Pic of the Week

Life's a beach as Joe Benson chases a ball toward
a real estate ad on an outfield fence in Jupiter, Fla.

I might not have selected this photo had it been somebody other than Joe Benson, once a highly-regarded Twins prospect. That it is Benson gives me a reason to talk about him.

Benson's in the Miami Marlins' camp as a non-roster invitee. My take on the Marlins at this point is that it's a franchise one signs up with when there are no other alternatives.

To be fair, Benson (and his agent) may have figured the outfield situation with the Marlins is fluid enough for him to have a shot at making the roster. There's Giancarlo Stanton, who's established as a top flight power hitter; there's Christian Yelich, who's a well-regarded prospect (better regarded than Benson was at the same age); and not a heck of a lot else to get excited about. And given that Stanton is starting to get expensive, and has been critical of Marlins management, he might not be around all year.

But Benson's career is in trouble. The Twins cut him loose last summer with a slash line of .192/.256/.285 in Triple A. The Rangers picked him up and sent him to Double A; .205/.293/.394. The Rangers let him walk this winter and he signed with the Marlins. He's 26 now; time is slipping from him.

His first 11 spring training plate appearances with the Fish: 0-for-11. Small sample size, to be sure, but still ... that's not a good impression he's making.

Benson appears to be an example of the difference between an athlete, which he definitely is, and a major league baseball player.

Hank the Brewers dog

Hank was a stray, but enough of a self-promoter to
 hang around a big league club's spring training complex. 

I'm a sucker for a dog rescue story, so of course I love the story of Hank and the Milwaukee Brewers.

When the Brewers opened spring training in mid February, a bedraggled stray started hanging around the complex in Maryvale, Ariz. A stadium worker took him to a vet, who determined that he had at some point been hit by a car.

He quickly became an unofficial mascot, hanging out at the park wearing a Brewers bandana or dog shirt -- or a hot dog outfit to take part in the sausage race. He's become the star of camp.

Today Hank the Ballpark Dog (named in honor of Henry Aaron) is to be the center of a Pet Adoption Day at the Brewers' game with Kansas City. The Arizona Humane Society will have animals available for adoption on site, and Hank will be on hand to take photos with those who donate to the organization.

Hank's not available for adoption himself. The Brewers aren't saying who, but Hank has a forever home now (but still doing sleepovers with players or other team personnel). And there's a "rumor" that he'll take part in the sausage race at Miller Park on opening day.

Hank confers with catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

Dr. Frank Jobe, savior of pitchers' careers

Dr. Frank Jobe was honored last year
in Cooperstown for his contributions to the game.

It is almost impossible to imagine baseball today without Dr. Frank Jobe, the orthopedic surgeon who invented what is popularly known as Tommy John surgery.

John was only the first baseball player to have an elbow ligament replaced. Only the first. There have been hundreds since that pioneering surgery. Soon Miguel Sano will join the crowd.

John Smoltz. Francisco Liriano. Joe Nathan. Adam Wainwright. Chris Carpenter. Brian Wilson. Tim Hudson. Billy Wagner. Stephen Strasburg. Kerry Wood. Anibel Sanchez. Jordan Zimmermann. A.J. Burnett. All, and dozens more, have had the surgery.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, with whom Jobe was associated for 50 years, announced Thursday that Jobe died. He was 88.

I doubt there's a team without somebody who's had Tommy John surgery. (The Twins, for example, have Brian Duensing, Sam Deduno and Mike Pelfrey.) Pitchers have been blowing out their elbows for generations; until Jobe came up with the idea of taking a tendon from a different part of the body, attaching it to the bones and essentially training it to act as a ligament, nobody had a solution.

Today Tommy John surgery is almost routine, with a reported 95 percent success rate. Yes, it's a long and grueling rehab process, at least for pitchers. But it's far better than what they had before Jobe got creative.

Phil Hughes and the curve ball

Phil Hughes displays the curve ball grip preferred
by Mike Mussina, the so-called knuckle curve.

When Phil Hughes signed with the Twins, I took note here of the significant change in his pitch selection from 2012 to 2013.

To review (data from Baseball Info Systems as presented in its annual Bill James Handbooks):

2012: 65 percent fastballs, 18 percent curves, 10 percent changeups, 4 percent sliders, 2 percent cutters. (That comes out to 99 percent, so presumably there are rounding errors involved).

2013: 62 percent fastballs, 24 percent sliders, 9 percent curves, 5 percent changeups, less than one percent splitters.

This is so drastic a change in repertoire that I wondered in December if these numbers were legitimate or if it signaled a problem in pitch identification in BIS' system. Turns out that, yes, Hughes did largely switch from the curve to the slider as his primary breaking ball in 2013. And his ERA ballooned by almost a full run per nine innings.

This year, he plans to revert to the curve. Fully a quarter of the pitches he threw in an intrasquad game last week were curve balls.

As detailed Wednesday by Twins Daily blogger Parker Hageman, Hughes has a history of shuffling breaking ball techniques. He's thrown a variety of curves, then, as noted, largely abandoned the curve for the slider last year.

I think it was Rob Neyer who wrote once that baseball history has two major themes: owners taking economic advantage of the players, and pitchers trying to develop a better changeup. Hughes' personal history is more about trying to find a better breaking ball.

From the print column: Making (service) time stop for Buxton and Sano

Byron Buxton hasn't made it to the
majors yet, but the Twins should be
planning how to keep him for
his entire career.

This was my Monday print column, which I post here to enhance its potential audience.
----

Miguel Sano's 2014 season is already over.

There will be no Target Field debut for the much-hyped power prospect, either in the Futures Game in July or as a major league callup. There will be, instead, surgery this month to replace a torn ligament in his throwing elbow and months of rehab.

And then he can resume his march to stardom. This surgery is a detour, not the end of the road. On Opening Day 2015, Sano will be just 21 (assuming that his listed birth date is accurate). He will still be the best power-hitting prospect in baseball.

On Opening Dy 2015, Byron Buxton will also be just 21. Universally regarded as the best prospect in baseball, it is quite likely that he is the best center fielder in Twins camp.

He can be the best and have no real chance at coming north with the big league team because of the ramifications of service time.

These are the rules: For his first three big league seasons — four if the team sufficiently manipulates service time — a player plays for something close to the major league minimum. Then comes three seasons of arbitration eligibility, in which his pay balloons but still falls short of true market value. After six years of "team control", free agency kicks in.

Consider Joe Mauer. His first three years he was paid a total of $1,025,000. The next two seasons, as arbitration kicked in, his pay totaIed $10 million. The next two years, his pay totaled $23 million. That's a total of $37 million for his first seven seasons.

And now, with the market working in his favor, he gets $23 million each year. When his current contract expires, Mauer will have been paid $218 million over a 15-year span, a bit more than $14.5 million a year.

For a Hall-of-Fame caliber player such as Mauer, that looks like a good deal for the Twins (assuming nothing horrible happens over the final five years of the contract). There will be seasons in which he was "overpaid," but they are more than counterbalanced by the seasons in which he was "underpaid."

Buxton and Sano are, like Mauer, rare talents. The Twins and their fans salivate over the notion of two such players as lineup anchors. But they also have the question of how long they can be kept together.

Buxton may well be able, right now, to hit .260 with dozens of steals in the majors, and we know he can play Gold Glove caliber defense in center. But the Twins aren't going to waste a service-time year on a developmental season.

And the same would apply to Sano were he healthy.

Now, a rule of thumb: Players are at their peak in their late 20s. A player (such as Brian Dozier) who debuts at age 24 won't reach free agency until he's 30. Team control lasts through his prime years.

Buxton and Sano, on the other hand, should reach free agency at a much earlier age. Mike Trout, regarded as the best player in the game by everyone except Tigers fans and the MVP electorate, figures to hit free agency at age 26, just as his prime years are kicking in. If Buxton pushes his way to the majors this season, a real possibility, the same will be true for him.

How can the Twins avoid the dilemma of having two bank-busting free agents come due almost simultaneously? Pay them early.

Players (and agents) accept the baseball serf years in anticipation of the big paydays a half decade down the road. My notion: The Twins would do well to see if the players (and their agents) would entertain the idea of a career-type deal right off the bat.

Here's our offer, Mr. Buxton (or Mr. Sano). Fifteen years, $200 million. Or 20 years, $250 million. Your choice. Starts immediately.

The Twins would, obviously, carry the risk of a career-altering injury. (Sano's elbow is a reminder of that risk.) The player, in accepting such a deal, would be conceding that he'll never be the highest-paid player in the game.

The team would be free to move the players up without concern over service time, and spread out over that much time, the bulky totals would be readily absorbed into the budget.

It's Mauer money, but without the drama of service time and free agency speculation.

Contemplating Johan Santana

Johan Santana: On the shelf since
August 2012.

The word Monday out of Sarasota, Fla. -- where, by coincidence, Minnesota Twins split squad was playing the Baltimore Orioles -- was that Johan Santana was about to sign a minor league deal with the O's.

And good luck to him. While emotionally I will probably always want Santana to return to the Twins, the news last week that he could barely break 80 mph during a bullpen session convinced me that he and the 2014 Twins are not a good fit.

The upside to Santana is the possibility that, with continued rehab on his post-surgical shoulder, he might be an effective pitcher in the second half of the season. (There is a greater likelihood that continued rehab on his post-surgical shoulder will still leave him without sufficient velocity, but a minor-league deal represents minimal risk for the team.)

If and when the Twins need to swap out a rotation piece in the second half, their preference should be to give one of the prospects a shot. Alex Meyer. Trevor May. Kyle Gibson. They represent the future, and Santana is a piece of the past. A beloved piece of the past, but still ...

Santana can't serve this year as a placeholder for the kids, and he's certainly not some to rely on for future seasons. He makes more sense for Baltimore, which holds ambitions of a playoff run this year.

The quest for "attitude"

Oswaldo Arcia pulls in a fly ball
during Sunday's game.

On Sunday, a Tampa Bay minor leaguer named Adam Liberatore twice buzzed Oswaldo Arcia. Two pitches later, Arcia took Liberatore deep.

For me, the significant aspect of this is: A left-handed hitter homered off a left-handed pitcher. Second time in two days, really; on Saturday Chris Parmelee homered off Jose Mijares, the former Twins lefty specialist now with the Red Sox.

Two at-bats are just two at-bats — and it's early March — but for the record: In 2013, Arcia's OPS vs. lefties was 110 points lower than against righties, and Parmelee's was 170 points lower.

For Ron Gardenhire, the significant aspect was/is Arcia's personality — his "attitude." "We need attitude," the manager said. "Attitude wins baseball games too."

Talking about "attitude" is like talking about "chemistry."  It's nonsense. Arcia should be in the lineup not because he's cocky, but because he has more talent as a hitter, and a brighter future, than the alternatives.

More than "attitude," the Twins need some outfielders who can go get the ball, some infielders who can do something useful at the plate, and some pitchers who can go seven, eight, nine innings. Those are tangible things that have been missing, or present only sporadically, for three years.

Attitude is only useful if it comes with production.