Michael Conforto is a cautionary tale.
When the MLB lockout ended, Conforto was the only major free agent to not sign with a team, as he wanted to wait and see how his shoulder would recover from an offseason injury.
He bet on himself, but now, he’s going to miss the entirety of the 2022 season after undergoing shoulder surgery.
In doing so, he missed out on potentially making millions in 2022, wherever he was going to sign.
Now, the free agent outfielder must wait until 2023 before he can get going again.
He’ll sit out all of 2022 and be out of a job until next offseason.
Last week Michael Confordo underwent successful shoulder surgery by Dr Neil ELATTRACHE. He is expected to make a full recovery and return to play in spring training 2023. @nypostsports
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) April 24, 2022
Missed Opportunity
This was a bad move on Conforto’s part, to wait to talk to teams until his shoulder recovered.
Obviously, it never did, and Conforto is in this position now, without a job and on shelf for the whole 2022 season.
He missed a great opportunity to make millions with another team who could have used a power hitting left-handed outfield bat.
It’s a shame that a player of caliber is left out on the market and without a new team for this season.
Conforto is an exciting ballplayer with All-Star potential.
Now, baseball fans have been robbed of the opportunity to watch an exciting player in action.
More importantly, Conforto shot himself in the foot by waiting it all out and not signing when he had the chance.
At least for him, he’ll have time to recover and likely be at full strength by 2023.
But this rash decision to wait out the process until his shoulder recovered may have hurt his stock a little bit.
We’ll see what happens next offseason when free agency begins again.
