Late Career
The 1925 proved to be the pinnacle of Aldridge's career. In 1926 he suffered a record of 10 wins and 13 losses, with a 4.07 earned run average. The year 1927 was better for Aldridge. He won fifteen games, losing only ten, with a 4.25 earned run average. Aldridge also played in the 1927 World Series, losing the second game of the series 6–2 as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig led the New York Yankees to a sweep of the Pirates in four games. He gave up all six runs in the 7⅓ innings he pitched. After several other players had ghostwritten newspaper articles for the Christy Walsh Syndicate, he wrote an article for a Pittsburgh newspaper, who bragged that it was Aldridge himself who wrote it.
After winning 15 games again in 1927, Aldridge expected a raise, but instead Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss traded him to the New York Giants on February 11, 1928, for Burleigh Grimes, citing Aldridge's 4.25 ERA in 1927 as a reason not to give him a raise. He held out for much of the year; by the time he returned, he was out of shape and pitched poorly. During the time Aldridge refused to report, Giants manager John McGraw threatened Aldridge with less pay, and at one point tried to trade him to the Cincinnati Reds. After the season, in which Aldridge's record was four wins and seven losses with a 4.83 earned run average after 119 innings pitched, he was sent to the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, Aldridge refused to report and retired from baseball instead. His final game was on August 29, 1928.
In total, Aldridge pitched 1,601 innings, won 97 games and lost 80, had 102 complete games and a combined earned run average of 3.76. Rogers Hornsby said that Aldridge had one of the three best curveballs he had ever seen, a curveball described by the Baseball Magazine as a "hard, sharp-breaking curve" that was one of the best curveballs in all of baseball. He also threw a screwball. His batting average was .229, a respectable average for a pitcher. Aldridge twice attempted to steal a base, once each in 1922 and 1926, and succeeded both times.
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