twins/mlb
Startribune.com digital sports editor Howard Sinker used to cover the Twins and now shares season tickets with friends in Section 219 of Target Field. He blogs about baseball from the perspective of a long-time fan who loves the game, doesn’t always believe the hype and likes hearing what others think.
Posts about Twins management
Section 219: Twins begin their hunt for competence
Posted by: Howard Sinker Updated: October 5, 2012 - 8:31 AM
First of all, the Twins didn't intend for the news to come out this way, for the coaching staff casualties to dribble over over the course of Thursday in ones and twos.
That was the excellent work of writer La Velle E. Neal III, who was hard-wired into the organization and went all Brian Urlacher, totally disrupting whatever plans existed and reporting on the firings in as close to real time as they could be confirmed. La Velle was also in transit from Toronto to the Twin Cities, getting the information and getting it to startribune.com as quickly as he could confirm things.
Let me suggest that the Twins should get on with their overhaul with the same intensity that La Velle showed on behalf of Twins fans.
General Manager Terry Ryan decimated Ron Gardenhire's band of brothers Thursday -- firing three coaches, reassigning two and sparing the manager's best baseball buddy, pitching coach Rick Anderson. If we assume that the Rochester pitching coach, Bobby Cuellar, will take over as bullpen coach and Gene Glynn, the Rochester manager, will get a Twins coaching job, you can consider Gardy and Andy to be on a very short leash in 2013.
Talk all you want about the weak starting pitching -- or obfuscate even more and blame it on the injuries to several of the failed starters -- and you ignore the fact that the "Twins way" has become one of mental mistakes in all aspects of the game: Mental errors, giveaway at-bats, flawed pitching. All of those traits manifest themselves in a second season of frightful baseball unworthy of their new ballpark.
However hard the coaches and Gardy were working, things were lost when the messages were delivered from the staff to the players. Ten years ago, the Twins were in need of Gardy's folksy approach as a replacement for the taciturn Tom Kelly.
Now, Gardy is being told by Ryan that what his staff was doing had stopped working and that he'll be given one more chance to fix things without a staff of his own choosing. Faced with what Ryan decided, there are managers who would have walked away with their guys.
I'm going to take it as a good sign that Gardy decided to take on the challenge. Whether he can lead the change is an interesting and debatable question.
Over the last few weeks, when people have asked what I thought would happen, I suggested that things were too quiet for big changes not to be made. I am also certain that nobody in the Twins organization thinks a new coaching staff alone can be sold as big change.
Players will come and go during the off-season. I would bet on minimal drama before things happen and a couple of dramatic moves intended to make 2013 more than a season of meandering toward .500. Many of the empty seats that you could see at Target Field as the season wore on were generating revenue because they were held by absentee season-ticket holders. In my circle, many people are bailing out on their season-ticket investments -- cutting back or getting out entirely.
Baltimore and Oakland this season have shown what's possible. Keep in mind that, with better geography, either of those teams would have handily won the AL Central based on the bigger chunks of Twins, Royals and Cleveland on their schedules.
The Twins not only finished last in their division, but they finished last in the only division in baseball that had three teams lose 90 or more games. The AL Central finished 28 games under .500 against the West and 24 under .500 against the East. (The Twins were 22-50 outside of their division, a .305 winning percentage.)
What happened on Thursday was a message to Gardy. He will have a boatload of work to do during the winter, preparing a new coaching staff -- one that won't of his choosing, however the replacements get spun -- to function the way he needs when the Twins gather in Florida next February.
In return for keeping his job, Gardy has basically forfeited the right to make personnel decisions about his staff that, in a better situation, a GM wants to be able to mostly leave to his field manager. On Twitter, Patrick Reusse described Gardy and Andy as being on "double secret probation."
That's the price of stink.
What needs to happen next are more moves by Ryan and ownership to further show that the painful performances we've witnessed for two years will be replaced by ones we can watch without holding our noses and looking away.
Section 219: Disenchantment of the Twins fan base
Posted by: Howard Sinker Updated: September 13, 2012 - 9:08 AMThis is what the outfield seats at Target Field looked like a couple of innings into Wednesday's night miserable baseball game:
Now, let's give the Twins the benefit of the doubt. It drizzled all day, clearing up and turning into a fairly nice night an hour or so before game time. And school's in session and the Royals are in town and ... blah, blah, blah.
Friends, this isn't working. If you wanted to go on StubHub and buy tickets at the last minute Wednesday, you could find a batch of tickets for $.01. Yes, that's a penny (plus a 10 percent surcharge -- $.001? -- and the $5.45 download fee..) At around 4 p.m., there were four tickets in the Legends Club listed for $5 each. Yes, that's five as in one-two-three-four-FIVE.) There were 2,500 or so unsold tickets on the 'Hub, all of which counted as part of the "attendance" of 28,139. Basically, you could have taken advantage of the one-cent sale and sat pretty much where you wanted, as long as you looked like you belonged.
In our row of 20, it was me 'n' Julie and the delightful couple who have the seats next to use and a party of four further down the row of 20. By comparison, we were packed in. By the seventh inning, the front three rows next to us in Section 220 were empty. Totally empty. We counted nine people in the no-alcohol Section 311 early in the game and figured that one fell off the wagon when we counted only eight a couple of innings later.
Here's the problem for the Twins: Attendance figures are being padded significantly by tickets already sold for 2012.
How will they sell those tickets for 2013?
My friends, who have varying degrees of baseball intensity, weighed in when they saw the above photo posted on my Facebook page:
A sampling:
"Holy Cow, that is bleak."
"Wow, that's sparse."
"Glad to see the new stadium was worth the investment."
"Seems like only yesterday I was hearing how a new stadium would allow the Twins to 'stay competitive.' What they didn't add was 'with the Indians.' "
And here's the best-face scenario from a season-ticket holder friend:
"Only difference, and it's a big one, the Metropolitan Club is a nice place to hang out when the game is too frustrating. I hate to admit it, but tonight I was one of THOSE people who watched very little of the game but had a great night at the ballpark chatting with friends. So wrong. But so fun. I'm sorry Grandpa. I'm sure he's rolling in his grave!"
One other fan-experience observation: Last year, we wanted to go out to dinner before the game at the Town Ball Tavern, the nice bar/restaurant in the left-field corner. We knew we pretty much needed to be there when the gates opened in order to get seated, even though it was a weekday night and not a particularly high-interest game. Last night, we did the same thing, getting to the restaurant about an hour before game time and having a number of tables to choose from.
I'm not talking baseball right now. If you want to watch Ryan Doumit's three-error inning, go here and skip to the 1:20 mark. I'm talking about observations and soft data. The Twins appear to be doing a pretty good job of dispiriting their fans.
Obviously, fans who just want to support a winning team are staying away. The more observant have spent another season wondering about the team's injury management, its pitching and defensive failures and much of anything that speaks to things getting better soon. The most intense have wondered about roster moves, recently focusing their nth degree analysis on why reliever Anthony Slama isn't being given another chance to see if his minor-league dominance can translate to the majors and why Chris Parmelee wasn't used in the outfield at Rochester, if that's where he has the best chance to play for the Twins. And we all marveled at the Nishioka thing a few weeks back.
When you can frustrate everyone from the advanced-statistics posse to the guy who asks which league has the designated hitter -- a question we heard last night -- it's a sign that the fan base is going, going ...
Putting my money where my blog is, I'll tell you that I'm involved with three sets of season tickets: My scorecard for 2013 has me keeping one, cutting back on another and bailing on the third. Am I alone?
Right now, I think the Twins can win back most of their fans by going boldly into 2013 with a makeover that could take many shapes. If they tarry and pretend that all is good enough at 1Twins Way, they run the risk of being just another pretty ballpark with plenty of good seats available.
Section 219: Giving up on Liriano (Finally)
Posted by: Howard Sinker Updated: July 29, 2012 - 12:15 AMI've written this before, but Francisco Liriano was so incredibly bad during much of his time with the Twins, that people had a tendency to treat a solid six-inning performance as great work. It was only "great" in a participation-medal sort of way. "Good job, Frankie. We know better things are ahead for you." (Even though "we" knew better.)
Things got so silly that some folks talked about whether Liriano's recent spate of acceptable work was due to the fact that he'd started chewing gum on the mound.
C'mon, people.
Many of the comments attached to the news story about the trade are lamenting that the Twins defied conventional wisdom and traded Liriano to a division rival.
Granted, you typically don't want to do that.
This isn't typical.
The Twins got what they could for him and, if Liriano stays with the White Sox after this season, the Twins could face him time after time in seasons to come.
The Twins should welcome those opportunities in the same way that Detroit (6.13 ERA), Cleveland (5.67 ERA) and the White Sox (5.77 ERA) have welcomed the chances to swing at his pitches.
Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the Twins were in a tougher place in terms of getting any significant return for Liriano. This deal makes it clear that, whatever kind words you may hear from the Twins on his departure, management gave up on Liriano and went into addition-by-subtraction mode.
Liriano could have continued an illusion of competence by pitching well in meaningless games in the final two months of the season, causing the fool-me-again crowd to wonder whether this was the time he would turn things around. I'm glad Terry Ryan declined to go there.
Make no mistake: There's heavy lifting to be done to return the Twins to relevance. If addition-by-subtraction is the only arithmetic that gets done between now and next season, Target Field will be an unhappy place.
Section 219: Liriano and a game of chicken for the Twins
Posted by: Howard Sinker Updated: July 24, 2012 - 11:14 AMThis Francisco Liriano thing looks to be playing out quite sloppily. After a series of good to excellent starts -- sometimes people have mistaken good starts for great ones because of Liriano's awful work earlier this season -- he melted down in Chicago on Monday night.
Less than three innings, three home runs, seven runs allowed, no command.
Some people are bemoaning that Liriano pretty much nuked his trade value with Monday's performance.
Not really. There wasn't much trade value before that, in part because of changes in the free-agent compensation rules that are frequently talked about and not always completely understood. And, in another part, because Liriano doesn't exactly bring a track record of quality to market.
The bigger issue for Twins fans is the game of chicken being played by the team.
Here's the deal: In order for the Twins to get draft-choice compensation for Liriano, they would have to offer him a one-year contract for about $12.5 million --the average of baseball's top 125 salaries. Liriano would have to decide whether to accept the deal or look elsewhere, most likely for a multiyear deal.
These are new rules that will be in effect for the first time after this season. Here's the best primer on the rules, from the website mlbtraderumors.com.
Do the Twins want to risk making an offer and having Liriano accept it? Fool me once...
Do Twins fans want to hear that other moves will be limited because the Twins spent $12.5 million to keep Liriano? You can fool some of the people...
There's more that works against the Twins. For one thing, a team trading for him will not be eligible for free-agent compensation. So Liriano would basically be a two-month rental. For another, teams looking at Liriano aren't just looking at his recent success when figuring their offers and counteroffers. You're not going to get a Top 25 minor-league prospect, the way Miami did when it got pitcher Jacob Turner from Detroit on Monday for starting pitcher Anibel Sanchez and second baseman Omar Infante.
Interest in Liriano is one thing; interest at more than a modest price is another. Teams know that starting pitching is the Twins' biggest need to again become competitive, so when they see Liriano being dangled, what conclusions do you think they're making?
So do the Twins shun modest offers for Liriano, and risk offering him $12.5 million after the World Series or losing him without getting anything in return?
Can they afford to trade him and not get much in return, like Seattle did when it sent Ichiro to the Yankees?
Can they afford not to deal him?
It's a messy situation the Twins have created for themselves, one without a good outcome.
What would you do?
Section 219: Trades, free agency and the Twins' checkbook
Posted by: Howard Sinker Updated: July 13, 2012 - 9:03 AMYou're going to read a lot about potential trades in the weeks to come. Some of it will be pretty frivolous, in the sense that even those who generally have keen insights may lose perspective from time to time.
If you look at the Johan Santana situation five years back, people with baseball savvy were writing that the Yankees could perhaps make fans forget some of their struggles by trading Santana for a package that would have included Ian Kennedy, who went 21-4 for Arizona last season, and All-Star Game MVP Melky Cabrera, plus others. Or the suggestion that a Santana deal would yield a star for the Twins. Robinson Cano, maybe, or Jose Reyes.
Instead, there was Carlos Gomez and the others.
And baseball's rules are different now, even from last year, in a way that won't facilitate some of the Twins dealing that's being imagined. Unless a team offers a free agent about $12 million, it won't receive a draft choice as compensation for losing him. So Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel wouldn't have fetched compensation based on the deals they were offered and eventually made with other teams.
What does that mean for the Twins as the trading deadlines approach? For one thing, don't expect much of anything for midlevel players.
Will contenders be very interested in Matt Capps when Kansas City's Jonathon Broxton, San Diego's Huston Street and Milwaukee's Francisco Rodriguez should be available now because their current teams won't make an effort to keep them under the new rules? We're dreaming if we imagine significant help coming this way for anyone other than Josh Willingham, Denard Span and Francisco Liriano. Anything else is strictly a salary dump with a body or two thrown in. (Think Delmon Young deal.)
Owing to his performance and contract, Justin Morneau has pretty much fallen into the salary dump category, and I can't imagine another team taking on his $14 million contract for this year and next. The Twins best hope is to hold on to him, hold out hope for improvement and see where he stands at this time in 2013, and again at the end of next season.
So where does that leave the Twins?
Needing to change the way they do business, at least in the short term.
Twins management talks of team payroll being a percentage of its revenues. That's fine, until the credibility -- or perceived credibility -- of the product is threatened. The Twins can talk about their $100 million payroll until Minnie and Paul turn blue, but the fact remains that 23 percent of that payroll is tied up for the next 6 1/2 years in Joe Mauer -- a move that had to be done by the Pohlads.
I have made the case previously that the Mauer contract needs to be considered as a separate item from the rest of the payroll. Kind of like an endowed chair at a college, supported by funds from outside of the regular budget. Ownership simply could not have moved into Target Field in 2010 with the Mauer situation unsettled. (The Angels and Tigers made first-cousin moves in their signings of Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder, paying them for a year or two longer than they are likely to be useful so they can better compete in the present. Better to do this on purpose than by accident -- see Wells, Vernon and Soriano, Alfonso.)
To say that the current and near-future payroll is limited by Mauer's contract is a disservice to anyone who follows the team. (Financial disclosure: I'm in for enough as a season-ticket holder to cover about 2 1/2 innings of Mauer's contract this season. Three innings, I guess, if you count expenditures on beer and the monster yams behind Section 102.) If the Twins need a couple of proven starting pitchers as an anchor for the coming years and a quality middle infielder, then they need to adopt a spend money-to-make money approach as part of becoming a contender.
That's what Wild owner Craig Leopold just did, right?
A total of $27 million comes off the payroll after this season if you assume the departure of Pavano, Liriano, Capps and Scott Baker. (I'll assume the Twins will offer Baker a smaller deal with significant incentives.) After 2013, another $22.5 million comes off the payroll with the Morneau, Nick Blackburn and Tsuyoshi Nishioka contracts expiring.
Should the Twins to commit that total -- $49.5 million, plus some "Mauer money" -- toward the 2013 payroll? Yes, if they want to remain relevant, both in baseball and in the Twin Cities. Ownership can afford it.
The Twins have $43.5 million committed for 2013 to Mauer, Willingham, Span, Ryan Doumit, Glen Perkins and Jamey Carroll. Nobody else on the roster is due for a major salary bump through arbitration.
Terry Ryan has scored well with the Willingham, Doumit and Jared Burton signings and got an infield upgrade with Carroll. The team has done well with its handling of Trevor Plouffe, Scott Diamond and Ben Revere, and is rightly using the remnants of this season to figure out the futures of Brian Dozier and a few others. There are some interesting prospects in the minors and hopes that last month's amateur draft will yield significant pitching help in a few years.
The Twins aren't good right now, but they're interesting -- not like the Twins of the mid- and late-1990s, who were bad and uninteresting.
Despite their record, Ryan's staff is doing pretty well with the mess it was handed -- maybe as well as possible. But to talk about the Twins "improving to .500" next season, or needing a few seasons to become postseason competitive, isn't a discussion that most fans will want to hear. Not when 10 teams make the playoffs.
One more issue: The Twin Cities pro sports landscape has changed markedly and at a lightning pace. The Wild just spent megabucks on Zach Parise and Ryan Suter; the Timberwolves are again interesting and relevant, and the Vikings are getting their new stadium. So continued atrophy, or running in place, could easily land the Twins as No. 4 among the four major pro teams in the Twin Cities -- status as darning as being at the bottom of the weakest division in the American League.
Twins ownership needs to trust Ryan's baseball skills by being willing to go more-in financially.
Otherwise they'll risk people saying: "No, I don't want your Twins tickets. I'm going to see the Lynx."
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