Portland pitcher Christopher Troye has a plan once his playing days are over. Troye, along with a friend, plans to work in real estate. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Christopher Troye can throw a baseball 95 miles per hour. At 25, he doesn’t see that ending any time soon. A relief pitcher with the Portland Sea Dogs, Troye is hoping for a long career in baseball.

When it’s over, though, when he no longer has the juice in his right arm to throw a fastball past a hitter, he has a plan.

Over the last six years, starting when he was 19, Troye and a friend purchased several homes in Detroit, Michigan. Troye wasn’t looking beyond baseball when he started buying property, but he was keeping an eye out on his future.

“To be honest with you, it’s not like I’m preparing for the end of my career. It’s just that I’m trying to maximize my earning potential during my career,” Troye said before a recent Sea Dogs game. “All the money I make playing baseball, when I make it to the big leagues, I’m just going to be buying bigger properties. It would be nice to own some Boston real estate for sure.”

No player wants to think of life after baseball, but those pro careers are incredibly finite. Each of the 30 major league teams carries a roster of 26 players. And each major league club has four minor league affiliates, with each carrying between 28 and 35 players, plus a squad of rookies playing at its spring training site. For a vast majority of players, the math toward advancement and a long career doesn’t work.

Thanks to a five-year collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and minor league players, minor leaguers are making more money today than ever, but it’s still not a lot. The annual salary in 2024 for a player in Double-A, the level at which the Sea Dogs compete, is $30,250. In comparison, the minimum yearly salary for a Major Leaguer in 2024 is $740,000.

The end is something most players avoid contemplating, said Mike McCarthy, who is the pitching coach for the Gwinnett Stripers, Atlanta’s Triple-A affiliate. McCarthy spent parts of four seasons pitching for the Sea Dogs and retired after the 2016 season.

Portland pitcher Mike McCarthy signs autographs before the 2016 home opener. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

“When your career ends, it’s a vacuum, and a lot of guys struggle with it,” he said. “Baseball ends in the prime of your life.”

Brian Abraham, the Red Sox director of player development, said the team and Major League Baseball provide each player with a packet containing resources and information they can use when their playing career ends, whether that comes via retirement or release. The packet contains guidance about financial planning and how to return to school.

Past and current players say they get some basic help with financial planning during spring training. But when you’re trying to either make a team or advance up the minor league ladder, players say they’re usually focused on the present.

“The second you have a strong Plan B, you start to lose focus and ground to other guys. You have to train and work like baseball is your only means of survival,” said Madison Younginer, who pitched for the Sea Dogs in 2015 and reached the majors with the Atlanta Braves in 2016.

Younginer last pitched professionally in 2018.  When he was released by the Dodgers, he was offered a job with CarolinaPower, an electrical contractor in South Carolina. He asked if he could wait three months before starting so he could decompress and get baseball out of his system. Two months later, the Dodgers re-signed him. When he was released once again, Younginer was ready to start his next life at CarolinaPower, where he still works in business development.

When he was playing, McCarthy, the former Sea Dogs pitcher, was able to work on getting an MBA through a program Major League Baseball had set up with the University of Phoenix. Even so, he said, some teammates and management thought that meant that he wasn’t fully invested in baseball.

There’s a balance to be found between baseball and outside interests, Sea Dogs manager Chad Epperson said.

“You’ve got to be where your feet are. I know in this game, people are always looking ahead,” Epperson said. “ ‘When am I going to be in Triple-A? When am I going to be in the big leagues?’ In some instances, ‘How much longer do I have to play?’ Focus on today. We’re here today.”

Sea Dog pitcher Madison Younginer and Justin Haley share a chair as they look at their phones in the club’s locker room on April 8, 2015. Press Herald file photo

Epperson said he knew his playing days were dwindling in 2000, when he was playing for Bowie, the Baltimore Orioles Double-A affiliate. He looked into the stands and saw his wife, Anne, holding their infant son, Drew. The next year, Epperson began his coaching career as manager of the Cook County Cheetahs in the independent Frontier League.

“I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t have her traveling all around having a kid now.’ It hits you right away,” Epperson said. “No regrets, looking back.”

He said he always had an interest in coaching: “It was a goal of mine, because I wasn’t a prospect player. I grinded it out for 10 years.”

Epperson said he’s thankful he had mentors and coaches along the way who encouraged him to stay in the game when his playing days were over. If a Sea Dogs player is considering retirement or a coaching career down the road, he is always happy to discuss it, he said.

“Outside the lines, we’re always talking about that stuff,” he said. “I’m not saying they walk out of here ready to tackle everything, but they’re definitely more prepared to do it. They know. I think if I knew, they know. … Guys will come up to you and say, ‘I’m done.’ You want to make sure it’s not a jerk reaction: ‘I got no hits today, so I’m done.’ You have those conversations.”

McCarthy retired at the end of 2016 and began talking to clubs the next year about coaching opportunities. In 2018, he joined the Minnesota Twins as a coach with their Triple-A affiliate. In 2022, he moved on to the San Diego Padres as pitching coach for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. The next year, he joined the Oakland A’s as the bullpen coach and then moved on to Gwinnett this season.

Younginer said he didn’t give coaching a thought either while he was playing or after.

“For me, I needed space,” he said. “I loved throwing that 0-2 curveball so much, I didn’t want to coach.”

Portland Sea Dog pitcher Brendan Cellucci has an interest in psychology. When his playing days are over, he plans to pursue a possible career in that field. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

In the offseason, Brendan Cellucci, a left-handed relief pitcher with the Sea Dogs, hosts and produces a podcast, Culture Church, with his best friends Adam Holland and Denari Beard. They bring on guests they hope will spark interesting conversations about finding motivation and personal growth. The hope is to not just entertain listeners, Cellucci said, but to make them thankful they heard the message.

It’s sparked an interest in psychology that Cellucci, 26, hopes to delve into more deeply when his playing days are done. Cellucci attended Tulane before he was drafted by the Red Sox in the 12th round of the 2019 draft. Major League Baseball will pay for his education when he decides to return to school, Cellucci said.

“This has always been tunnel vision for me. I’m going to play this game until somebody tells me I have to hang up my cleats,” he said. “But (the podcast) is something I like to do in addition to (baseball). I think it’s important for athletes to have our own hobbies as well, things that can take us away from the game – so through the ups and downs of it, we’re not always so focused on our results, we’re appreciating other aspects of life as well.”

Troye, the Sea Dogs relief pitcher, says he spends about four to six hours a month tending to his properties, giving him plenty of time to focus on baseball. He’s from California but said he’s proud that he’s able to provide homes to low-income families in Detroit. Owning property also is a step toward a goal he’s had almost as long as he’s wanted a lengthy career in professional baseball.

“Financial freedom, bro. Financial freedom,” said the 12th-round pick out of UC Santa Barbara in 2021. “The dream has always been there to have enough passive income to sustain the standard of living you want and to spend your time doing what you want to spend it on.

“For me, I play baseball because I want to. I have a passion and I have a dream for it. It’s cool to be able to do these things while I’m playing baseball, because there’s not too many ways you can earn money while you’re playing. Investing in real estate was the right combination for me.”

Players need to know that they can do two things at once: focus on the game and develop outside interests, McCarthy said. Those interests could become a career when the playing days are over.

“If you were done playing tomorrow, what are you passionate about?” he said. “We all know this won’t last forever.”