Soft Ball: Fat & Out of Shape MLB Baseball Players in Spring Training

Being a professional baseball player in the 21st century is a year-long gig. You play rougly six million games in eight months of a the year, and during the winter offseason you’re expected to stay in shape. Apparently, no one told Jesus Montero.

And he’s far from the first player to tip the scales a little too hard on the opening day of spring training. The past few years have seen other MLB players come in at less-than-ideal shape. Inspired by Montero, here’s a quick list of the major league baseball players who have come to spring training soft, and how it affected their careers.

These MLB Players entered Spring Training out of shape

[sc:MLB240banner ]Pablo Sandoval (San Francisco Giants, 2013)

Pablo Sandoval and Babe Ruth share two things in common: they’ve both hit 3 homers in a single World Series game, and they’ve both got huge guts.

The Babe’s pot belly didn’t slow him down much during his time, but the Panda’s protruding tummy has. Sandoval drew the ire of Giants management last season when he showed up much heavier than they’d have liked. The result? His worst season (.278/.341/.417) since his equally unfit 2010 season (.268/.323/.409).

Johan Santana (New York Mets, 2013)

Johan Santana’s body was breaking down long before last spring, but Mets management still harbored hopes that their multi-million dollar investment would at least contribute. The Mets eventually voiced their displeasure with the two-time Cy Young winner, saying he was not in pitching shape, which Santana did not take kindly to. Eventually, the issue became a moot point because Santana re-injured his left shoulder and has not pitched since.

Miguel Cabrera (Detroit Tigers, 2011)

Miguel Cabrera‘s 2011 spring training was well-publicized, for all the wrong reasons. Cabrera was famously arrested for a DUI (driving under the influence). This was his second brush with the law for the same offense.

Suffice it to say, getting back on the wagon so close to training camp is not an ideal way to prepare for an MVP-caliber season. But Cabrera sure defied that logic by winning the AL batting title (.344), which landed him fifth-place in the MVP voting.

Felix Doubront (Boston Red Sox, 2013)

Boston Red Sox pitcher Felix Doubront sure enjoys his offseasons. The left-hander showed up to last year’s camp out of shape, the second time in three years he had done so. It was so bad that Red Sox pitching advisor Pedro Martinez called Doubront his “special project.”

To Doubront’s credit, he turned it around in the regular season, posting near-identical stats to the previous season. However, he lost steam by September, as he failed to reach the 4th inning in three of his last four starts. Who knows? Some better offseason conditioning might have contributed to the Red Sox’s World Series run.

Jose Mijares (Minnesota Twins, 2011)

Jose Mijares had a great 2009 with the Twins, pitching 61.2 innings with a 2.34 ERA. He failed to build on that season in 2010 because he was out of shape, as his 6.75 ERA  during in the spring showed.

The solution to get back to his ’09 self was to just get in shape, right? It wasn’t quite that simple for Mijares, who, despite getting into outstanding shape in spring of 2011, still posted a terrible 4.59 ERA that season.

Joba Chamberlain (New York Yankees, 2011)

The running joke in New York back in the spring of 2011 was that as CC Sabathia was losing weight, Joba Chamberlain was finding it. Unfortunately for Joba, Sabathia’s pounds didn’t come with any of his shutdown pitching ability.

To be fair, Joba was pitching respectably well in relief; he had a 2.83 ERA by June. But disaster struck when it was determined that he needed Tommy John surgery. Whether or not his subpar conditioning was responsible for the injury is anyone’s guess.

Phil Hughes (New York Yankees, 2011)

Phil Hughes wasn’t as out of shape as fellow former ace prospect Chamberlain, but he was sufficiently unfit enough that the Yankees had to send him to their “fat camp” before the start of the 2011 season.

Whatever Hughes did in “camp”, it didn’t make his performance any better. In his first three starts, Hughes pitched just 10.1 innings, gave up 16 earned runs (for a 13.94 ERA) and struck out just three batters. A two-month stint on the DL followed due to shoulder inflammation.

Ruben Tejada (New York Mets, 2013)

In 2011-12, the emergence of Ruben Tejada as a potential shortstop of the future was one the lone bright spots during some gloomy Mets seasons. But all that optimism faded away last year, as Tejada’s production fell off a cliff (from .289/.333/.351 to .202/259/.260).

It may have been other factors that affected Tejada’s play, like perhaps the crushing reality that he plays for the Mets, but Tejada certainly didn’t help by showing up to camp badly out of shape.

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