What could Terry do? Or what could Paul do? I just don’t know at this point. It’s just a total system failure, so to speak.
— Twins owner Jim Pohlad speaking to the Star Tribune on May 6
It’s a rare situation in sports when there is a total system failure and the general manager is not relieved of his duties. There are myriad issues with the Minnesota Twins right now, and while not all of them are directly the fault of the GM, he tends to take the fall. It is, after all, easier to fire a coach or GM than it is to get rid of an entire roster of players.
The point of all this is not to point a finger directly at Twins general manager Terry Ryan, but to assess, as completely and concisely as possible, what has gone wrong with a team that Ryan himself said could win the AL Central, many fans and media members locally thought could have a winning season after an 83-79 record and most national pundits had pegged for roughly 75 wins.
Halfway through May the Twins are toeing the precipice of playing meaningless games throughout the rest of the season, if they haven’t passed that threshold already.
The Twins were 8-20 at the time that Pohlad called the early-season meltdown a total system failure. They won their ninth game on May 14. They are off to their worst start in franchise history, having already endured an 0-9 start and an eight-game losing streak. Before the Twins won their first game of the season, a reporter mentioned to manager Paul Molitor that the 0-9 record isn’t a death knell — just as a 1-6 start last year wasn’t — but it will be hard to keep fans engaged if the team is playing meaningless games in May.
Well, halfway through May the Twins are toeing the precipice of playing meaningless games throughout the rest of the season, if they haven’t passed that threshold already. Unless things really come apart and an emergency front office house cleaning is imperative, any change at the top should come at the end of the season. Not only do rash mid-season decisions tend to end up poorly, but it creates an odd situation where a team could end up with a lame duck coach or general manager for a significant part of the season.
Offseason change tends to be cleaner and better thought out. And, honestly, both the coach and GM positions would be hot jobs at the end of the year. Minnesota has a slew of young talent that a lot of people would love to work with: Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, Jose Berrios, Eddie Rosario, Oswaldo Arcia and so on. On top of that Joe Mauer returned to form in the first part of the season, and Byung Ho Park has hit major league pitching well.
Ryan’s culpability lies in the trades he’s made and large contracts he has given to players that have not panned out so far. Jim Souhan has a pretty succinct write-up of the Twins mishaps in the trade market over at the Star Tribune, highlighted by Alex Meyer’s struggles since arriving in a trade that sent Denard Span to the Washington Nationals.
There’s also the John Ryan Murphy for Aaron Hicks deal which seemed logical at the time, but with Murphy and Buxton’s struggles at the plate, keeping Hicks for his defensive value and signing a catcher in the offseason would have made more sense. Finally, Ricky Nolasco struggled in the first two seasons of his four-year, $49 million deal, Ervin Santana received an 80-game PED suspension in the first year of his four-year, $54 million contract, and Phil Hughes received a three-year, $42 million extension that starts next year after a strong first season with the Twins two years ago and has had inconsistent performance since then.
There also have been some curious 25- and 40-man roster moves lately that have caught the attention of the local media and those that follow the team closely. Ryan dropped John Hicks from the 40-man earlier in the season in order to make room for David Murphy, who ended up retiring instead of joining the team. Hicks got picked up by the Detroit Tigers, meaning the team lost a defensive catcher unnecessarily — albeit in a unique situation.
Additionally, after a 16-4 loss to the Houston Astros on May 4, the team placed Casey Fien and Tommy Milone on waivers, and designated J.R. Graham and Ryan O’Rourke for assignment to bring up two replacement-level players: Darin Mastroianni (career WAR: -0.2) and Juan Centeno (-0.5).
Centeno, a minor-league signing this offseason who had big league stints with the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Mets, is off to a hot start, meaning that the loss of John Hicks might not matter as much. But even with that said, keeping Graham on the 25-man roster all year as a Rule 5 pick only to designate him for assignment and trade him to the New York Yankees for a player to be named later or cash considerations is a bit perplexing. And had the team retained Aaron Hicks, they would not need Mastroianni as defensive depth in the outfield.
Aside from the general manager, both Molitor and team leadership has also come under fire recently as well.
As far as Molitor goes, he appears less culpable for the team’s struggles given his ability to coax an 83-win season out of a team that started 1-6 last season. Sabermetrically-inclined analysts have picked apart his lineups all season long, but his willingness to shake up the batting order and adjust it based on who is hitting well at any given time indicates he’s willing to make adjustments to try and get the bats going.
He can only manage the players he’s given, and as long as he continues to tinker with the lineup and squeeze as much production out of it as possible, it’s hard to see him as one of the main issues with the team early.
Moving from the manager’s office into the clubhouse, it should be noted that Glen Perkins and Trevor Plouffe, two of the team’s leaders, have spent a decent amount of the season on the disabled list. While they can still lead while hurt, they are not playing or traveling with the team while on the DL, making their situation more difficult.
The Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers both struggled after Hunter left the team.
Torii Hunter’s name has been brought up recently, both by fans and current players alike. As Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press pointed out in a recent article, the Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers both struggled after Hunter left the team. He was an important complement to Mauer, a lead-by-example type, in the locker room last year that is difficult to replace. In fact, players are still reaching out to him this season even though he is retired.
And, last of all, any of the young players getting playing time in the majors could take advantage of their opportunity of being in the big leagues — although to blame this entirely on the players without looking at every other aspect is a bit narrow-minded.
In the end, there’s a lot of season left to be played. Having said that, fans are starting to lose interest in the team because they are 10-26 halfway through May. As Joe Soucheray explains in a recent Pioneer Press column, they won’t be lovable losers like the 1962 Mets because of the money in the game today. Target Field itself is an attraction, and should be more full as it gets warmer out, but ultimately the product on the field has to be good, and it hasn’t been so far this year.
