These aren’t your older brother’s Minnesota Twins, my friends. Further proof of that — outside of hiring a wunderkind farm director from the Los Angeles Dodgers — came on Tuesday morning when Jon Heyman (who else?) broke the news that the Twins had hired John Manuel as a pro scout.
If Manuel’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been with Baseball America since 1996 — Paul Molitor’s first year as a player with the Twins! — and has written a column there since the turn of the century. He was named editor-in-chief in 2005.
In short, Manuel has been a mainstay at the publication that is basically the industry standard for baseball coverage — and in the opinion of this writer, most notably among amateur (college and high school) and minor league stuff.
It also shows that this front office isn’t only committed to getting younger, but getting smarter without much regard to the age of the minds. This isn’t to say that Manuel is in any way a dinosaur — and if he’s reading, hello and welcome! — but he graduated from high school in 1990. That’s the same year — and maybe even the same month of June — new farm director Jeremy Zoll was born.
Here’s John’s entire post on his personal Facebook page, more or less confirming Jon’s scoop:
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