Padres Cheat Their Own by Bullying Benes

Andy Benes is Mr. Midwest. He works hard and keeps his mouth shut and gets the job done.

He was born Andrew Charles Benes, a solid, conservative name from a solid conservative family. He was born in Evansville, Ind., and went to Central High School. It figured he would stay home to go to college.

At 6 feet 6, 238 pounds, he could throw the ball through a barn. Not the barn door. The barn.

His talent for pitching a baseball eventually brought him to the Padres as the No. 1 choice in the 1988 draft.

His talent for pitching a baseball made him the Padres’ pitcher of the year in 1991, when he won 15 games, lost 11 and had an earned-run average of 3.03.

Obviously, this 24-year-old was the rock upon which the Padres’ pitching staff of the future would be built.

A problem has arisen, however.

Andy Benes is mad.

This is hard to imagine. You figure it would be easier to irritate Santa Claus. This guy is apple pie and baseball cards. If he was not so big, you would figure him for either a bat boy . . . or choir boy. You figure him to say “gosh darn” . . . and then blush.

In their infinite wisdom and generosity, the Padres have managed to get his blood boiling.

You heard what he had to say.

“I’m very bitter with what’s going on,” he said. “You better believe I’ll never forget it. I don’t care if I go to arbitration and win the next three years. I’m never going to forget how they shafted me.”

When I first heard these words, I thought Benes was playing Charlie McCarthy to Benito Santiago. I checked to see if he was a wooden dummy rather than flesh and blood. Those had to be Santiago’s words. They could not be coming from Mr. Midwest.

Santiago has been battling the Padres forever over contractual matters, three times taking his fight to arbitration. His battle is near an end. He will walk at the end of the season, unless he is traded sooner.

It now looks as if Andy Benes will follow Santiago’s footsteps through arbitration.

“Three times,” he said. “Then I’m walking.”

The Padres’ mismanagement team has done it again. They renewed Benes’ contract for $375,000. It is a nice raise from the $235,000 he made last year, but hardly commensurate with what similar talents are getting at similar stages of their careers. The Dodgers’ Ramon Martinez, for example, comes off a 17-13 season with a 3.27 ERA and gets $725,000.

This slap in the face flies in the face of what the Padres have been insisting they are trying to do.

While other clubs have sought to improve themselves through the acquisition of blue-chip free agents, the Padres have stood haughtily on the sidelines. They would not cheapen themselves with such frivolous fixes. They would also not lighten their bank account.

Instead, the Padres have insisted that they would build through player development.

Fine.

But for whom are they building?

It looks to me like a pattern is developing. The Padres develop a player and bring him to the majors for maybe a year or two of tranquillity, during which the kid is finding his way and happy with whatever they pay him. Then, should the kid be a little too good for what they are willing to pay, comes a year of anguish over injustice and unfairness. What follows are three years of acrimonious arbitration.

This pattern leaves these home-grown talents with six years of servitude, at least half of them uncomfortable, with the Padres. They go screaming off into the night as free agents, finally to be paid at market value. Coincidentally, they leave the Padres at about the beginning of what will be their peak years.

Benes, of course, is one who got a little bit too good too soon for what Padre mismanagement seems willing to pay. He is unhappier even sooner than Santiago was unhappy, and poor Benito is the one plagued with the image of being such a malcontent.

The real malcontents should be the fans. They know that the Padres will not pay for the high-priced talent on the free agent market. And they may as well come to realize home-grown talent will not be paid enough to stay around either, if it becomes too good.

Thus, it appears that the Padres will be a blend of older players not good enough to command star quality salaries and younger players serving their time.

It was easy to understand where Benito Santiago might seem perennially upset. It is the nature of his personality to snarl and pout and growl. He is in his own private comfort zone when he is displeased about something.

But Andy Benes is a lesson, an ominous lesson, in what the future holds for the San Diego Padres.