Comments on: If a Change Must Be Made…

By: frightwig

frightwig — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:53:21 +0000

I’m not a Gardy fan (although he seemed to be a refreshing change from TK in 2002, I’ve never been all that impressed by him as a manager), but it’s hard to imagine this group of talent suddenly taking off just because Gardy is gone and either Brunansky or Liddle (or, god forbid, Ullger) take over, and it wouldn’t seem like the Twins to fire the manager just to get people buzzing for a little while.

If fans won’t come out to Target Field just for the splendorous atmosphere and beauty of the ballpark, and if that matters to the Pohlad heirs, then Terry Ryan will need to get straight to work on fixing what’s wrong with the team. And it looks like the most pressing problem is the pitching, right? The club has a good lineup core still under contract after this season, but the pitching is just a mess.

Fortunately, this winter will give Ryan a great opportunity to rebuild the rotation practically from scratch, with Pavano, Baker, Liriano, and Marquis all coming off the books (that’s $23.5M, right there). After focusing on pitching in the draft this June, I hope to see Ryan sign at least two good SP’s after the season, in addition to the bargain basement vets who will be brought in to compete with the youngsters for the other two open spots. And after 2013, I expect him to decline Blackburn’s option and go get another quality pitcher to take his spot, too.

That’s the task in front of him. He may not be able to fix it all by next year, but he has a chance to overhaul the staff and right things pretty quickly, if he makes good decisions and ownership will spend the money.

By: shannon

shannon — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:25:08 +0000

Gardy hands are clean of this mess, in my opinion. I think we’re seeing the results of poor scouting and what really happened when Bill Smith was the GM. Terry Ryan has his work cut out for him, and he’s struggling with cleaning up and repairing the damage. It’s still too early in the season to tell what’s going to happen. Yes, the starting pitching is an issue, but so is the offense’s inability to drive in runs. There have been too many games already this season where the Twins had several opportunities to take the lead and win the game, but too often they could not come through in the clutch.

Oh, and if in the off chance Gardy does get his walking papers, I’m gonna play the nepotism card and say that Jake Mauer would get promoted to manage the Twins.

By: jjswol

jjswol — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:41:15 +0000

I am not sure any manager could do much with this team. I know that it is easier to fire a manager than the players but this team is what we thought it would be. You can’t make silk out of a sow’s ear.

By: Jim Crikket

Jim Crikket — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:37:09 +0000

I wouldn’t say I’m exactly “on board” with your line of thinking, thrylos. I don’t agree at all with your evaluation of the performance of the manager and GM. Players are not doing their jobs well and you seem to think the answer is to blame everything on management. It’s a typical instinct in most of America today. I simply don’t subscribe to it. I don’t agree with your view that everyone in the front office and field management is incompetent and replacing all of them magically solves the Twins problems.

For me, this is simply boiling down to a business decision. There are masses of fans who think the way you do… “management is the problem”… and that means that a change may be necessary just to keep those people engaged through the rest of this season and in to next year. It doesn’t make them right. It just makes it necessary to acknowledge that they feel that way and ignoring them would come at a financial cost.

By: thrylos98

thrylos98 — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:00:45 +0000

Wow. What bit you? You start sounding a lot like me

And firing the manager and his cohorts mid season, replacing him with a young hungry manager and replacing the interim GM with a young GM who would energize the front office this off-season cannot be that bad… Remeber 1986 and what happened in 1987.

Both Gardy and Ryan have to go. Ryan was also part of the problem. And it might had been a long time ago, but before the Twins rose like Phoenix this millennium, Ryan took the team of champions that McPhail built and turned it into a candidate for contraction…

New blood (and outside of the organization) in the front office and the manager’s office will do wonders for this team, I am certain (heck, been certain since they lost game 163 in Chigaco and been consistently saying so…)

Glad to see others coming on board