Would you trust former Dodger Ross Stripling to manage your money?

For Ross Stripling, baseball was something of an accidental career.

He joined Texas A&M, majoring in corporate finance, and plans to stay on campus long enough to earn a master’s degree. After his junior year, he turned down a six-figure bonus offered by the Colorado Rockies. After his senior year, he accepted a six-figure bonus to sign with the Dodgers, only to blow out his elbow after one season in the minor leagues.

He was 24 years old. He was at peace. He called home.

“I think the right thing to do is say I did this baseball thing and start my life,” he told his father.

If you’re a Dodgers fan, you know the rest of his baseball story: In his major league debut, Stripling was five outs short of a no-hitter when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled him. During his nine years in the major leagues, five of them with the Dodgers, he appeared in the All-Star Game and the World Series, and he once pitched with his nickname “Chicken Strip” on the back of his game jersey.

His father knew what was best. Instead of giving up on baseball when he needed Tommy John surgery, his father encouraged Stripling to use the year-long rehabilitation process as a way to explore what a future without baseball might look like. His grandfather offered him an internship in an investment company.

Five years ago, Stripling and his mentor from that company founded their own financial services company, called Skyward Financial. Now, 21 months after Stripling threw his last pitch in the major leagues, he’s throwing a new one: Hey, young athletes making big money, I’ve lived in this world, and I’m going to show you how to protect your money and build toward generational wealth.

“This isn’t me trying to become the next wolf of Wall Street,” Stripling said. “It’s genuine. I want to help kids and their families in a space that has gotten out of control in a hurry.”

Matthew Houston, the mentor, said Stripling blew the brokers away when he interviewed for the internship.

“He brings with him, like, a two-inch folder full of handwritten stock reports that he had written on bus trips in the minor leagues,” Houston said. “He handed us a few, and they were legit reports from Wall Street, he was doing stock analysis. We were falling out of our chairs.”

Stripling quickly obtained his broker’s license. Over the past decade, Houston estimates, he and Stripling might have exchanged messages about markets and customers “25 to 50 times a day.” One evening, Houston watched Stripling’s pitch on television. Shortly after the game ended, he heard the ping of a text message.

“I had just seen him on TV and he said to me, ‘What do you think of Celgene and Gilead in the biotechnology sector?’ “, Houston said. “My mind was blown. »

You don’t have to have played in the major leagues to realize how much money athletes make. The big brokerages want some of that money. Some even call on former athletes to recruit current ones.

Marc Isenberg, former director of financial education for Morgan Stanley’s sports and entertainment group and author of the “Money Players” guide for young athletes, wished Stripling good luck but said he would face significant competition from companies with bigger names and greater resources.

“It’s oversaturated,” Isenberg said. “Almost every Wall Street company, to compete for athletes and entertainers, has a sports and entertainment group.”

And it’s not just the behemoths. Stripling checked with a basketball agent, who said he represented 24 college players who each had a different money manager.

There’s nothing revolutionary about Stripling’s message: Limit flashy spending now in favor of prudent saving and investing, so you can make your money grow throughout your career and beyond.

Stripling believes he can win by focusing on younger athletes, those who suddenly received six- or seven-figure payments from draft bonuses, college revenue-sharing payments and name, image and likeness deals.

“I’ve seen first-rounders come in and spend money on cars and houses and gambling,” Stripling said, “and I’ve seen first-rounders like (former Dodgers shortstop Corey) Seager, who probably didn’t spend a dime of his signing bonus.”

In a presentation aimed at young athletes — and professional teams and college athletic departments that might invite him to speak — Stripling’s company uses his story of a baseball prospect who received a $900,000 upfront payment and spent the $500,000 after taxes on a red Lamborghini. If the prospect had invested that $500,000 over 30 years in a fund that tracked the S&P 500, he would have earned $8.6 million.

“It was the stupidest decision I’ve ever seen people make,” Stripling said.

“I have these stories from being in the locker room. I hope that as a player, my story resonates more than some guy from Goldman Sachs saying, ‘Yeah, we have some good ETFs.'”

Stripling would love the chance to speak at one of the Dodgers’ morning meetings during spring training, where players hear briefings on everything from safety and security to social media.

“I’d like to know more, but I’d be willing to put it in front of the guys,” Roberts said. “I really trust him.”

Meanwhile, Stripling has a federal record. All brokers do it. One form requires brokers to list their employers and job descriptions for the past 10 years. Of all the wealth strategists, financial advisors and registered representatives, Stripling’s form is the one whose professional history begins with this line: “LA Dodgers, Pitcher.”