The Minnesota Twins enter play today on a five-game losing streak, which has sunk them to a season-low 24 games under .500. With this as a backdrop, Twins owner Jim Pohlad was a guest Saturday of Darren Wolfson on 1500 ESPN. Phil Mackey of 1500ESPN.com has excerpts from the interview.
- On approaching a second consecutive 100-loss season, Pohlad said, "It's very frustrating. There's only one way to describe it, and that's losing (stinks)."
- On the future of interim GM Terry Ryan, "When Terry wants to remove the interim (label) from his title, we'll welcome that." Pohlad added that Ryan's "interim" label still exists only because Ryan "hasn't chosen to drop that (label) from his title (yet). But on the other hand, we don't keep revisiting that every week or every month. We don't keep saying to him, 'Terry, why are you still interim?' Whenever he wants to take that way, he can, as far as we're concerned."
- Pohlad "can't foresee" a change in manager. He did say that any decision regarding the future of Ron Gardenhire and his coaching staff would be Ryan's.
- Pohlad does not believe the Twins are looking at a lengthy period of futility while trying to rebuild. "We have no desire to have our history defined by losing. With some tweaking — or maybe some people would say it's more than tweaking, and they could be right — we have faith in the future."
- One of Twins' problems is they have $32MM invested in players who are either on the disabled list, in the minors, or no longer with the organization. "That's true," said Pohlad, "and that unfortunately happens throughout baseball. It's part of the game, and it's not an attractive part of the game. And we don't like that. Nobody would like that."
- One thing Pohlad would like is for Target Field to host the 2014 All-Star Game. "Dialogue between the Minnesota Twins and the commissioner's office has increased noticeably over the past couple weeks," he said, "and we believe something is really imminent."
Gardy isn’t the best manager around, but Anderson and vavre are horrible pitching and hitting coaches, respectively. They need to be canned. Twins have the offense to be competitive next year. But obviously the need to some how find a way to add 4 good starting pitchers, a whole bullpen makeover and some quality depth behind that. That’s a huge undertaking for one off season. The only way to make it happen is for Pohlad to allow Ryan to spend big.
I believe Minnesota are too far off from being able to get to the playoffs and making a dent.
They should trade away guys like Denard Span and other valuable pieces in order to stock up their farm system. Look for them to have it all ready in two-three years instead.
I’ve been ultra-critical of Vavra in the past, but the Twins are hitting the ball very well this year. The Twins are scoring more than enough runs to win this division, and numerous players appear to be thriving, even in spacious Target Field.
Anderson is not the problem, IMO. His bullpen of no-names is doing very well and chocking up tons of innings since the starters are so miserable. Look at all the players who have blossomed under Anderson at some point over the years. Santana, Nathan, Baker, Radke, Mays, Guerrier, Crain, Hawkins, Guardado, Perkins, Burton, etc. Even Carlos Silva did pretty well doing it the “Twins Way.” Anderson has done a lot with a little, teaching these guys to get ahead in the count, throw strikes, and let the defense work for you. The problem is that the Twins don’t draft power arms that can compete with the big guns in the playoffs, and now their defense isn’t very good either, so the pitch-to-contact method is biting them in the butt.
The cause of this mess is Bill Smith and his almost unspeakable list of blunders. I still can hardly believe they amount of damage he did in that short period of time. The only way to get out of this is to spend money and land FAs until some help from the draft and minor leagues become available, which may be a couple years off. What the Twins need right now are the starters and prospects that they should have received in the Santana, Garza, Hardy trades, and also the Hunter, Nathan, Kubel, and Cuddyer trades that should have happened, but didn’t. If they don’t spend some money to buy time during this dry spell, they will continue to stink. I fully expect that they will do nothing, and lose a ton of games in the next few years.
These are some dark days in Twins Territory, and it’s just the beginning. Don’t expect the Pohlads to spend enough to dig the Twins out of this hole. Consider yourself lucky you don’t have season tickets, because they aren’t worth wiping your you-know-what with right now. I’ll be eating tomorrows game vs. SEA because school starts and I can’t go. $106 down the drain. I can’t even sell them for half of face value right now, and these are good seats, too.
No-names, yes. But part of Anderson’s job is to know who is out there. I genuinely believe he could t give you a breakdown of each player in his pen. I lost faith in him when he gave the infamous “it’s not my job to teach guys how to pitch” line. And for vavre, he was trying to remove Ben revere’s hitch in his swing, while Ben was hitting .350. The fact that Ben was hitting everything, and Joe wanted to change his swing, tells me he is incompetent. The team is hitting well because they have a lot of good to great hitters. Vavre might not be hurting them, but he sure is t helping.
Twinkies were probably everyone’s favourite “second team” in the Torii, Radke, Meintkiewicz era and it still stings they couldnt get past the Yankees. they looked to maintain it with Santana, Morneuau, etc but it really sank fast didnt it? the irony is that’s when they really started to spend the money!! but, yeah its starting pitching that has hamstrung this current team (and is the real hole it will take the time to climb out from)
How is spending big the only way to accomplish that goal? There are some very successful pitching teams who drafted well. Minnesota’s only hope of having some effective pitching is by means of the draft IMO.
Spending big is the only way to win in 2013, as pohlad sounds like he wants to do. Absolutely they need to revisit their drafting approach. Also their minor league coaching and player development. They have a poor track record of obtaining and developing high ceiling arms (the two true #1s came via rule 5 and trade) as well as a horrible track record of handling 5-tool outfielders. Benson and Hicks may be lost causes because of that, and I’d hate to be saying the same about buxton in 2014. So scouting and player development needs a look too. This franchise has fallen victim to the complacency of a club that enjoys a decade of success. It sure wouldnt be the first time we have seen this order of events: team wins for a few years, gets new ballpark and huge boost in revenue, owner starts cutting payroll, team starts losing and losing.
Good points. Santana came via rule 5. Who’s the other guys you’re referring to? I can’t think of another true #1 the Twins have had in the last two decades. Ha
Liriano gave about 2 full seasons worth of ace production. It was just scattered across several years.
I believe Joe Mauer probably makes some type of sense for Minnesota, in that he sells merchandise.
But he’s nowhere near the type of player his salary is indicative of.
Minnesota needs to make a few changes come next season.
The first one is to move in the fences somewhat. Right now their own players are batting pathetic at home and feeling eaten up by the ball park.
This is mostly true in early spring, and would be an issue if Twins ever made it into post season.
They also should try to trade away Denard Span for some hot prospects.
The oppositon rarely has issues hitting HR’s at Target Field. It’s in the players head.
The opposition rarely has issues hitting HR’s at Target Field because the Twins pitching is horrendous
They haven’t seemed to bother Willingham
Target Field favors right-handed hitters and limits left-handed power numbers. The core of the team for a while has been the left-handed combo of Morneau and Mauer. Both have seen a dip in slugg% at home since the move, Morneau for example is slugging 100 points less at home.
I saw at one point mauer was worth approx $24 million according to Fangraphs player value this season. Joe ain’t the problem.
Mauer lucked out in the fact that he was coming off a massive career year and another batting title, and playing for his hometown team that happened to be moving into a taxpayer funded ballpark in which team and fans had been lobbying for over a decade. It also didn’t help that the Yankees were a likely landing spot for Mauer, not with the bad taste in people’s mouths from all those recent, brutal playoff losses.
Mauer had to be resigned. He had the upper hand in the negotiations, and he used it to the fullest. Whether or not he should be faulted for that is another story. In reality, he’s only overpaid by 5-8 million dollars, in my opinion. That kind of money shouldn’t be used as an excuse why a team is in the cellar.
The Twins lost 99 games last year, not 100.
Blockbuster deal in the offseason. Twins send Mauer and Morneau and a little cash to Boston for Ryan Lavarnway and other pitching prospects. Twins save a ton of money, Boston gets a star average hitter in Mauer to replace AGonz, and a power hitter in Morneau to replace Ortiz, who I doubt they want to resign in the offseason. No way do I think this solves all of Boston’s problems, but it’s a bigger splash than they can make with anyone on the free agency pool, outside of Josh Hamilton, who I would argue is actually a bigger risk than Joe Mauer. Boston probably won’t be able to solve its pitching woes as easily via trade though, so I’m betting that’s where free agency comes into play for guys like Greinke, Sanchez, Dempster.
Can we find people who can catch ball. We could do that with koskie guzman and hunter
The Twins problems aren’t because Gardy can no longer manage or Varva and Anderson forgot how to coach. The Twins hitters are doing fine and Anderson has worked minor miracles with the likes of Deduno, Burton, Devries and Diamond. Its also not because the owners are cheap because the team has spent money. It is because for a couple years the team made poor decisions in the FO when Bill Smith made a handful of poor trades and failed to add quality pitchers to the farm system. Part of it is bad luck with Wimmers and Gibson getting hurt but the major league rotation shouldn’t be crippled because of a couple of injured 1st rounders. The lack of other option on the farm has hurt the team and it has already begun to turn around under Ryan.
Anderson hasn’t worked any miracles. Bobby Cuellar has worked the miracles. All of them. He has guys you’ve never heard of pitching to sub-3 ERAs. HE is the pitching guru. After all, he’s the same guy that taught both Johan and Frankie their change-ups. Anderson sucks. He always has.
Paul Molitor as manager. Bobby Cuellar as pitching coach. Tom Brunansky as hitting coach. It can’t be any other way next year if the Twins are serious about playing in the postseason.