Tyler Gaffney recently announced that he will be returning to baseball after dealing with injuries the past few years during his NFL career.
“My dream has been the big leagues my whole life,” Gaffney said, via MLB.com. “I think I’ve been tasting that every time I was hurt. You have time to think about things like that. So now I’m here, putting in my work. Now I’m here, five years later. I think the last couple years took their toll on my body. The heart wanted it. The body didn’t. I’m finally able to come back to baseball, the sport I love.”
Gaffney was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2012 and played for them during a summer before returning to Stanford and football.
Gaffney, 27, is a former sixth-round pick of the Panthers back in 2014. He was in the third year of his four-year, $2,316,600 rookie contract and set to make a base salary of $600,000 for the 2016 season when he was waived and later claimed by the Patriots.
New England ultimately waived him coming out of the preseason in 2016 with an injury designation and he later reverted to their injured reserve list. New England elected to bring him back on a future/reserve contract last year, but cut him loose just a month later.
The Jaguars signed him to a contract last summer but waived him with an injury designation a few days later.
At Stanford, Gaffney ran for 2,500 yards on 486 carries (5.1 YPC) and scored a total of 37 touchdowns over the course of four years.
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