of the Cubs. He had another memorable moment when the Dodgers defended their pennant in the 2018 NLCS, making a sprawling, over-the-shoulder, run-saving catch in left field against the Brewers in the series’ decisive seventh game in Milwaukee.
“Man, worlds would have been different if he hadn’t made that play,” Roberts recalled. When the Dodgers finally ended their championship drought in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Taylor played an important role, starting in all but two games of that October’s postseason run. He then became an All-Star for the first time in 2021, when he batted .
254 with 20 home runs and a career-high 73 RBIs in the regular season, before hitting a walk-off home run in the NL Wild Card game against the Cardinals. Getty Images In his postseason career, Taylor had nine home runs, 26 RBIs and a . 791 OPS.