Where they stand: Center field

Presumed regular: Bryon Buxton

Others on 40: Jake Cave, Michael Reed, Zack Granite

Notable nonroster: None who figure for 2019

As with Miguel Sano, the Twins are counting on Buxton to get them where they want to be. Unlike Sano, they have some reasonable alternatives on the 40-man roster if he fails again.

Cave, who got a little more than 300 plate appearances last season and hit 13 homers, may seem the obvious Plan B. He wouldn't be for me. Two primary reasons:

• I believe that Max Kepler, Granite, (probably) Reed and (possibly) Eddie Rosario are superior defensive center fielders to Cave;
• Cave's walk-to-strikeout rate is horrendous, and I believe the Twins have already crossed the line on hitters with limited command of the strike zone.

My ideal Plan B is probably impractical in the era of 13-man pitching staffs, and that's a platoon of Granite and Hall. That duo would be made up of two guys with leadoff-hitter skills -- which is not to say that their skill are necessarily pitched high enough. But the Twins don't have an obvious leadoff hitter, so that would fill a lineup need.

Obviously, the ideal Plan B is not to need Plan B. If Buxton is the player we saw in the second half of 2017, the Twins don't need a Plan B, and they will have, if not a prototype leadoff man, someone who works in that lineup slot.

Buxton is Plan A. And I expect the Twins to be patient with Plan A.

Notes, quotes and comment

The losing streak is over! Or, in homage to the opposing team's signature broadcaster (Hawk Harrelson), it's OVAH!

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A point I should have made explict in the Thursday post comparing Byron Buxton to Jackie Bradley Jr,: The Red Sox handled Bradley in the past much as the Twins have handled Buxton the last two years, with repeated demotions and callups. It finally clicked for Bradley this year, and if it doesn't click for Buxton this month, that neither means that it never will nor that the Twins have mishandled him.

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Eddie Rosario hasn't started in center field since the game in Toronto in which Max Kepler made an ill-advised dive for a looper that turned into a Little League home run.

The next day Danny Santana started in center; he gave way to Rosario after his injury. The next day Logan Schafer was up and in the lineup, and he played center all three games in Cleveland.

In one of those games, Kepler repeated the ill-advised dive, with the same result -- the ball bounced over him and rolled deep into right field. But this time Schafer was there and held the Cleveland batter to a double. Which prompted this Mike Berardino tweet:

Davis doubles past a diving Kepler in right. Logan Schafer remembers to back up the play. What a concept.

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) August 30, 2016

It's quite possible that when Paul Molitor reviewed the Kepler play in Toronto, what stuck with him was that Kepler got to the ball at about the same time as Rosario did -- which suggests that Rosario was standing around admiring Kepler's effort and not anticipating that the ball might get past him.

Contemplating the center field situation

Aaron Hicks' remarkable over-the-head
grab off former Twin Chris Parmelee
on July 6.

Center field has been another kaleidoscope position for the Twins this season. Aaron Hicks has started 38 games. Jordan Schafer (released) started 20, Shane Robinson 14, Byron Buxton 11 before his injury. Eddie Rosario and Danny Santana drew a sliver of starts as well (three apiece).

When Buxton arrived about a month ago, I figured Hicks had gotten his last shot at the job. But three things happened: One, Buxton did not immediately shine. Two, Buxton sprained his thumb. Three, Hicks has been a sharply better player since stepping back into the lineup.

It's not just a small sample size, but a tiny one: 10 games, July 3 through July 12. Ten games in which Hicks has put up a slash line of .323/.436/.645. And it's not that he's been abnormally lucky: his batting average on balls in play is a normal .296 in that stretch. We know he's not that good -- nobody is -- but I'll guarantee he hasn't had a comparable 10-game stretch in his career.

His two homers this month came right-handed, no real surprise, but he's also crushed a pair of doubles left-handed that could have gone out of some more friendly yards than Target Field. He's drawn seven walks and fanned only three times in those 10 games.

Power and a batting eye. He sure hasn't demonstrated those skills in the majors before. He just looks like a different hitter, one who has a clue from at-bat to at-bat.

Hicks' slash line for the season, .266/.333/.387, is not eye-popping, but it's close to league average, and that's sufficient for a good-glove center fielder. He's pushed his way out of the very bottom of the lineup, hitting seventh most games, and right now there's a good case for him to move ahead of Rosario as well.

It may be another month before Buxton is a factor again, and Hicks may well revert to the weak hitter he's been until July. (He was hitting .247/.293/.301 coming into the month.) But if Hicks settles into a .270/.340/.400 groove (slightly better than his slash line to date), the Twins may well opt to give Buxton some Triple A time when his thumb is healed.

This doesn't change the long-term status of the two. Buxton is still the center fielder of the future. Hicks, however, now has his best claim ever as the center fielder of the present -- and in a pennant chase, that matters.

Center field revisited

Aaron Hicks' stat line
is less impressive than
it was a week ago.

When I wrote here last week about the center field competition, Aaron Hicks was sporting a .330 spring training average. He had maybe one hit since then and dropped to .207 -- which, really only illustrates the silliness of relying on spring training stats to evaluate players. The sample sizes are small, the competition is uneven, the numbers are essentially meaningless.

Even if he were still hitting three-something, so what? He did that in spring trainings 2013 and and 2014, and it didn't prove indicative of anything. Hicks has 150 regular season games, 538 regular season plate appearances, in which he's hit .201. Letting a couple dozen spring training at-bats outweigh that would be silly.

Meanwhile, Eddie Rosario's spring training stats display a red-flag glitch: 40 plate appearances, no walks. He still has a batting average (.256 per Baseball Reference) higher than his on-base percentage (.250). His minor league stat line hardly reveals a Kevin Youkilis-type base-on-balls machine, but it's not that bizarre.

My take on this is that he's trying too hard to impress. There used to be a cliche about Dominican players and their hacking tendencies: You can't walk off the island. The idea was that these players were encouraged to swing at everything because they had to hit the ball to get the scouts' attention. Rosario is from Puerto Rico, not the Dominican, but the concept holds.

Hicks and Rosario are the two young guys in camp who can be seen as full-time center fielders. Veteran fringe players Jordan Schafer and Shane Robinson are more likely to be platoon mates, and that increasingly looks like the direction the Twins will take. Terry Ryan doesn't sound very enthused by that prospect, while Paul Molitor this week expressed openness to platoons and invoked the success Earl Weaver had with platoons back when Molitor was a young player.

One difference, of course, is that Weaver platooned aggressively. His Orioles collected players like John Lowenstein and Benny Ayala specifically to use in such roles. A Schafer-Robinson platoon would be more a passive platoon, chosen out of a lack of better options not for a strategic advantage. Robinson's career splits actually suggest he's a bit "backwards," meaning better against right-handed pitchers, although I don't think 200 or so plate appearances over five seasons each way proves a whole lot. He's probably not the right-handed outfielder you'd pursue if you wanted to build a center field platoon.

Still, Schafer-Robinson is more palatable to me this spring than either Hicks or, I'm sorry to say, Rosario. (If Rosario does come north, I will not complain, but I won'be have high expectations; if it's Hicks, I will complain.) Schafer-Robinson are acceptable until Bryon Buxton arrives, and I hope that's sooner rather than later.

The center field competition

Shane Robinson was
a popular player among
Cardinals fans.

First there were three genuine candidates for the Twins center field job. Now there are four. The winnowing process, it would appear, is going in the wrong direction.

There remains more than two weeks of spring training, but the indications are that Paul Molitor wants to use the last week of camp to "practice manage" game situations, not evaluate talent. Remember, he's never run a game on any level. So the expectation is that that Twins will look to essentially set their Opening Day roster in 10 days or so.

Let's look at the candidates in alphabetical order:

Aaron Hicks is, for the third spring in a row, putting up good spring training numbers (slash line .330/.400/.500). Call him Mr. March.

Twenty at-bat sample sizes are meaningless to begin with, and particularly so in spring training, and even more so with Hicks. This kind of thing has fooled the decision makers each of the past two springs. I've said this before: I don't know what Hicks can do this spring to convince people that he's better than he's been. He certainly didn't help himself with his wool gathering early on.

He's 25, so growth is possible if  unlikely. Molitor says in this story that Hicks is too young to be a bench guy, that he should play everyday. My take is that Hicks is never going to be more than a fourth outfielder/platoon candidate.

Roster status: 40-man roster, has an option left.

Shane Robinson, 30, split the past four seasons between St. Louis and its minor league affiliates. He's a right-handed hitter, no power, with some speed -- classic fourth- or fifth-outfielder tools. I may be wrong, but he seems to have mainly played corner outfield this spring.

Roster status: Non-roster invitee, but he has, as many non-roster veterans do, an opt-out clause -- if he's not on the 40 by a specific date (in his case, apparently, April 2) he can declare free agency and walk away.

Eddie Rosario, 23, is the guy who wedged his way into the conversation. He has an odd set of splits, .276/.267/.586; he has an on-base percentage lower than his batting average because he has literally never walked but has picked up a sac fly. Patrick Reusse's kind of hitter line, I guess.

Rosario is the only one of the four without major league experience; in fact, he's not played above Double A, and he didn't do much at that level. He is also, presumably, the weakest defensively of the four.

Jordan Schafer is
a .229 lifetime hitter
in  more than 1,300
plate appearances.

Rosario is definitely what Molitor says Hicks is: A young guy with a high ceiling who needs to play every day at some level. He only makes the big league roster as the regular center fielder.

Roster status: 40 man roster, has all three options left.

Jordan Schafer, 28, is the one guy most certain to make the roster, either as the backup behind Hicks or Rosario or in a platoon with Hicks or Robinson. Left-handed hitter who fared better in his 41 games with the Twins late last season than he did in any previous stretch in the majors. Another guy with reserve outfielder tools.

Roster status: On the 40, presumably out of options, has a $1.55 million contract for 2015.

These are the realistic choices for the Molitor and general manager Terry Ryan:

• Hicks as the regular, Schafer as the backup, Rosario to the minors, Robinson gets to make his choice.
• Rosario as the regular, Schafer as the backup, Hicks to Triple A, Robinson gets to make his choice.
• Schafer platoons with Robinson, Hicks and Rosario to the minors.
• Schafer platoons with Hicks, Rosario to the minors, Robinson gets to make his choice.

My impulse is to vote for the second option, Rosario as the regular. It's consistent with my wish for the organization to push the talent and find reasons to play them. But ... I am also a firm believer that the outfield defense is a bigger problem than the Twins acknowledge, and Rosario as a center fielder doesn't figure to be a defensive asset.

I want him up, but the positions that fit him best aren't available. My guess is that the Twins will opt to follow the same logic that they are following with Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano and send him down.

In which case, I'd say go with option 3, a Schafer-Robinson platoon. There can be no illusion there: These are two low-ceiling players whose purpose is to fill the position until somebody better is ready. Having them in center will give the front office incentive to decide that somebody better -- be it Buxton or Rosario -- is ready.

What's most likely, I fear, is option 1, Hicks as the regular. The definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

The Rosario Scenario

Eddie Rosario had
a lost 2014 season
after his drug suspension.

Eddie Rosario had a pretty good game Friday.

As a left fielder, he showed off his throwing arm, nailing Pittsburgh leadoff man Josh Harrison at second on a ball Harrison hit off the left-field fence,

As a hitter, he hit his third home run of the spring.

From 1500ESPN's Derek Wetmore, Twins assistant GM Rob Anthony:

"He's a guy that can play center field. He's a guy that could jump right into that competition with the [Jordan] Schafers and [Aaron] Hicks and [Shane] Robinsons of the world. So keep an eye on him as spring progresses." 

While my opinion certainly carries no weight in the Twins roster deliberations, I thought off Rosario's Arizona Fall League stint that he ought to be given a real opportunity this spring, so that kind of talk from the likes of Antony should sit well with me.

But I'm not sure I take it that seriously. Yes,. Paul Molitor has been saying good things about Rosario's supposedly improved work ethic. But ... the corner outfield jobs are sealed off by Oswaldo Arcia and Torii Hunter, The one outfield job available is center field, which isn't Rosario's end game.

Rosario's spent much of the past three years at second base; he hasn't had all that much center field time since 2011. Even this spring, with the CF job open, Rosario has been mainly playing left field. Center has belonged to Hicks, Schaefer and Byron Buxton.

I'll believe Rosario is viewed as a serious center field candidate when he gets serious center field time.

The center field competition

Byron Buxton chases down a ball
in an early spring training drill.

Aaron Hicks has legitimately been the best outfielder in the Twins spring training the past two years. Not just the best centerfielder, the best outfielder, period.

And once the season began, it meant nothing.

So I'm not sure what the Twins are looking for from Hicks this spring to convince them he's the man for the center field job. I'm quite sure that it isn't the vapor lock he's exhibited the past couple of games.

The other day Hicks was picked off first and saved by a balk call, which moved him to second -- where he promptly got picked off again.

On Tuesday Hicks lost track of the outs, and Paul Molitor pulled him from the game and inserted Byron Buxton.

Buxton drew a pair of walks and pulled off a Buxton baserunning move, going first-to-third on a single to left that the Toronto broadcasters described as a "looping liner." Baserunners generally don't make that play work -- the throw to third is a short one -- but Buxton motors. I don't know that he's the fastest guy in baseball, as Tom Kelly suggested in the summer of 2013, but he's close. Hicks is fast. Buxton is faster.

Meanwhile, Shane Robinson, the former St. Louis Cardinal reserve, committed an error in right field.

I know full well this isn't going to happen, but I will again say: Buxton is probably the best bet, right now, for center field in the Twins camp. I know he barely played more than two weeks at a time last summer, and I know he has one game above A ball on his resume. Put him in the lineup, and he'll provide Gold Glove defense, steal some bases and outhit Hicks, not that that last is all that impressive.

The Twins by position: Center field

Jordan Schafer hit .285 for the Twins
in the last two months of 2014.

If we ignore Danny Santana, who enters spring training a presumed shortstop, the Twins will open camp with three center fielders with multiple seasons of major league experience: Aaron Hicks, Shane Robinson and Jordan Schafer.

Hicks is 25 and a .201 career hitter in 538 plate appearances spread over two years.

Robinson, a non-roster invitee signed after the Cardinals let him go, is 30 and a .231 career hitter (five seasons, less that 500 plate appearances)

Schafer is 28 and a .229 hitter (five years and nearly 1,400 plate appearances).

You can draw up various platoon possibilities out of these three. Schafer is left-handed, Robinson right-handed, Hicks a switch hitter. You might still envision Hicks as a regular, although that notion is increasingly dubious. No matter how you deploy this group, you get inadequacy. These are, at best, bench guys,

The best center field talent in camp (and this is true even if we count Santana as a center fielder) are two prospects coming off disappointing 2014s and ticketed for Double A: Byron Buxton, who had repeated injuries, and Eddie Rosario, who served a 50-game drug suspension.

Despite his 2014 stall, I still believe that if the Twins simply handed the center field job to Buxton this spring and let him play all year, his floor is something like .260 with 10 homers, 30 steals and Gold Glove caliber defense (assuming, of course, that he stayed intact). Rosario would probably put up a better batting average but with fewer steals and lesser defense.

You know to a dead certainty that the three "major leaguers" aren't going to come near those numbers. Not a dead certainty, but close to it, is that the Twins front office won't let Buxton sniff the majors until the second half of the year at the earliest, and Rosario isn't going to be fast tracked either.

The Twins have reasons to slow play Buxton and Rosario. They would do better to look for reasons to play the kids, not to look for reasons to keep them in the minors. Let the kids play.

Looking for meaning in a minor signing

OK, it's a minor transaction -- specifically, a minor league transaction. But it still says something about a particular problem in the upper levels of the Twins farm system.

The Twins on Thursday signed outfielder Shane Robinson to a minor-league contract with an invitation to spring training.

Robinson has been with the St. Louis Cardinals since he was drafted in 2006 and has been a reserve outfielder for the big-league club for most of the past three years. He's a little (5-foot-9) guy who can run well enough to be used in center field, and he has a career MLB average of .231.

The Cardinals cut him loose rather than risk going to arbitration with him. The Twins got him to sign in a hurry, probably because there's a fairly obvious chance to be on the major league team. While the corner outfield starters are set (Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia), center field is open.

Aaron Hicks? Jordan Schafer? Robinson? As matters stand, at least one, probably two, of these guys are going to be on the 25-man roster. Somebody has to play center field, at least until Byron Buxton establishes that he can stay in one piece for a month.

The Twins had the opportunity to do unto Schafer as the Cardinals did to Robinson, but they lack any sort of depth in center field-competent outfielders. So Schafer, a .229 lifetime hitter, figures to pull in well over $1 million next year, while Robinson will do well to get half that.

At the very least the Twins have now the option of platooning in center. Schafer hits left; Robinson hits right. Robinson has actually shown a backwards platoon split in his limited major league playing time, but if Paul Molitor has any inclination to platoon, this might be a reasonable pair to do it with.

Hicks, a switch hitter who is stronger from the right side, also offers a platoon option, but I doubt the Twins would do that with Hicks, who is considerably younger than Schafer and Robinson and is still seen as having a higher ceiling.

A switch-hitter's switch

Aaron Hicks makes a diving catch in center field
during Monday afternoon's game.

The latest touch of the bizarre for the Twins outfield came Monday morning when Aaron Hicks announced that he is giving up on hitting left-handed.

It's easier to understand Hicks' surrender than to be optimistic about it, even after he collected two singles off a right-handed pitcher Monday. He is a natural righty, and he has a long-standing pattern, majors and minors, of hitting better from the right side.

The problem: Hicks is 24 and has been a switch-hitter since childhood; he has never before seen a slider break away from him.

To put it bluntly, Hicks is in a career crisis. It is not going to be an easy transition, and I doubt the Twins management encouraged this move -- at least not in midseason in the majors. Giving up switch-hitting may be the right move for Hicks, but doing so at the highest level is not the right place.

And yet there is no real alternative. The Twins, through misfortune and their own mistakes, have no real option for center other than Hicks.

I'm quite certain they figured during the winter that if Hicks repeated his 2013 failure they would have Byron Buxton straining at the leash to come to the show by midseason. But Buxton has spent most of the season on the shelf with a wrist injury. Eddie Rosario would have been a plausible option, but he's wrapping up his 50-game drug suspension and has yet to play outside of extended spring training.

The Twins brought in no minor league free agents who can play center. (That may not have been entirely the Twins' decision; such players and their agents look at the roster depth of teams and try to find the place that gives them the best shot at the majors. Buxton would be a major reason for such players to sign elsewhere last winter.) The Twins also lost two marginal center fielders, Alex Presley and Darin Mastroianni, on waivers as a direct result of a misplaced fascination with Jason Bartlett.

The result is that at both Triple A and Double A, the Twins' highest minor league affiliates are playing career infielders in center.

So the Twins are stuck with Hicks and his not-a-switch-hitter experiment for the foreseeable future -- unless they decide to swing a trade. (There are indications, by the way, that the Phillies are getting frustrated with Ben Revere.)

In the abstract, trading for a center field alternative, and giving Hicks a chance to cope with this drastic change in the minors, is the thing to do. But, of course, when you get to specifics, the question is: What are you getting, and what are you giving up?

The shaming of Aaron Hicks

Aaron Hicks celebrates his
10th-inning walkoff single Thursday.

Thursday was a pretty good time for the embattled Aaron Hicks to come up with a game-winning base hit. The extra-innings heroics doubtless will make everybody involved feel better, but it doesn't much change the situation

Ron Gardenhire and Rob Antony on Wednesday unleashed a rare public barrage of criticism at Hicks. The gist of it: Hicks doesn't properly prepare mentally for games -- doesn't study video, doesn't even know sometimes who's pitching for the opposition.

I'm in no position to assess the accuracy of the complaint of ill-preparation. I think it likely that different players should prepare differently, and that there are hitters for whom rigorous film study will simply lead to paralysis by analysis. Considering that Hicks' default plate approach might be already overly-selective, I don't know how much a greater emphasis on "homework" is going to help him.

What is inarguable is that what Hicks has been doing isn't working for him. The Twins taking the issue public suggests that they've been unable privately to change the behavior.

In the immediate wake of Thursday's game, my Twitter feed flooded with posts essentially suggesting that Hicks had proven the in-house criticism wrong. Fact: Hicks is hitting .170. It's not like they're trying to fix something that ain't broken.

Underlying the frustration with the inability of the former first-round pick to establish himself: The Twins have no true center field alternatives available.

Fourth outfielder Sam Fuld is on the concussion list and doesn't appear to be nearly ready to return. Even if he were, he's 32 and has a track record of being better afield than at the plate. Usable bench piece, not fit for regular play.

The regular in center field in Triple A Rochester is Eric Farris, a 28-year-old who has spent most of his career at second base. Farris is hitting for a nice average for the Red Wings, but those of us grousing about the chronic use of infielders in the outfield this season would find no relief in Farris.

As for Double A New Britain, the Twins picked up Kenny Wilson from Toronto to get a legit center fielder at that level. Wilson hit .195 in 11 games, and the Twins waived him and Toronto reclaimed him. The guy with the most center field time in New Britain: Corey Wimberley, another career non-prospect infielder.

The Twins got into this jam through a combination of injury, suspension and questionable roster decisions. If things had gone well, Byron Buxton would be in New Britain making everybody eager to jump him to the bigs; instead, he is again nursing his injured wrist. Eddie Rosario, a center fielder before the Twins started trying to convert him to second base two seasons ago, ought to be in New Britain (if not Rochester); instead, he's at extended spring training with about two more weeks of drug suspension to serve.

And, as has been griped about here repeatedly, the Twins jettisoned Alex Presley and Darin Mastroianni this spring to make room for the Jason Bartlett Experiment Embarrassment. Neither Presley nor Mastroianni would be a quality regular in center, but they wouldn't be obviously out of place defensively.

And therein is the gist of the Hicks dilemma. All the options available to replace him would be out of place defensively, and this pitching staff has enough trouble with the outfield defense with Hicks in center.

Contemplating Aaron Hicks

Aaron Hicks in spring training: Despite
the grimace, he had a superb
spring. It was the regular season
that went sour on him.

I was trying Monday to puzzle out who the Twins might bring up when the rosters expand next month when my eye fell on Aaron Hicks' stat line since his demotion to Triple A Rochester at the the start of August.

.179/.276/.196? Yikes.

This is looking like a worst-case scenario. The argument against pushing a prospect up the ladder is that exposing the player to a more difficult level prematurely can be damaging.

That Hicks was pushed up the ladder this spring is undeniable. I cannot criticize the Twins for doing so; I would have been vocally disappointed had he opened 2013 in Triple A. He had played very well in Double A in 2012 and he had clearly outplayed his competition for the center field job in spring training.

But bringing Hicks from Double A to the majors clearly did not work for him, and this belated month in Triple A isn't going any better.

Where do the Twins, and Hicks, go from here?

A September return, which I figured was a given when the Twins demoted him, seems pointless now. Giving him some time away from the field is probably the better idea. Then a stint in winter ball seems likely.

There's still time to salvage Hicks. He has two option seasons left. He's only 23 (turns 24 in October). He had several impressive moments in the majors; the talent to be a good major league player is there.

But certainly the Twins cannot have him prominent in their plans for 2014.

Nor has Clete Thomas cemented his place on the roster, much less the lineup.

And for all the merited hype Byron Buxton has received (his slash line in Fort Myers is .328/.420/.495 and rising), I cannot imagine the Twins bringing him straight to the majors next spring. Well, that's putting it a bit too strongly; I can imagine it, but it's not going to happen. (Kent Hrbek went straight from high-A ball to the majors in 1981, as did Rod Carew in 1967, so it's not completely unprecedented, just exceedingly rare.)

Which all adds up to this: The Twins are likely this winter to look for a more established center fielder who would be an upgrade on what they've gotten out of the position in 2013 but is not going to be a roadblock on Buxton.

If Buxton is Mike Trout 2.0, he'll be playing center field in Minnesota by July.

Whither Aaron Hicks?

Here's a tangent not taken in the composition of  this week's Monday print column, which was devoted to the happy thought that Bryon Buxton might reach the majors as early as the middle of next season -- the Mike Trout timeline, if you will -- the tangent being, what would that mean for Aaron Hicks?

Hicks, currently nursing a bad hamstring on the disabled list, has had an undeniably rough go of a rookie year. His batting average remains well south of the Mendoza Line, and the walks and power have not been strong enough to overcome that.  The Twins have been patient with him in part because of a lack of perceived options in center field, but if Buxton is on the Trout timeline, that lack will soon be filled.

I think Hicks is/will be a better hitter than he's shown so far, that he'll eventually establish himself at an offensive level high enough to be a regular center fielder. I don't know that he's going to hit enough to justify being a regular corner outfielder.

It is at the least an interesting field of speculation, the makeup of the future Twins outfield. Oswaldo Arcia in one outfield corner, Buxton in center ... and maybe Hicks in the other corner. Arcia isn't much of a gloveman, but with Buxton and Hicks out there, Arcia wouldn't have to cover a lot of ground.

But for that to happen, Hicks is gonna have to hit. And I now think he has less time to do so than everybody thought a few weeks ago.

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More on Buxton compared to Trout: the Cedar Rapids paper provides this stat matchup for the two outfielders through 64 games with the Kernels. (Trout, as noted in the print column linked to above, played 81 games with Cedar Rapids in 2011; Buxton has 64 and may not get to 65. The Midwest League all-star game is Tuesday, and speculation has had him moving on to Fort Myers after that.)