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Max Muncy Reveals He Nearly Left the Dodgers Before His Break Out 2018 Season

Let’s preface this by saying that Max Muncy is just so dang good in interviews. We know this firsthand at DodgersNation.com after he was nice enough to join us during the offseason. Max Muncy is just an open book that doesn’t sugarcoat anything. And with that, the Dodgers slugger revealed an interesting nugget in a chat on a recent edition of the Foul Territory show on YouTube.

Muncy was asked once again about his well-documented path from Oakland to his couch to the Dodgers. In a follow up, former MLB catcher Erik Kratz wondered if Muncy was upset he didn’t get a call up to the major leagues in his first season in the LA organization in 2017.



It turns out, uh, yeah.

“At the end of ’17 I was pissed I didn’t get called up after having that year. But, at the same time, I also understood because when you looked at that team they had in ’17 there was no spots to be filled, there was no reason to call anyone up. The only spot that needed to be filled was they needed a shortstop because (Corey) Seager’s arm was hurting and that was when they called up Charlie Culberson.”

Via Foul Territory on YouTube

Muncy joined the Dodgers on a minor league deal on April 28, 2017. In 110 games at Triple-A Oklahoma City that year he hit .309 with a .905 OPS. That should be good enough to get at least a call up when rosters expand in September, right? Well, as Max recounts — and Dodger fans well remember — that 2017 squad was pretty good. Good enough to make it to the World Series and lose in 7 games to the Houston Astros (we won’t get into that).

So Max got the reason why. But he also nearly took it heart enough to leave the club that offseason.

“So, the baseball mind in me completely understood why I didn’t get called up in ’17. But, I was also mad about it, so I didn’t really want to sign back with them coming into ’18. They were like, ‘why don’t you want to sign back?’ And I was like, ‘well, I didn’t get a chance to even just come up in September and even just play a game here or there after the year I just had. I’m gonna go somewhere I can get a chance.'”

Bombshell from Maxwell Steven Muncy. Thankfully, the voice of reason prevailed.

“But the more reasonable mind I had kind of spoke out and said, ‘you’re comfortable here. You just had a great year.’ And there’s something to be said about being with an organization that you’re comfortable with that was willing to give you a second chance, so I stuck it out.”

Muncy was rewarded for sticking it out as he put together a monster season with LA in 2018 and put a ribbon on top of it with an iconic walk off homer in the 2018 World Series. Since joining the Dodgers’ big league roster, the now 31-year-old has hit 144 home runs and has earned two All-Star selections along the way. Max is signed through the season and has a club option for 2024 that will certainly be picked up if an extension isn’t worked out before then.

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Clint Pasillas

Clint Pasillas has been writing, blogging, and podcasting about the Los Angeles Dodgers since 2008. Under Clint's leadership as the Lead Editor, Dodgers Nation has grown into one of the most read baseball sites in the world with millions of unique visitors per month. Find him online on Twitter/X or his YouTube channel!

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