Orioles icon Adam Jones is retiring from the franchise September 15 – Twin Cities

Longtime Baltimore midfielder Adam Jones will return to the franchise on September 15, retiring as Oriole, the team announced on social media Friday morning.

Jones, 37, played for the Orioles from 2008 to 2018 and ranks among Baltimore’s statistical leaders in several categories. He last appeared in the majors with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2019 before playing in Japan for the next two seasons.

The Orioles will hold a pregame ceremony for Jones before their Sept. 15 home game against the Tampa Bay Rays. The American League East game, which will be broadcast nationally on Apple TV+, will include a Jones t-shirt raffle for the first 15,000 fans.

The team announced Jones’ retirement Release of a short social media video in which a waiter pulls out a cake, places it next to one of Jones’ bobbleheads, and leaves a note announcing Jones’ retirement on September 15. For much of Jones’ tenure in Baltimore, post-game celebrations saw Jones smack a pie in the face of that night’s Player of the Game.

Jones was acquired as part of the February 2008 trade that sent starting player Erik Bedard to the Seattle Mariners and soon became a cornerstone of Baltimore’s most successful career in decades. He was a first-time All-Star in 2009 and made the team every year from 2012-15, winning four Gold Gloves and a Silver Slugger while earning three top-15 finishes in the American League’s Most Valuable Player poll . From 2012 to 2016, Jones appeared in all but 40 of the Orioles’ 810 games, making them the AL’s most-winning team. In that span, the organization has only made three playoff appearances in the last 25 years, although the team is poised to secure another in 2023.

Midway through the 2012 season, Jones signed a six-year, $85.5 million contract extension, which was the largest contract in club history at the time. He ended his decade in Baltimore with 263 home runs ranked fifth among the Orioles. Of those, 146 came to Camden Yards, more than any other player in the stadium’s three decades. Jones is also among the top five franchise players in hits, doubles, RBIs and total bases. His 1,613 games as an Oriole is the eighth most since the club moved to Baltimore in 1954 and third most among primary outfielders behind Brady Anderson’s 1,759 and Paul Blair’s 1,700.

With Jones due as a free agent in 2018 amid a disastrous Orioles season, the club agreed to a swap to send him to the Philadelphia Phillies, but Jones exercised his 10-and-5 rights – the players with more than 10 years of major league season have been granted service, with at least five of them coming for their current club – to reject the trade and remain at Baltimore. Jones later said he wanted to remain a regular midfielder with the Orioles and not just a part-time Philadelphia right fielder when he approached free agency, but Baltimore soon put him in that unwanted role anyway, giving young outfielders more playing time than that Organization of reconstruction began. He signed with Arizona in the off-season before retiring in Japan at the age of two.

The approaching retirement is another sign of a repaired relationship between Jones and the Orioles. Despite his place in franchise history, Jones was not among the attendees of the Orioles festivities to celebrate Camden Yards’ 30th anniversary last year, told 105.7 The Fan he hadn’t even been invited. In recent years, Orioles broadcasters and staff have been advised not to mention Jones on the show or on social media.

Jones returned to Camden Yards last month to serve as a “guest splash”. The Orioles Bird Bath section is in the left panel. Wearing a City Connect No. 10 jersey with “CAPT SPLASH” written on the back, Jones doused fans in the splash zone with water.

On September 15, the fans around the stadium returned the favor with applause.

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