What's Our Working Definition Of "Baseball Activities" Here?

We haven't heard much about the status of Derek Jeter lately.  But both the Yankosphere and MSM news outlets got their ears pricked up by this Andrew Marchand tweet yesterday:

Jeter is back on the field in Tampa. He took 25 dry swings today and fielded 20 grounders right at him, Brian Cashman told me. Story soon.
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) June 10, 2013

And almost immediately there was a flurry of reports coming out about Derek Jeter "resuming baseball activities."

Ummm, did he really?  I don't know if my definition of that phrase differs from everybody else's but I don't consider 25 dry swings and basically standing in place and bending over slightly to catch a ball baseball activities.  I picked up a putter I had laying around my apartment last night and took 25 dry swings while I was watching the Sawx-Rays game and I didn't even break a sweat.  If those are considered "baseball activities" then the 20-25 second I spent in the shower vigorously rubbing shampoo into my head is a baseball activity.  So is the rather brisk walk I take to the coffee room to refill the mug and the walk back to my desk.

Point being, don't get excited about anything Jeter-related that gets reported for the next few months because he's nowhere near coming back.  The Yankees threw out the "after the All Star Break" date after the ankle setback, but that doesn't mean it's going to be the game after.  Jeter has a long way to go and it's going to be a very slow rehab process.  At this point, I feel confident saying that I think Alex Rodriguez will be back on the field before Jeter this season, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Jeter didn't play at all this year.  I don't consider what he did yesterday to be baseball activities, and I don't think we're actually going to read about him doing real baseball activities for quite some time.

Don't Count On Heathcott In The Bronx This Year

 (No need to rush the kid.  Courtesy of MiLB.com)

Prospect huggers everywhere were rejoicing last Friday when they got wind of scouting director Damon Oppenheimer's latest comments on 2 of the Yankees' hottest prospects.  Speaking to Jack Curry of YES, Oppenheimer had very high praise for both Mark Montgomery and Slade Heathcott, calling Montgomery's slider "sick," describing Heathcott as an "impact player," and leaving the door open for both of them to be on the Yankee roster sometime in 2013.

This comes as no surprise to anybody who's familiar with Montgomery's body of work.  I've advocated for his call up to the show on multiple occasions, once before last year's roster expansion date (which may have been a little hasty) and recently as part of the MiL group I think we will see in a Yankee uniform in 2013.  But Heathcott is a different story.  He's 22 years old, but not nearly as polished as Montgomery, and with less high-level experience under his belt.  Heathcott is as toolsy as they come, but he's got more working against him than for him on the path to the Majors in 2013 and to look past that would be wrong.