The Troy Tulowitzki redemption tour officially will begin in mere months, but the team he’ll be playing for to kick off the rebound remains uncertain.
Teams appear interested in what he has left in the tank, too. The 34-year-old held a workout Tuesday morning in Long Beach, Calif., and according to Yahoo! Sports’ Tim Brown, 12 teams, including the Boston Red Sox, decided to stop by.
In addition to the Red Sox, Brown noted the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Angels, San Francisco Giants, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates and “others” sent representatives to watch. Over the course of an hour, Tulowitzki fielded grounders at shortstop and took batting practice.
The Toronto Blue Jays released Tulowitzki with two years remaining on his lucrative, multi-year deal. He’s been contending with injuries that caused him to miss all of the 2018 season and limited him to just 66 games in 2017. All told, the two-plus seasons he actually played in Toronto were wildly underwhelming, and he hasn’t been nearly the same player since getting traded from the Colorado Rockies during the 2015 campaign.
The upside is there though, which certainly is why teams are willing to at least take a look. He’s a two-time Silver Slugger with a career .290 batting average, and boasts 28 homers in his 162-game average. Couple that with skill in the field that’s resulted in a pair of Gold Gloves and he could prove to be a valuable extra infielder with decent upside.
He hasn’t been productive since 2015, and the cards are stacked against him to return to that form, but that clearly hasn’t kept him from piquing teams’ interest.
