The Los Angeles Dodgers hope they signed the steal of the offseason, reportedly agreeing to a minor league contract with former New York Yankees and New York Mets reliever Stephen Ridings.
Ridings spent last season with the High Point Rockers of the Atlantic League in North Carolina and will start the 2025 season with the Dodgers’ Triple-A club in Oklahoma City.
The 29-year-old went 1-0 with a 3.06 ERA for the Rockers last season. He appeared in nine games, including seven starts and struck out 41 in 32.1 innings pitched.
Ridings made his big league debut with the Yankees in August 2021. It was a whirlwind season for him which began as a substitute teacher at the Palm Beach Maritime Academy in Lantana, Fla.
“Yeah, I mean I’d go to work, proctor for the day,” Ridings told MLB.com. “Then I’d show up to the gym, dressed up in my polo and khakis. I’d change in the bathroom quick, go throw, get a workout in and be done before they closed.”
In 2019, Ridings was in the minor leagues with the Kansas City Royals, but the cancellation of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic led him to take a substitute teaching job. He told MLB.com that from October 2020 to early March 2021, he worked at a school where he managed attendance, handed out lesson plans, and maintained classroom discipline.
At the end of the day, he needed a paycheck and the job paid while the minor league season was cancelled.
“The younger kids had no idea,” Ridings said. “Some of the older ones I talked to about it, they thought it was cool. I don’t know if they heard it through the grapevine, but they would ask me what I do other than this and I would say, ‘I’m a professional baseball player.’ They tried to Google me. There were a couple kids who had a solid grasp on it.”
The Royals released Ridings one month into his substitute teaching job which led him to training at a nearby gym ran by Yankees director of player health and performance Eric Cressey.
Ridings ended up appearing in five games for the Yankees during the 2021 season and had an ERA of 1.80. He struck out seven, walked two and gave up four hits in five innings of work.
