Forget the fact that Jurickson Profar sent the first live pitch he saw this spring over the wall in left field, and forget that pitch came off the hand of Rangers' ace Cole Hamels (both are true).
Just forget those (but really, it's pretty impressive).
Profar, the one-time top prospect in all of baseball who's missed the past two seasons with a lingering shoulder injury and even still just turned 22 years old, made his return to the field in that meaningless game on Monday, the first time he's played in the field since 2014, and his first game at shortstop since fall ball in 2013.
And after seeing what Profar did in that game, it's obvious it wasn't meaningless to him.
The Dallas Morning News reported that Profar made two impressive plays, going up the middle on Delino DeShields' grounder to make a diving stop and throwing out the speedy leadoff man on a one-hopper. After that, he ran down a pop fly in shallow left for a sprawling catch on Hanser Alberto.
So far, so good.
"I've worked very, very hard to get back to playing," said Profar. "This gives me even more push to keep working.
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"I feel great," he added. "I feel like I've tested it [the throwing shoulder] out on routine balls this spring, but I wanted to show you guys it's there."
The Rangers' plan for Profar is to put him at shortstop in the minors and let him get as many at-bats there as possible. Ideally, the Rangers might not even see Profar getting to Arlington this season after the two-year layoff.
Profar doesn't see it that way, but understands the easygoing approach.
"If I have to go to [Triple-A Round Rock], I will go there," Profar said. "But I know that I've worked hard and I'm going to play somewhere in the big leagues at some point this season."
