Episode 66 is out for your listening enjoyment. You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here.
Tom Glavin is nonplussed receiving his Hall of Fame phone call.
We snuck in some hall of fame talk towards the end of the podcast, but for the most part we stayed away from the hall (Just like Jack Morris – ZING!). This week we feature Stuart Turner, the Twins 2013 3rd round draft pick, we talk about what Eddie Rosario‘s 50 game suspension and Miguel Sano‘s possible Tommy John surgery could mean for their development and Twins debuts and argue over whether the Twins should sign a couple of the free agents who are still out on the market, most notably Johan Santana and Stephen Drew.
We are also joined this week by special guest Graham Womack of Baseball Past and Present (@grahamdude) to talk about the 50 best players not in the HOF.
If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes. Ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, probably.
Episode 65 is out for your listening enjoyment. Happy New Year from all of the gang at Talk to Contact. We debated titling the podcast after Twins Coach Nelson Prada who wore #65 a few years ago, but anytime Tom Kelly‘s zubaz come up on conversation you are required to title said conversation after those wonderful pants. You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here.
After a holiday hiatus the Talk to Contact podcast returns will all of the usual contributors. Up for discussion this week is Chris Colabello declining a trip to Korea, the make-up of the Twins opening day outfield, former Twins making comebacks and a rousing of debate of whether or not Kurt Suzuki will play a meaningful role for the Twins in 2014.
We go down on the pond and take a look at the Twins 2013 4th round draft pick, Stephen Gonsalves (LHP), discuss whether a shandy should even be considered a beer and talk about moves from around the rest of the MLB, including possible landing spots for Masahiro Tanaka and the potential for the Houston Astros to contend in the AL West this coming season. All of that and more on this week’s podcast.
If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes. Ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, that will help Liam Hendriks make the major league club in Baltimore and hopefully pitch against Danny Valencia and the Royals, beaning him in the middle of the back.
2013 is now officially behind us. All the disappointments of the last baseball season, the frustrations with management and the starting roster we’re used to seeing for that matter are all officially in the past of “last year”… that being said, this is the day when we as a culture seemingly are addicted to saying what one thing we want to do better.
So I’m curious. What baseball related resolution have you made? What one resolution do you think the Twins should make?
And of course, we all realize that resolutions rarely make it 3 months into the new year so congrats to any and all resolutions that actually make into the start of baseball season.
MY resolution is: See a minor league game in person. (that gives me plenty of time to work on it).
Episode 64 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
The Twins are wearing this patch on their hat and jersey every single day next season.
Paul is away celebrating his birthday but this week on the podcast, Cody and Eric spend 60+ minutes talking about the Ryan Doumit trade, if Josmil Pinto needs a real backup, what to do with all of the Twins’ mediocre pitching, and the awful All-Star Game Logos that the Twins are putting all over everything.
If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes. Ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, which are probably useless.
There’s a lot of chatter on this here interweb thingy lately concerning what Twins General Manager Terry Ryan’s next moves will be and should be. He came out of the gate fast this offseason, immediately setting out to shore up – if not completely rebuild – the Twins’ starting pitching rotation by signing free agents Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes and Mike Pelfrey.
But there’s still more than a little doubt as to whether this is truly a new Terry Ryan, willing to spend Pohlad money to make the Twins more competitive (or at least more watchable) immediately. There seems to be two schools of thought concerning what Ryan is likely to do next.
Can Terry Ryan change his stripes?
First, there’s still some smoke out there indicating Ryan is not done shopping for starting pitching. The top tier of free agent starters haven’t really fallen in to place yet while the world waits to hear whether Masahiro Tanaka will be posted by his Japanese team. Would Ryan make a play for Matt Garza, Bronson Arroyo or even Tanaka, himself? There are at least a few people out there who think he might.
The more prevalent thought, however, seems to be that Ryan is done shopping for starting pitching and is shifting his focus toward addressing what was a pretty anemic offense in 2013. He swung and missed at the top catching free agents, but may still be kicking the tires on backups, especially now that Ryan Doumit has been shipped to Atlanta to make room for Pelfrey on the 40-man roster.
Ryan has added a pair of former Twins, Jason Bartlett and Jason Kubel, on minor league contracts with invitations to the big club’s spring training. But, as people far smarter than I am have been pointing out, no combination of the Prodigal Jasons and a new backup catcher is going to result in significantly improved run production for the Twins.
The good folks at MLBTradeRumors.com pointed out recently that, of their “Top 50 free agents” list going in to the offseason, only five position players remain unsigned. That list includes Stephen Drew, Shin-Soo Choo, Nelson Cruz, Kendrys Morales and Raul Ibanez.
A while back, there was some buzz that the Twins were one of the teams that agent Scott Boras was talking to about Drew. I’m not sure which surprised me more, that the Twins were actually considering signing a player that would cost them a draft pick as compensation (Drew rejected the Red Sox’ Qualifying Offer) or that Terry Ryan apparently sat down in the same room with Scott Boras.
Certainly, the Twins have had Boras clients in their organization (and still do). But Boras has clients and then he has CLIENTS. Players like Drew are Boras CLIENTS – the kind that Boras uses every bit of leverage he can find to pull every last nickel and every last year out of a team to sign.
From what I’ve read among the Twins blogosphere and twittersphere, it’s hard enough for most Twins fans to believe Ryan would allow a draft pick – even a second rounder – to be pried from his hands in order to sign a free agent, but to give up that pick for a free agent represented by Scott Boras is just not something fans can get their heads around.
If you’re one of those fans, that’s okay. I understand. I do. But you might want to stop reading at this point, because if you can’t grasp that concept, what I’m going to propose next could make your head explode.
If I were Terry Ryan, I wouldn’t sign one of those five remaining “Top 50” MLBTR prospects. I wouldn’t sign one of the free agents that would cost me a draft pick. I wouldn’t sign one of Scott Boras’ CLIENTS.
I’d sign two.
First, I would absolutely sign Stephen Drew. He’s okay defensively and he’d be an offensive upgrade at one of the very few positions that the Twins could logically expect to upgrade at this point, given that third base and centerfield will be getting upgraded with top prospects Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton soon enough that it is likely impossible to attract strong free agents at those positions.
If you or Terry Ryan have concerns over losing that second round draft pick, I suggest you glance over the list of recent second rounders that Andrew Bryz-Gornia assembled over at Twinkie Town earlier this week. Or you could just take my word for the fact that giving up a second round pick for multiple current years of Stephen Drew is a no-brainer.
And, once I had a deal with Boras for Drew, I’d tell him I want Kendrys Morales, too.
Morales makes sense for the Twins.
Trust me, it feels as peculiar for me to say that as it does for you to hear it. But it’s true.
Morales turned down Seattle’s Qualifying Offer, as Drew did Boston’s. But if Drew is worth coughing up a second round pick, then the third round pick that Morales would cost the Twins is barely worth mentioning.
Morales was the Mariners’ primary designated hitter, but also filled in at first base occasionally. He’s a switch hitter with better results on the right side, which is something the Twins could make use of.
Certainly, you could make the argument that the Twins already have a relatively crowded DH corps with Kubel, Chris Parmelee and Chris Colabello already on board. But, seriously, those are exactly the types of players the Twins should be looking to improve upon. Having their presence keep you from signing a Morales is even more absurd than letting the presence of Bartlett, Pedro Florimon and Eduardo Escobar keep you from adding Drew. A guy like Florimon at least has some defensive value to consider, which is more than you can say for Kubel, Parmelee and Colabello.
But even if Ryan could be convinced that the two draft picks are worth giving up for Drew and Morales, could he find the money to pay what Scott Boras would extort from the Twins to sign them?
Heck, that’s the easy part.
After jettisoning Doumit’s salary commitment, my back-of-the-napkin math estimates the Twins are on the hook for about $80 million for 2014 (and that assumes that Kubel makes the team and gets the roster bonus that’s part of his minor league agreement with the Twins). So, as things stand, even after adding multi-million dollar deals for Nolasco, Hughes and Pelfrey, the Twins are still a couple million dollars BELOW their 2013 Opening Day payroll.
The Twins, by pretty much any reasonable estimate, operated a year ago well below their often self-stated goal of spending just over 50% of revenues on Major League payroll. They, like every other MLB team, are benefiting from new TV money that is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $25 million per team.
Conservatively – VERY conservatively – the Twins should be able to absorb a $110 million payroll in 2014 without so much as breaking a sweat concerning whether they will end up spending more than 50% of their revenues on payroll. Remember, that new national TV money comes with zero additional expenses to offset it. If the Twins took in $200 million in revenue a year ago (again a conservative estimate), those revenue projections just went up to $225 million.
That’s all a long way of saying that, yes, Terry Ryan can afford to add the $25-28 million in annual salary it may take to get Drew and Morales on board. From that point, you’re just talking about how many years and who has what options, etc.
But, would Drew and Morales actually sign on to join one of the worst MLB teams to take the field in 2013?
I grant that neither of them, nor Boras, certainly, had joining the Twins in mind when they rejected their old team’s Qualifying Offer. But times change.
Who else will give enough money to either of these two players to make rejecting those Qualifying Offers a good decision? The list of teams with enough payroll flexibility to afford one of them is short. When you cross off those teams that have no need for a shortstop or a designated hitter (no matter what Boras claims, I can’t see any NL team paying Morales to actually field a defensive position every day), the list all but disappears.
The Red Sox and Mariners, the players’ former teams which would not have to give up draft pick compensation to re-sign them, have recently added new talent at the players’ positions, quite possibly eliminating chances for return engagements.
The Yankees could use Morales, if not for the fact that they already have a boatload of over-the-hill position players that they’ll almost certainly need to rotate through the DH spot. The other free-spending clubs (the Dodgers, Rangers, Angels, Phillies, Tigers, Giants) look to me to be pretty set at Drew’s and Morales’ positions.
From where I sit, Terry Ryan and Scott Boras need one another.
Ryan’s Twins represent the kind of “surprise” team that Boras loves to pull out of his hat to prove how smart he is and that, when he tells a player he’s going to get paid, he gets paid.
Boras and his clients can provide Terry Ryan with what are realistically perhaps the only two true offensive upgrades that match his needs and will prove, once and for all, that he and his bosses are done sitting and waiting for “someday” to come.
Tell me this line up wouldn’t score runs:
Presley CF
Dozier 2B
Mauer 1B
Morales DH
Drew SS
Willingham LF
Arcia/Kubel RF
Pinto C
Plouffe 3B
And now, with just a couple of adjustments later in the year or by 2015:
Buxton CF
Dozier 2B
Mauer 1B
Sano 3B
Morales DH
Drew SS
Rosario LF
Arcia/Kubel RF
Pinto C
If you like Hicks in there somewhere to provide more OF defense, OK. Certainly, we could debate who should hit where in that line up. But the point is, that is a line up that suddenly looks very different than what the Twins trotted out there every day in 2013.
And it still wouldn’t project the Twins to be above the middle third of MLB team payroll on Opening Day (which is about where they rightfully should be), nor would it hamstring them from making future moves. In a worst case scenario, Drew and Morales are likely to be marketable assets, assuming Boras doesn’t talk the Twins in to full no-trade clauses.
Of course, none of this is likely to happen.
I expect Boras to let things play out for Drew and Morales, much like he did for Kyle Lohse a year ago before matching him up with the Brewers shortly before spring training camps opened up.
In the mean time, maybe Terry Ryan will find creative ways to improve the Twins’ offense.
But if February rolls around and it still looks like the Twins are counting on Jason Kubel to provide their improved offense and Scott Boras is still looking for face-saving options for these two CLIENTS, then Ryan and Boras need to get back in a room together.
I typically take a little business trip to the Tampa/St. Petersburg FL area in December and did so last week.
After years of hearing about how interesting baseball’s Winter Meetings are, this year I found myself within reasonable driving distance of those Meetings when they officially opened up. That being the case, I decided I would check the situation out for myself.
The Dolphin half of the Swan & Dolphin Resort
I had heard about all the players, agents, front office staff and media folks rubbing elbows and making deals in the hotel lobbies and bars at these Meetings. That sounded very interesting. It also sounded very unbelievable, to me.
I’ve been to more “national conferences” in my life than I care to remember, much less count, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned by attending all those conferences it’s that absolutely nothing noteworthy gets done in the lobbies and bars (well, nothing noteworthy that pertains to the business at hand, anyway). So, it was hard for me to imagine that anything noteworthy would be going on in the public areas of the Swan & Dolphin Resort on Disney’s Boardwalk either.
But I drove up anyway, just in case I was wrong.
I wasn’t wrong.
I had an enjoyable enough evening. I had a meeting. In fact, you could say I had a couple of “meetings,” but only if you stretched the definition of “meeting” to include having a beverage with some of the Kernels’ staff after their Affiliates Dinner with the Twins. Though, honestly, that’s a meeting I could have had at the Stadium Lounge in Cedar Rapids just as easily.
But the people-watching at the Stadium Lounge wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as at the Dolphin’s lobby. It was absolutely packed with, from what I could gather, hundreds of 20-somethings in suits who I believe were trying their damnedest to find work in the baseball industry somewhere. The competition for whatever jobs are available must be intense.
I couldn’t help but feel they might have a better chance of standing out and eventually landing a gig if they’d simply start a blog.
Or maybe not.
Anyway, upon my return to the great white north, it occurred to me that, after a similar business trip to Florida a year ago, I posted some thoughts I had concerning the way the Twins’ 2012-13 offseason was shaping up at the time. If that was a good time for mid-offseason reflection a year ago, it probably is now, as well.
A year ago, I wasn’t feeling terribly impressed with the roster reconstruction work Twins General Manager Terry Ryan was doing. While he had added some future pitching, in return for his top two Major League centerfielders, the only additions to his 2013 rotation he’d acquired had been Vance Worley and Kevin Correia.
My take on Correia wasn’t really negative (I wrote, “he could well be better than most of the in-house options the team has,” and added that, “My problem at this point isn’t with signing Correia, it’s with NOT signing other… better… pitchers.”). I think, even with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I’d stand by that opinion now.
Last year’s top starting pitching free agent, Zack Greinke, had signed by this time, as had Anibal Sanchez, Ryan Dempster and others of that ilk, pretty much establishing what the market rates were for starting pitching. This season, the market has been slower to set as pitchers such as Matt Garza wait for the Masahiro Tanaka drama to play out.
But, unlike a year ago, Ryan has already made a legitimate effort to improve his team. Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes aren’t aces, but they are starting pitchers who have been good at times in their careers and there are reasonable cases to be made that they have upsides that could make them valuable additions to the Twins rotation. There were various reports linking both pitchers to multiple teams, but Ryan was aggressive and got them on board before the Winter Meetings.
Mike Pelfrey warms up in the bullpen before his 2013 rehab start in CR
The re-signing of Mike Pelfrey has widely been panned by fans, but I’m OK with it. I feel much the way I did about the Correia signing a year ago. The Twins probably overpaid with a two-year deal, but I think he could be better than almost every other in-house option. And since, unlike Correia a year ago, Pelfrey is not the best free agent pitcher signed by the Twins, I’ll give Ryan the benefit of the doubt. If the Twins saw something in Pelfrey toward the end of 2013 that makes them believe he’ll be better in 2014, I’ll trust their judgment for now.
I suspect that we’ll be seeing the Twins trade Sam Deduno, however. He, along with Worley and lefty Scott Diamond, are out of options, so the Twins are likely going to have to part with at least one of them. Deduno, it seems to me, is the only one of the group with any trade value at all right now. That would leave Diamond and Worley left to fight for the final rotation spot, with the loser perhaps getting the long-relief role in the bullpen to start the season.
I won’t be surprised if Ryan makes another splash in the free agent market, however. It sounds like he’s continuing to at least stay in touch with the agents for Garza and Bronson Arroyo. I’m not sure that would change the dynamic significantly, though. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Correia traded if Garza or Arroyo is signed. It would be worth it, to me, if it’s Garza that’s added. I’d be less enthused with Arroyo because it almost feels like you’d just be adding another Correia, but paying more and committing for more years.
What’s more important, to me, is that the Twins add some offense before camp opens. I’m just less optimistic that it will happen.
There simply aren’t logical options, now that the offensive-minded veteran catchers are pretty much off the market.
Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier are locked in on the right side of the Twins infield.
Trevor Plouffe is going to hold down third base until Miguel Sano arrives.
Josh Willingham has no trade value at this point, so he’s likely to be the primary left fielder.
Oswaldo Arcia should open in right field unless the Twins think he needs more AAA time. Even if so, it’s unlikely any replacement would be a significant offensive improvement over Arcia.
That really leaves just center field and shortstop as possible positions where an offensive upgrade would be feasible. The Twins have been linked to Stephen Drew and I think that idea has some merit.
In center field, however, it’s hard for me to imagine any free agent signing with the Twins, knowing that the top prospect in all of baseball is due to arrive within a year or two, at most, to claim that position.
In any event, as the folks at MLBTradeRumors.com point out, there simply aren’t many position players with impact potential still on the free agent market. Just five of the position players originally listed on MLBTR’s “Top 50 free agents” remain on the market. They are Drew, Shin-Soo Choo, Nelson Cruz, Kendrys Morales and Raul Ibanez. Unless the Twins make a run at Drew, it’s hard to imagine any of those guys wearing a Twins uniform in 2014.
Will Jason Kubel find some old magic in 2014?
Maybe the Twins will catch lightning in a bottle and get a boost from one of their returning Jasons (Bartlett and Kubel), but I think the best shot at significant offensive improvement might be if Sano gets off to a hot start and earns a mid-year promotion. Likewise, while it would be unreasonable to expect, it’s fun to consider what could happen if Byron Buxton gets off to a start at AA similar to what he showed a year ago during his time in Cedar Rapids.
Still, there’s a lot of conjecture going on about just how much improved the Twins could be if the roster stands more or less as it currently is constituted. I don’t think it’s post-season competitive yet, but I’m a lot more hopeful than I was a year ago.
Was the Twins rotation so bad that the addition of Nolasco and Hughes could result in as many as 10 more wins for the Twins? I think so.
It’s not that I think those two pitchers will be solely responsible for 10 additional wins, but I could see them accounting for, say, one additional win per month between them from April through August. If the Twins are healthy (read that as saying “if Mauer is healthy”) and not just going through the motions in September while providing cannon fodder for every team on their late-season schedule, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that they add a handful of wins to their 8-20 September record from 2013.
I don’t think Terry Ryan is done making deals that he believes will improve the 2014 roster. Considering that and considering the pitching upgrades already made, I don’t think expecting an improvement of 10 games over 2013 is unrealistic.
That’s not enough to get this team to “good,” but it would signal that things are once again moving in the right direction.
It has been a weird offseason for the Twins, hasn’t it?
I’m not complaining. mind you. It’s refreshing to see General Manager Terry Ryan being aggressive in the free agent market to address the team’s starting pitching needs. Signing Ricky Nolasco to a four-year contract with a fifth year vesting option was more than a little out of character for the Twins.Adding Phil Hughes on a three-year deal two days later was almost downright giggle inducing.
Terry Ryan (Photo:Jim Crikket/Knuckleballs)
I mean, not only did Ryan go sign a couple of guys that were clearly in demand elsewhere, but the organization obviously looked beyond just wins, losses and ERA in determining who to target. That’s just not normal for this front office.
But the thing is, Ryan’s apparently not even close to being done with his offseason shopping. Based on media reports, Ryan has also been actively looking to upgrade his roster at other positions, most notably at catcher and in the outfield. And despite a number of assumptions to the contrary, he’s also apparently not done trying to land starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo.
Like most Twins fans, I would imagine, my first reaction to all of this activity has been, “Great! It’s about time!” But, at the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, my second reaction has been to wonder why this is happening all of a sudden.
I suppose, if you were inclined to take the comments made by the Twins ownership and front office management at face value, none of this should surprise us. I think owner Jim Pohlad, team president Dave St. Peter and GM Terry Ryan have all pretty consistently told any reporter inclined to ask that they were not happy with recent results on the field and they understood that the roster had to be improved.
But after three consecutive 95+ loss seasons, they’d have sounded pretty out of touch with reality to say anything else. They all said pretty similar stuff a year ago and, probably, a year before that.
So, again you ask yourself, why has the approach apparently changed so dramatically this offseason?
Obviously, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have some theories to share.
New MLB Media Money
The Twins, like every MLB team, have a big chunk of new annual national media rights money coming in starting this year. Reports estimate it at $25 million per club, though the MLB offices have tried to downplay that a bit by pointing out that, while the new overall money divided by the number of teams might be $25 million, part of the money is retained by Major League Baseball itself. I guess to pay for Bud Selig’s platinum parachute, maybe.
Regardless, it’s a bunch of new money and it’s essentially “found money” because it doesn’t come with a nickel’s worth of corresponding expenses. In theory, it could (and arguably should) be dedicated wholly to improving the talent being put on the field at the Major League and minor league levels. That is to say, there’s no reason that only half the money should go to payroll, which is the portion of revenues that the Twins have claimed in the past that they earmark for payroll.
The bottom line is that, between the new money, the $40 million or so of payroll space the Twins would have had even without the new money and the lack of any significant long term commitments for anyone not named Joe Mauer, money honestly is no object for the Twins this offseason. That’s a concept that is almost impossible for most Twins fans to grasp, but it’s true.
The 2014 All-Star Game
During the fourth season in their new stadium, the Twins hosted the MLB All-Star game. They put on a good show, but the game itself was not all that exciting and the Twins, in the midst of yet another generally poor season and sitting 11 games out of first place at the break, had only the minimum allowable one reserve player named to the American League roster.
No, I didn’t slip in to my DeLorean and zap in to the future for that information. Rather, that’s a recap of the 1985 All-Star Game that the Twins hosted at the HHH Metrodome.
I don’t think Jim Pohlad likes the fact that most Twins fans in Minnesota (and a few of us in Iowa and the Dakotas, too) wonder why, with that beautiful taxpayer-funded ballpark, he won’t spend the money necessary to put a decent team on the field to watch. If that’s true, he’s probably even less enthralled with the idea of every baseball fan in America asking the same question during All-Star week next July.
If the Twins are going to suck in 2014 – and they certainly may – I don’t think Pohlad will let it be because he’s seen as having pocketed all of the new stadium and national media revenues, rather than spending some of that money on real Major League ballplayers.
Peer Pressure
When you own a Major League baseball team, you run with a pretty fast – if somewhat conservative – crowd. And I’m not talking about your fellow owners.
Your peer group includes owners and CEOs of other big time businesses and, while I certainly have no personal experience to back this up, I have to imagine that such a peer group tends to keep score.
If you can run your baseball organization at a good profit, see your organizational value (which is reported on annually in business magazines such as Forbes) climb and do it all while making customers/fans happy by winning consistently, your fellow local billionaires are going to look on you, personally, as a winner.
But if you, say, lose 95+ games a season for, I don’t know, maybe three years in a row and you see attendance start to dwindle and your fans are all talking about how cheap you are now that they have paid for your new stadium, those peers (some of which are probably paying premium prices to advertise at your stadium) may start to ask some of the same questions your fans are asking. Like, for example, “do you really need TWO AAA teams, one in Rochester NY and one here in Minnesota?” That’s embarrassing.
So…
Looking back at a number of interviews with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I think there are two quotes, one each from Pohlad and Ryan, that give pretty good clues as to what’s gotten in to the Twins.
Was that just an owner saying what he thought fans wanted to hear? Was it a not-so-veiled statement that, if money wasn’t spent, it wasn’t because he told his GM he couldn’t spend it? Or was it a hint that perhaps he had given his GM direct instructions to, “use the damn ladder to get out of that hole,” and spend some money to put real ballplayers on the field?
We don’t know.
We do know, however, that about a week or two later, Nolasco and Hughes had deals with the Twins.
This past Monday, Terry Ryan was quoted by Star-Tribune beat reporter LaVelle E. Neal III as saying the following concerning the Twins’ own homegrown talent: “If they take a step forward, they will answer some of our problems and questions. A step backwards is going to be concerning not only for us but for their careers. We have given opportunities to guys here the last two years. And it hasn’t gone so well. So now we may have to look out for ourselves here a little bit more.” (Emphasis added)
I found that quote to be about as interesting as anything the Twins GM has uttered publicly in years.
The Twins – and Terry Ryan specifically – have been famously adherent to a process of building from within. They focus on the draft and international signings. They work hard to develop players and promote them deliberately through the minor leagues. When those players are ready, they use them as their primary source of talent to replace players that have aged and/or been judged too expensive to retain. That’s all part of the Twins Way.
Ryan’s quote is a shot across the bow of Chris Parmelee, Kyle Gibson, Aaron Hicks, Trevor Plouffe and any other young player who might be inclined to think that, having survived several years of development in the Twins organization, they now are enetitled to roster spots with the Twins. And just in case any of those players didn’t grasp the meaning of Ryan’s statement, they can now ask Liam Hendriks, who has been Designated for Assignment, for an interpretation.
Why is Terry Ryan talking to free agent catchers and free agent outfielders when he has Josmil Pinto, Chris Herrmann, Aaron Hicks and Oswaldo Arcia?
“We have all kinds of areas that could be upgraded,” Ryan said. “We’ve got people where, if I told you the positions you would say, ‘Well, this guy is going to be there.’ But some of those guys we need to take a step forward. We can always upgrade any spot anywhere. So if something came to our attention and it looks like an upgrade, we should probably pursue it.”
When Ryan said, “we may have to look out for ourselves,” I’m not sure if he was referring to the Twins, generally, or to himself.
But I wouldn’t be feeling too comfortable if I were any player on the Twins 40-man roster not named Mauer or Perkins, because I think Terry Ryan means what he’s saying right now.
