Joe Christensen took a break from blogging long enough to pen a nice feature-length article about Sidney Ponson for Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune. The piece includes plenty of quotes and details about Ponson's difficult upbringing, checkered past, and star status in Aruba, plus some reason for optimism regarding his chances of turning a once-promising career around. Christensen covered Ponson when they were both in Baltimore years ago, and their familiarity helps shape the article:

Since 2003, when Ponson won 17 games in a season split between Baltimore and San Francisco, he's been released by three teams. He's been through alcohol rehab and anger management. He's had his transgressions, such as punching a judge on an Aruban beach, played out all over the media.

[...]

Ponson's personality could best be described as friendly and unabashed. He is part-David Wells, part-Charles Barkley. Back in Aruba, people still tell him they wish he were a better role model.

In talking about the Twins' offseason I've tended to lump Ponson in with Ramon Ortiz as veteran free-agent signings coming off horrible seasons, but that's not entirely fair or accurate. I actually liked the decision to give Ponson a minor-league contract, because there's almost zero risk involved and he has the potential to be a passable back-of-the-rotation starter for about a million dollars. Ortiz has similar potential--at least to some extent--but he's guaranteed $3.1 million and a spot on the roster.

Terry Ryan and Ron Gardenhire clearly want to avoid turning over three-fifths of the starting rotation to rookies and second-year players, which is certainly understandable. Taking a low-cost flier on Ponson is a smart way to avoid doing that, but taking a low-cost flier on Ponson and giving Ortiz $3.1 million guaranteed just makes it look like the organization once again simply doesn't trust the outstanding young talent it has on hand.

I would have loved to see Ponson signed to a minor-league deal and thrown into a competition with Matt Garza, Scott Baker, Glen Perkins, and Kevin Slowey for the final two spots in the rotation behind Johan Santana, Boof Bonser, and Carlos Silva. Instead, Ortiz has already claimed one of those two spots and Ponson is competing with a handful of young pitchers for just one job, with the early reports suggesting that he already has a definite leg up on the rest of the field:

Even though the Twins signed Sidney Ponson to a minor league contract, they expect him to win a job in the starting rotation, manager Ron Gardenhire said Wednesday.

"I view [Ponson] being one of our starters," Gardenhire said. "I expect him to step up and take one of those jobs. Whether it happens or not is totally up to him."

True to his self-destructive form, Ponson is putting that to the test with visa problems, which apparently will keep him from pitching in an official exhibition game until mid-March. Both Ryan and Gardenhire have expressed disappointment and frustration over Ponson's inability to get his situation straightened away, which could certainly impact his chances of securing a job. However, he's still able to throw on the side and work out with the team, so barring further problems it shouldn't be a huge issue.

If Ponson ends up making the team, the Twins will have spent about $9 million and 13 percent of their payroll on three pitchers (Silva, Ortiz, Ponson) who failed to post a single sub-5.00 ERA between them last season and combined to go 26-36 with a 5.84 ERA in 456 innings. Meanwhile, it's possible that the rotation at Triple-A Rochester will include Garza, Baker, Perkins, and Slowey, which has a good chance of being a better foursome that the non-Santana starters the Twins leave spring training with.

I recognize that almost all major-league teams, and particularly the ultra-conservative Twins, are much less willing to simply hand jobs to young players than I would be. Because of that, I understand the motivation behind re-signing Silva for $4.3 million despite his coming off a brutal season or scooping Ponson up off the scrap heap on a low-risk move. What I don't understand--and what I ultimately have a problem with--is the decision to do both of those things, and hand Ortiz $3.1 million.

It's one thing to give the team some extra options and take a little pressure off some young players. It's an entirely different story to seemingly go out of your way to push those young players aside by collecting--and devoting a big chunk of the payroll to--mediocre veterans who, at best, might be able to avoid being complete disasters long enough to keep those young arms at Triple-A until they're too ripe to avoid picking any longer.

Last year the Twins began the season with the predictably execrable combination of Tony Batista and Juan Castro manning the left side of the infield, got off to an ugly 25-33 start as they combined to hit .234/.283/.350 with bad defense, and then ditched the veteran mediocrity in favor of younger talent on the way to a playoff run. Despite that experience, they seem content to do the same thing this year, with Ortiz and Ponson playing the roles of Batista and Castro.

The bottom three-fifths of the rotation may not be quite as disastrous as the left side of the infield was and perhaps the Twins can once again win despite the self-imposed handicap, but for once I'd like to see Ryan and Gardenhire simply put the best team on the field. Don't worry about how old everyone is. Don't get caught up in thinking that being a veteran who doesn't play particularly well means you provide leadership. And don't base decisions on how loudly Jason Bartlett calls for a pop up.

Trust the talent you have regardless of when it was born, spend what little money you have available to fill legitimate holes on the roster instead of buying expensive, mediocre insurance for spots you don't need it at, and go to war with the best possible group in place. If the AL Central is as tough as I expect it to be this year--with perhaps four of the 10 best teams in baseball--the Twins will need every win they can get from Opening Day to Game 162 in order to make it back to the playoffs.

Opening the season with Silva, Ortiz, and Ponson in Minnesota and Garza, Baker, Perkins, and Slowey in Rochester might be a lot of things--and might not prove to be a season-killing mistake--but putting the best team on the field isn't one of them.

Note: For the second day in a row, I'm posting a completely pointless and self-absorbed entry. Sorry, but such is life when you read a site where the day-to-day content is essentially determined by whatever's running through my head at any given time. If pointless and self-absorbed isn't your thing, feel free to skip it and come back tomorrow, when I'll pump out a couple thousand words about the Twins. I promise.

Yesterday in this space I described (and showed a gross picture of) a problem I've been having with my right ear. Yesterday afternoon I visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist, who diagnosed me with something called an auricular pseudocyst. According to WebMD.com, "the condition is uncommon" and "may be misdiagnosed or underreported by clinicians," although the doctor I saw certainly seemed sure that he knew exactly what it was.

A few more tidbits from WebMD:

Mortality/Morbidity: Without treatment, permanent deformity of the auricle may occur.

History: Clinically, a pseudocyst manifests as a benign, noninflammatory, asymptomatic swelling on the lateral or anterior surface of the pinna, usually in the scaphoid or triangular fossa. Typically, the swelling develops over 4-12 weeks.

Causes: The etiology for pseudocysts of the auricle is unknown, but several pathogenic mechanisms have been proposed, including chronic low-grade trauma. Some have suggested that a minor defect in auricular embryogenesis contributes to pseudocyst formation. This defect may cause the formation of residual tissue planes within the auricular cartilage. When subjected to repeated minor trauma or mechanical stress, these tissue planes may open, forming a pseudocyst.

Exciting, huh? Basically, there's fluid built up in my ear between two layers of cartilage. This has caused swelling and some deformity, as the cartilage gets bent out of shape, which you can see in the picture from yesterday. What makes it different than a normal cyst--and why it's instead called a pseudocyst--is that simply draining the fluid serves no real purpose. If you do that, the fluid will apparently just re-fill the same space eventually, and the problem will start all over again.

WebMD informs me that "no medical treatment is uniformly effective" and offers a half-dozen types of "surgical care" options. My doctor plans to drain the fluid and then eliminate the "pocket" where the fluid forms by removing cartilage and rebuilding the ear around what's left. In other words, I need surgery. The doctor seemed relatively confident that things would go smoothly, but did scare me a bit when he said, "One risk is that, with less cartilage in place, the ear could collapse on itself." Seriously.

A few weeks ago I had a sore ear and now I'm looking at surgery, which is a shock to my system after not visiting a single doctor for anything in at least five years. Now I'll be visiting a doctor for one reason or another at least five times over a six-week span, culminating with someone slicing my ear open and rearranging things in there. The lesson, as always, is that if you stop ignoring a problem and decide to actually get it checked out, it's possible that they might find something wrong with you.

In happier news, bad ear or not I taped a pair of video segments for NBCSports.com that are running this week. One is a stand-alone piece on the Twins' starting rotation and the other is my call-in to the weekly "Fantasy Fix" show hosted by Tiffany Simons and Gregg Rosenthal. I'm a little sad that a chunk of my Twins report was edited out, because it takes some of the context away, but more importantly I'm pleased to say that I was featured alongside Shana Hiatt on the NBCSports.com "media center":

(From left to right: Gleeman, Hiatt, Simons, Rosenthal)
If you're interested in watching the aforementioned videos, click here for my solo segment about the Twins and click here for the "Fantasy Fix" show where I call in to chat with Rosenthal about how Adam Wainwright and Jonathan Papelbon figure to handle moving from the bullpen back to the rotation this season. Oh, and since I probably need to redeem myself after forcing that gross picture of my ear on everyone, click here to see why they call Hiatt "The Goddess of Poker."

Important note: Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune devoted an entire 1,483-word column in Sunday's newspaper to essentially saying he doesn't like blogs. It's an odd column full of misguided logic, old-fogey stances, and straw-man arguments, but after reading the following completely pointless and self-absorbed entry you might start to think he has a point. You've been warned.

A few weeks ago I was watching Inside the UFC on Spike TV when I saw a segment on cauliflower ear, which a lot of wrestlers and mixed martial arts fighters get as a result of frequent ear trauma. A couple days after watching the show, the upper part of my right ear started getting sore, which I figured was some sort of weird psychosomatic effect of watching the segment. I thought nothing of it until, after a few more days, my ear started looking noticeably swollen in addition to still being sore.

The ear continued to hurt and throb, and it was getting so swollen and deformed that the outer rim started to actually turn inside out a little bit. I haven't been to a doctor about anything in several years and generally go with the "ignore it and it'll go away eventually" theory of health care, so I continued to pretend that nothing was wrong for another week or so. Then one day last week I looked in the mirror and saw this beauty staring back at me:

That's really blurry, because I'm even worse at photography than I am at keeping myself healthy, but suffice it to say that an ear is not supposed to look like that. In fact, it appears to look almost exactly like the cauliflower ears I saw on Inside the UFC. Of course, since I'm not a wrestler or an MMA fighter and I don't think you can get ear trauma just by watching something about it on television, I was pretty confused about what was going on.

Despite all of that, I still wasn't going to get it checked out until, after showing it to my mom for the first time Tuesday night, she said something like, "You have to go to a doctor immediately!" Since it wasn't really an emergency, I decided that going to an urgent care clinic Wednesday would be fine. After filling out a bunch of paperwork and waiting for about 20 minutes, a nurse called my name and brought me into an examination room.

She asked what the problem was, looked at my ear for about a second, jotted down a few notes, and then proceeded to take my temperature, pulse, and blood pressure. After scribbling a few more things on my chart, she informed me that "the doctor" would be in to examine me in a few minutes. Sure enough, he arrived a couple minutes later, sat down, glanced over the chart, looked at my ear, and began the following exchange with me:

DOCTOR: Are you a wrestler?

AARON: No.

DOCTOR: That looks like cauliflower ear. You haven't been wrestling or boxing or something like that?

AARON: No, definitely not. It looked like cauliflower ear to me too, but I have no idea why it would be.

DOCTOR: You haven't been hit in the ear recently.

AARON: No.

DOCTOR: OK, well I don't know what it is then. You have to go see an ear, nose, and throat guy.

With that, he half-heartedly asked if I had "any questions?" as he walked toward the door, and my examination was finished in less than two minutes. I had essentially gone to a doctor so that he could say "I dunno" and then tell me to go visit a different doctor. The urgent care clinic said they would make the otolaryngology appointment for me and call me back with the details the next morning. They didn't, of course. In fact, they didn't call me back until two days later.

The nice woman on the phone told me that an appointment had been made for the afternoon of March 5, to which I responded, "March 5, as in two weeks from now?" She said yes, that was correct, and then we hung up. About 45 seconds later, the phone rang again and the same nice woman said, "The doctor says you definitely can't wait that long. Can you go today instead?" I was working, so I said no, but that I could come in over the weekend. "Weekends are no good," she said. "How about Monday?"

Since I had just gone from a March 5 appointment to a doctor suggesting that I should be seen immediately within the span of a minute, I figured Monday would have to work. So, that's what I'll be doing this afternoon, perhaps while you're reading this very entry and being grossed out by that picture of my ear. My hope is that no additional damage was done by me not getting it checked out for two weeks and the urgent care clinic not bothering to call me back for two days.

Actually, the experience with the urgent care clinic got even more amusing yesterday afternoon, when they called "to check on how I was doing." Here's the exchange I had with some guy named John:

JOHN: I'm just calling to make sure you're happy with the service you received from us.

AARON: I didn't really receive any service. You guys just told me to go see an ear, nose, and throat doctor.

JOHN: Oh ... OK. Well, is the issue resolved, then?

AARON: No, the appointment isn't until tomorrow.

JOHN: Right. Well, good luck!

As you might expect, I have a few questions stemming from the call. First and foremost, are all urgent care clinics this clueless? The doctor there finished examining me in literally two minutes and had absolutely zero information to give me about my condition, they failed to book me an appointment with another doctor for 48 hours, initially booked me one two weeks away, called back 45 seconds later to change it, and called back to "check on how I was doing" before the actual appointment took place.

Beyond that, they seemed to have no clue what service they had provided (or failed to provide) while I was there. I'm genuinely curious what would have happened if the doctor hadn't been standing there when the initial phone call was made to me Friday. Would I have simply waited until March 5 to roll around? And if so, would I still have gotten that same call yesterday, wondering if the issue was "resolved" and I was "happy with the service"?

I'm hopeful that the ENT doctor isn't as disorganized and useless as the urgent care clinic. Actually, for him to be equally as clueless, he'd probably have to incorrectly decide that my ear needed to be amputated, schedule me for an appointment in August of 2012, re-schedule me for an appointment Wednesday, and then slice off the wrong ear. Luckily, blogging doesn't require the use of ears, so I'll have something to fall back on when the cauliflower-amputee look ruins my modeling career.