JUPITER - You can't accuse Trevor Hutchinson of getting bogged down in details. Not after the Marlins' pitching prospect spent the first week and a half of spring training working out in a jersey that had his name spelled wrong on the back.

 

''I never noticed it,'' Hutchinson said sheepishly, staring at a uniform top that was missing an ''n'' in his last name.

 

And here's another thing that apparently escaped his attention most of the past two years: He's not playing football anymore. A standout high school quarterback in suburban San Diego, Hutchinson was offered a scholarship to Stanford but elected to go to Cal and concentrate on pitching baseballs instead. However, he brought some old habits along with him, and they have proved difficult to break.

 

''Because he was a quarterback . . . his throwing motion was as a quarterback,'' said Dean Treanor, the Marlins' minor-league pitching coordinator last season. ``He's come a long way with understanding how the arm has to work as a pitcher as opposed to as a quarterback. It's completely different.''

 

So different, in fact, Treanor blames Hutchinson's mechanics for the arm problems that landed him on the disabled list twice in 2003 and once again last summer. A sore shoulder also cut short his visit to the Arizona Instructional League last fall and might have cost him a call-up to the big leagues in September, when the Marlins promoted Logan Kensing for three starts.

 

''He should have been the guy that came up last year,'' Treanor said. ``I know that that was probably the plan, [but] he was not physically able to it. I think the biggest thing that he needs to show is that he can stay healthy.''

 

DOMINANT RECORD

 

Because when Hutchinson has been healthy, he has also been dominant, winning 22 of 34 decisions with a 3.67 ERA in 43 starts -- 30 of them for Double A Carolina. He was the organization's Pitcher of the Year in 2003, a season after the Marlins drafted him in the third round of the June amateur draft, and Baseball America has twice ranked him among the team's top 10 prospects.

 

None of that guarantees him success at the major-league level, of course, something to which Hutchinson's brother, Chad, can attest. A second-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998, Chad rocketed through the Cardinals system in three years but lasted just three games in the big leagues, giving up 11 runs in four innings of relief. Eight months later he gave up on baseball and signed with the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.

 

''He struggled tremendously,'' Trevor Hutchinson said of his brother, who played for the Chicago Bears last season. ``He definitely has the physical ability. What he's had to work on was the mental part of both games.

 

``Just being around him on and off the field, seeing what he goes through every day, that's where I learned a lot.''

 

Pushed by their father, Lloyd, a minor-league outfielder for four seasons with the Phillies ending in 1972, the two boys battled one another so intensely in everything they did as kids they finally had to call a truce because, in Trevor Hutchinson's words, ''it was getting pretty heated.'' Now, the 25-year-old right-hander turns to his other brother for counsel, not competition.

 

''Now he tells me sports is not your life,'' Hutchinson said. 'Why do you play? Because we love to compete. That's why we play. And he's like, `Just enjoy it every day. And just take it like nobody else can get that opportunity to go out there on the field and be outdoors all day.' ''

 

WRITING ON THE WALL

 

Speaking of opportunities, Hutchinson would like one more -- an opportunity to pitch in the major leagues. But he knows the chances of that happening in April are slim because, while he has had trouble reading the writing on the back of his shirt, he has no trouble with the writing on the wall.

 

And that writing says the Marlins are filled with big-league arms.

 

''It's locked up,'' he said of the Marlins starting rotation. ``The way I look at it now is I'm just trying to be as mentally and physically prepared as possible. I'm trying to do everything I can so when I get that actual shot, I'm ready and I can stick.''

 

Credit Treanor with helping instill that attitude.

 

''This is a huge spring training for him,'' said the coach, who will manage the Marlins' Triple A affiliate in Albuquerque, N.M., this summer, where Hutchinson could land.

 

``He still has to come in here and feel like he's competing for a job. He may not make this club coming out of spring training but when someone goes down or something happens -- and it always happens every year -- he's got to be the first one that they think about.''

 

Let's just hope they learn how to spell his name by then.

 

 

 

miamiherald.com

What a hoot. Went for a week without noticing his name was misspelled.

hahahah thats awesome

Poor Hutch.

Poor Treor

Well I'd understand if someone if a last name like Spooneybarger didn't notice something like that, but Hutchinson isn't all that complicated.