Baseball: Hernandez ready for spring
The bushy, unkempt hair is now closely cropped and slicked back. Felix Hernandez’s shoulders look broader, his face thinner.
At age 20, the Seattle right-hander is maturing quite quickly.
“When I saw him I was stunned,” Seattle general manager Bill Bavasi said. “This guy looks like a guy who is very prepared, very focused.”
A sleeker, trimmer Hernandez showed up in Seattle this week with a toned physique down 20 pounds from the same time a year ago. Hernandez spent the winter in Venezuela eating smarter and working out daily, after his first full major league season failed to meet the expectations placed upon the youngster.
Hernandez was 12-14 a season ago with a 4.52 ERA in 31 starts, hampered by his poor physical conditioning that led to the development of shin splints in spring training. The splints took two months to fully overcome.
Hernandez has apparently learned from his mistake, helped by conversations last season with manager Mike Hargrove and pitching coach Rafael Chaves.
Last season, Hernandez reported to spring training at 246 pounds, 16 pounds heavier than the team wanted. This year, Hernandez will arrive in Arizona at a svelte 226, looking more like the workhorse Seattle is counting on to be the ace of its staff.
“Last year, he looked like a baby, he looked like a kid, from the look in his eye to how he carried himself to the composition of his body,” Hargrove said. “All that is different. You don’t see that in a lot of young kids, that transformation that quick.”
Hernandez took the first two weeks of the off-season to himself, by order of the team. He then started his off-season workout program, regularly running and hitting the gym and, perhaps most important, eating more vegetables and avoiding what he called “fat foods.”
“I learned a lot of things,” Hernandez said of his first full season. “The first thing I learned is that you have to get ready in the off-season for spring training.”
Hernandez acknowledged he showed up in Arizona last year in “all right” shape.
“His heart is in the right place, it was in the right place then,” Bavasi said. “He just made a mistake and that’s part of a 19-year-old coming to camp is he makes a mistake. You don’t see this kid make mistakes twice.”
Hernandez was limited to less than 200 innings last year, but still led the team with 191 innings pitched.
Hargrove will not have the luxury of limiting Hernandez’s innings this year as Seattle failed to land the No. 1 starter it sought in free agency, leaving Hernandez as the default ace of the Mariners staff.
“Jeff Weaver is close to finding a home with the Mariners.
The Mariners are closing in on a deal with the 30-year-old right-hander, a baseball official close to the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the contract had not yet been agreed to.
Drew, Red Sox agree
The Boston Red Sox and J.D. Drew finally resolved their wrangling over the outfielder’s five-year, $70 million contract – more than seven weeks after agreeing to everything except what to do about his surgically repaired right shoulder.
A baseball official involved in the negotiations said that the language had been agreed to. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because an announcement had not yet been made.
The Red Sox reached a tentative agreement with Drew on Dec. 5, but the deal was delayed over possible damage lingering from September 2005 shoulder surgery.
After wrangling for weeks – interrupted by the holidays and Boston’s pursuit of Japanese ace Daisuke Matsuzaka, another Boras client – the sides agreed on language that would allow the team to opt out of guaranteed money in 2010 and 2011 if a specified pre-existing injury recurs.
Clearing the bases
Right-hander Jamey Wright and left-hander Joey Eischen signed minor-league deals with Texas. … Outfielder Darin Erstad finalized a $1 million, one-year contract with the Chicago White Sox, and right-hander Tomo Ohka completed a $1.5 million, one-year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. … Houston agreed to deals with its three remaining players in arbitration: third baseman Morgan Ensberg ($4.35 million), shortstop Adam Everett ($2.8 million) and outfielder Jason Lane ($1.05 million). … Oakland gave a $2.1 million deal to outfielder Bobby Kielty, its final player in arbitration. … Jack Lang, a Hall of Fame baseball writer who for two decades had the pleasant assignment of telling players they’d been elected to Cooperstown, died in Huntington, N.Y. He was 85.