Could Andruw Jones Possibly be Done?

When the Dodgers restructured Andruw Jones' contract, I wondered out loud if the Yankees would be interested in signing him based on the fact that they have already probed the center-field market this offseason.

Now, according to Buster Olney, he may be lucky just to stay in the majors. He’s in danger of getting cut by the Dodgers and it is more than likely that somebody will give him another shot.

Even then, some baseball executives wonder if he has lost the ability to play in the majors.

“He’s just too heavy to play at the level he used to play at in the outfield,” one scout told Olney.

Olney himself added,

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“There is not a lot of confidence in the minds of evaluators that Jones is a candidate for a body transformation, because as great as he was in the outfield, he has never been known as a workout freak. Jones is playing in winter ball, but he has looked bad in winter ball this year, reports one highly ranked executive.”

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The problem with this thinking is that he will play somewhere. He might not ever resemble the player he once was or could be, but there are plenty of successful fat players in the majors. Also last year was not just about him coming in over weight, by and large it was a knee injury which limited him to 200 at bats.

So, whoever does take a chance on him in 2009 may not be getting the guy capable of hitting 40 homers. If they are lucky and he’s healthy they should get some kind of half way decent defensive player and some kind of bat.

If he can get 500 at-bats, I’m guessing he could hit somewhere around .240/.330/.450. For the Yankees, they might as well take a Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner platoon, but somebody would take those numbers. He won’t be out of baseball.