This is not a repeat from last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that. Or really any year after 2006:
[Chavez’s agent says] Chavez is handling “pretty strenuous workouts’’ five days a week at Athletes Performance in Arizona just fine and “from our perspective, is completely healthy . . . Eric’s looking for the right opportunity, at the right time but his hope and desire is to be playing next season.”
I guess you could give him a non-roster invite, play him for nine innings in every single spring training game from the time they begin until the end of March, and then, if he hasn’t ‘asploded yet, maybe offer him a bench job. But really, I think everyone has been around this block enough times to where even that is pushing it a bit.