Drew Henson, after a six-year baseball career, has elected to go back to football. He’s walking away from $12 million owed to him over the next couple of years, although he’s likely to make most of that up in a football contract.
I take no pleasure in this. My objection to Henson’s baseball career had more to do with the outsized expectations placed upon him by the scouting community and the Yankees. It was very clear that Henson, despite his size and strength, lacked the skills necessary to be a productive baseball player. He was pushed to Triple-A despite considerable evidence that he didn’t belong there. His prospect status as a baseball player was almost entirely a function of his ability as a football player; had he not had that particular trait, he would have been just another guy.
Credit Henson for how he managed his career. Two-sport athletes should always choose baseball first, because the skills required to play the game–to hit, specifically–atrophy quickly if they go unused. You can fail at baseball and go on to a career in football or basketball much more easily than you can take a few years away from baseball and come back to it.
Aaron Boone will have exploratory knee surgery next Tuesday to determine how serious the tear of his ACL is. MRIs are notoriously difficult to read, so it makes perfect sense for Lewis Yocum to peek around before deciding what course to take. This does let us know that the tear is likely not complete, a definite positive for Boone’s assertions that he will be back in August. Tyler Kepner also reminds us that Boone had the same surgery in 2000 and made a full recovery.
Scott Erickson is back, and reports from his workouts–public and private–are reasonably positive. No one is predicting that he’ll be a top starter, but he’s recovered sufficiently from a series of surgeries on his pitching arm to make a contribution at the back of the rotation. His stamina is going to be more of an issue than his stuff, especially early in the season. At least Mets fans can look forward to some Lisa Guerrero sightings this season.
The Mets are also hoping that Cliff Floyd will be sufficiently recovered from late season Achilles tendon surgery to be a force in the middle of the lineup. Early signs are very positive. Mets team sources indicate that Floyd is running at full speed and will be ready for spring training. Floyd may be injury-prone, but the tendonitis should be in his past.
Brian Sabean has brought a fair amount of criticism on himself with his low-key approach to this off-season, creating the world’s largest chapter of the lunatic fringe in the process. So it’s no surprise that he faced his share of skeptical questions from Giants fans during his live chat on mlb.com earlier this week. But it was his answer to a fairly innocuous question that raised the most eyebrows among the “fringers”:
Q: Did you ever make an offer for Vladimir Guerrero?
Sabean: In a word: No. If we had signed Guerrero or [Gary] Sheffield, we would have been without [Jim] Brower, [Scott] Eyre, [Matt] Herges, [Dustin] Hermanson, [Brett] Tomko, [A.J.] Pierzynski, [Pedro] Feliz, [J.T.] Snow, [Jeffrey] Hammonds, [Dustan] Mohr and [Michael] Tucker–obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending.