Former Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell has agreed to a contract with a team in the Mexican League, reports Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter link). MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets further tweets that Maxwell will be joining los Acereros de Monclova.
Maxwell, 28, became the first (and only) player in Major League Baseball to kneel during the National Anthem back in 2017. Already one of the game’s most polarizing players because of that protest, Maxwell came under considerably greater scrutiny in the 2017-18 offseason when he was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (eventually resulting in a plea agreement). Oakland outrighted Maxwell following the 2018 campaign, at which point he became a free agent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, between those issues and Maxwell’s lack of on-field productivity — he’s a career .240/.314/.347 hitter in 412 MLB plate appearances — he was unable to latch on with a big league organization this winter.
Maxwell is facing a long road back to the Major Leagues, but it seems that he’ll look to utilize this latest opportunity as a means of showcasing for MLB organizations in hopes of landing a minor league opportunity to return to affiliated ball.
