FORT MYERS, Fla. – Zack Granite first noticed a gray hair on his temple when he was 14. Pretty soon there was another one, and another, and before long, he was the most mature looking teenager at Tottenville High School on Staten Island.
"I'm an old soul, I guess," Granite said. "But girls liked it, so I was OK with it."
These days, he walks around the Twins clubhouse with a subtle salt-and-pepper shade that makes him looks like a veteran, and not the 24-year-old rookie he is. And it's not just his hair that makes him seem older; it's his playing style, too.
Granite, the Twins' 14th-round pick in 2013, is a speed-first table-setter, a player who would have been right at home racing around the bases in the dead-ball era, or perhaps for a turf team in the 1970s. He has been a professional for only four years, only 337 games, and already has swiped 102 bases. Of those, 56 came last summer at Class AA Chattanooga — and no player in the minor leagues had more.
"Fifty-six, it's a big number, I don't care what level you're at," Twins manager Paul Molitor said. "It shows no fear."
Granite had a near-permanent green light from Lookouts manager Doug Mientkiewicz, on the notion that there's no better way to learn.
"Doug and Sammy [minor league baserunning coordinator Sam Perlozzo] would talk to me when I got thrown out, about why I made a mistake. You're not learning if you don't go," said Granite, who was thrown out 14 times for a success rate of 80 percent. "I went a lot, sometimes not on the right pitch, but I got better. I ran as much as I could, and it helped us win games."
Granite would like to do the same for the Twins, and Molitor is intrigued by having another player with extraordinary speed, to go with Byron Buxton, on his roster. The Twins have a quartet of veteran outfielders hoping to capture a spot as a utility outfielder, but Granite is making a case to stay in-house.
