Matt Joyce still hasn’t forgotten what happened at Angel Stadium 11 years ago, and on Friday he made clear just how much that 2015 season wore him down.
The retired outfielder reflected on the year in a 500-word post on Twitter/X, describing a stretch that began with big expectations and ended with him wondering whether his career was over. Joyce, who was acquired by the Angels in the December 2014 trade that sent pitcher Kevin Jepsen to the Tampa Bay Rays, said the season had beaten him down long before Erick Aybar’s knee collided with his head during a July 2015 game against the Texas Rangers.
"The season I thought was going to secure my future ended with me wondering whether I would ever play in the big leagues again," Joyce wrote on Twitter/X. "And if I'm being completely truthful, part of me was relieved.
I didn't have to walk to the plate in front of 40,000 people and struggle anymore. That's how badly the season had beaten me down."
Joyce had been in the middle of a rough offensive year even before the concussion. In fact, the time he spent on the injured list ended up being the high point of his 2015 season.
He returned in September and played seven games, going hitless and dropping four points from an already-low .178 batting average. Among Angels players with at least 250 plate appearances, only Roger Repoz in 1969 finished a season with a lower batting average.
Even now, Joyce’s numbers still stand out for the wrong reasons. In the 11 seasons since his lone year in Anaheim, only two players have posted a worse batting average for the Angels: Danny Espinosa in 2017 at .162 and Brandon Drury in 2024 at .169.
The injury also created a new opening for the Angels, who were in their most recent season with a winning record. Shane Victorino stepped in to play left field after being acquired in a trade with the Boston Red Sox, and he finished the final 38 games of his career in Anaheim. Victorino hit .214/.292/.286, a modest improvement over Joyce’s production.
Joyce’s own career, though, kept going. He went on to sign several more contracts and played six additional seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016, the Oakland A’s in 2017-18, the Atlanta Braves in 2019, the Miami Marlins in 2020 and the Philadelphia Phillies in 2021 before retiring.
Looking back on that season, Joyce said the biggest lesson was how much energy he had wasted on things he couldn’t control.
"When I looked back on that year, I realized how much time I spent obsessing over things I couldn't control," Joyce wrote. "I had become so focused on what baseball could give me that I got away from simply playing baseball."
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