Oakland Athletics catcher John Jaso has finally been cleared to resume all baseball-related activities after a laborious recovery from a season-ending concussion suffered in August, according to MLB.com's Jane Lee.
Jaso started 47 games behind the plate in 2014 as he shared catching duties with Derek Norris, but did not appear in a game after Aug. 23 due to lingering concussion symptoms.
"When I first got hit, it was nausea and a headache for five straight days," Jaso told Fangraphs' Eno Sarris. "That kind of went away, because I wasn’t catching for a while because we hit a string of lefties. All of a sudden, we hit a string of righties and I was catching a lot and all of a sudden all of my symptoms - I’d been playing through this for a while, I had been foggy and all that through this whole thing - all of a sudden my symptoms just skyrocketed."
The Athletics have even considered giving Jaso some reps at first base in spring training, a position at which he's logged just five innings at the major-league level, in order to increase his versatility and keep his bat in the lineup. The 31-year-old managed a .767 on-base plus slugging with nine home runs over 99 games last season, and boasts a 126 OPS+ over the last three seasons.