Dieter Hartinger, Still Strong or Nearing the End? October 24, 2026 – Dieter Hartinger has seen a lot in his time with the MBBA. He’s most famous, of course, for being a workhorse in Las Vegas, pumping out 200 inning seasons like he was a factory—which in a way he is. Dieter Hartinger is a guy for whom everything has a place and a time. Perhaps it’s cliché to blame it on his German heritage, but since he’s the one who does it first, I’ll include that here. Dieter Hartinger was born in Germany, and first learned to play the game there.
“I loved baseball because the game is so structured,” he said. “Three strikes. Four balls. Three outs. Nine innings. Every time. It’s the perfect game.”
That idea moves in everything he does to approach the game, too.
“I get to the ballpark three hours before the game,” he says. “No earlier, no later. Otherwise I will lose.” Then theirs is pre-start meal: a three ballpark sausages with grilled onions and peppers. Light mustard. There is, perhaps, a reason he’s 250 pounds, but we’ll leave that to the reader to determine.
He puts his glove in the same cubby every time he returns to the dugout.
His locker is magnificently clean, and … uh … precisely laid out.
Not surprising, then, Hartinger’s precision is apparent on the mound, too. While he could push it up to 97 at times in his youth, Hartinger was always about hitting spots, controlling a game with the up and in and then the down and out. “I don’t like giving people first base, and I despise seeing the ball go out of the park,” he once told a reporter. “I hate them both almost as much as I hate the media.
And it worked for him. In Vegas Hartinger won double digits most every year until 2021 when a fractured elbow brought his season to a vastly premature end.
A trade at age 32 sent him to Buffalo, where he struggled for two seasons before signing a deal with Yellow Springs, a place that’s more pitcher friendly, and a place where his kids (now nearly in High School) seem to get along fine. Hartinger knows his time is coming, though. He can read a calendar as well as the next guy, and he knows that his next birthday will see him turn 37. He knows he only hits 94 on the gun on days when he’s got the wind behind him, and that he’s living and dying on the ground ball (if he were less kind, he might tell the GM it would be nice if he had a real shortstop behind him). He knows the Nine hold a team option on him now, and that if they give that option up he’ll be looking to the free agent market to say if his career is over or not.
“I think that’s a little ways off,” he says. “I like it here, and my kids like it here, so I hope I can stay. But what is will be what is.”
That's pretty much been the Hartinger motto, hasn't it? Keep the nose to the grindstone, keep the metronome ticking. Three strikes. Three outs. Nine innings. Every time. Glove in the cubby. Polish sausage and onions, mustard. Keep it up for long enough and you strike our 2,000 hitters and you win 150 games ... which is exactly what the league saw Hartinger accomplish last season.
So, is it the end?
Nah. The guy can still pitch. And he can still win. The only question is whether that locker he keeps so neat will be in Chavez Memorial or not.