He’s dependent on exactly what we provide for him. I’ll acknowledge that forever, I’m not gonna hide from the talent level.
— Terry Ryan speaking about Ron Gardenhire after the former manager was relieved of his duties
Terry Ryan is the kind of person who will hold open the door for you. He would routinely pick up trash in the press box bathroom. And he sat next to former Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire at a the press conference announcing his firing. “I feel like he’s my brother, not my manager,” he said, before pausing briefly as emotion overwhelmed him.
He also openly accepted that he did not give a man who won Manager of the Year in 2010 enough talent to win in the the major leagues. “The reason for this change: I think it’s safe to say in the last couple years we haven’t won enough games,” he said that day, in late September of 2014. “That’s about what it comes down to; it’s nothing more, nothing less than that — we just haven’t won enough games.”
The same can be said now. And it has cost Ryan his job.
“He gets it,” team president Dave St. Peter told the Star Tribune. “We just didn’t win enough games.”
“We’ve hurt our brand over the last couple of years,” echoed owner Jim Pohlad. “The fans, I’m sure, are discouraged.”
Come October the Twins will have endured their fifth losing season in six years. This despite the fact that they played all of those seasons in Target Field, a state-of-the-art facility that has led to increased revenues and a higher payroll. Since signing his eight-year, $184 million extension in March of 2010, Joe Mauer played on a 94-win team that opened Target Field, then played on two 90-loss teams during his prime in 2012 and 2013 before suffering a career-altering concussion at the end of the 2013 season.
Failing to put a winning team around Mauer while he was still a .300-hitting catcher was a missed opportunity to christen Target Field with a series of winning teams. Failing to put a winning team around Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton, two players called the “Glimmer Twins” by Sports Illustrated writer Albert Chen in 2013, would be crippling to the organization.
If Bill Smith, the Twins former GM from 2007-11, had put a team around Mauer following his extension, Minnesota could have potentially become the St. Louis Cardinals North — a mid-market team that builds effectively from within. If the new GM, whether it be interim Rob Antony or someone else, fails to put a team around Buxton and Sano — who are both undergoing sophomore slumps — the Twins could replace the recently resurgent Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles or Pittsburgh Pirates as a league bottom feeder for years to come.
The Twins could use someone with a new perspective to run their team
The first order of business for the next GM is to figure out why Sano is making errors on routine plays and why Buxton is not hitting major league pitching. He must also ensure that talent develops around them. Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario, Jose Berrios, John Ryan Murphy and the like don’t all have to pan out — but enough of them have to in order for this to come together.
The Twins could use someone with a new perspective to run their team. They need someone to look at Alex Meyer and other players that are too old to be considered prospects and determine if they can become impact players in the major leagues. They need someone who can look at Phil Hughes and Mauer and see if they can get more out of them for the rest of their contracts. They need someone who can evaluate the minor league system and figure out why so many of these players can dominate the Triple-A level, but have failed to thrive in the majors.
Pohlad has said that he will look both inside and outside the organization for someone to replace Ryan. He has also said that manager Paul Molitor will return for the 2017 season. This is interpreted by some as an indication that it will be someone like Antony, scouting director Deron Johnson or special assistant to the GM Wayne Krivsky, who might be more likely than an outside candidate to retain Molitor as the team’s manager.
Such a move could reasonably be seen as rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship. But it also fails to acknowledge that each of these people have different perspectives on how to run a team, just as Molitor did when he took over for Gardenhire despite being on his staff the year before he was hired as manager.
It also overlooks the fact that a baseball organization is more complicated than, say, the development system of an NBA team. The Minnesota Timberwolves were able to clean house and bring aboard Tom Thibodeau, an aggressive hire that went over well with a fanbase that is itching to see what Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, two former No. 1 overall picks, can become when they hit their prime years.
Keep in mind, though, that the Wolves don’t have a D-League team. The Twins have affiliates in Triple-A, Double-A, three levels of A-ball and two rookie leagues. The new general manager should assess personnel at each level — the managers and coaches, not just the players — and retain the ones that fit his philosophies. A complete overhaul should only happen if necessary, not to appease the torch-and-pitchfork crowd.
No matter who they are or where they come from, they should emulate Ryan in the way he ran the organization
There are many projects on this team, but few lost causes. Many of these players would benefit from a new perspective, someone who perhaps is more stats-driven or is on the cutting edge of a game that has changed drastically over the years with pitch counts, defensive shifts and the like.
A person with this description likely will come from outside the organization.
But no matter who they are or where they come from, they should emulate Ryan in the way he ran the organization. No, the next GM of the team may not pick up trash off the bathroom floor or sit next to the managers he fires, but he should be accountable for his actions — just as the man before him was.
Ryan may have made poor trades late in his tenure, and some of the team’s most promising players are struggling, but there’s no doubt that he ran the Twins as a first-class organization as the team’s general manager.
By giving Ryan notice that he would be let go a month ago, Pohlad allowed him to go out on his own accord. He held the door open for him, rather than letting it hit him on the way out.
