Ryan leaves Twins, no effect on Mariners
Scheduling Note: Dave with Groz moves up a day, and can be heard this afternoon at 2:35 pm on KJR.
Terry Ryan resigns as GM of Twins. ESPN’s write-up here.
I’ve heard him mentioned as a possible Bavasi replacement, but Bavasi’s not going anywhere (unless they keep losing like this and the A’s catch them, maybe). So it doesn’t really matter to us.
The short version: the Twins under Ryan did an amazing job developing players their way, often evaluating them on the basis of criteria I totally disagree with (David Ortiz, for instance, run out of the org for not being their kind of player), did some things badly, but given the constraints they worked under, have to be acknowledged as a tremendous sustained success.
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74 Responses to “Ryan leaves Twins, no effect on Mariners”
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I’m mainly trying to talk about 2002-2003 after Boone and Cirillo were here. This team during that time was always 1 or 2 good players away from being a World Series worthy team. But the front-office was never willing to be flexible to get those 1 or 2 players.
That’s what I’m trying to get at. . .
from the 2003 trade deadline:
“We’d have liked to have done something. We were hopeful something would happen,” Gillick said. “But nothing happened.”
“We did have (financial) flexibility,” Gillick said. “We had some very substantial proposals on the table. We want to assure you that we had a number of discussions going, and two or three were of a serious nature.”
and can we lay to rest the ‘Nelson was traded because he shot his mouth off about the deadline’?
Since Bavasi is staying, does that mean McLaren gets fired to show that the team is “doing something” to fix this year?
Or does Mac stay, with the explanation that he did a great job under the circumstances, and that he gets a year to start from scratch and help build the team from spring training?
Or does the PR machine crank out the “wow, it was a great, unexpected season and we’re going to build on this year’s success?”
#52: That quote is partially about PR, I guarantee it.
#53: His mouth probably had something to do with it considering he got traded to the Yankees less than 48 hours after that quote came out. The issues Nellie had with the front office did get resolved eventually, hence why he came back in ’05, but at the time I’m all but sure he got traded because he shot his mouth. Because the idea of trading Nelly beofre the quote was a “pie out of the sky” type of thing.
In other words, my mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.
*sigh*
of course, although Jeff doesn’t seem to remember it now, he was on the trading block well before he said anything about management, and he even confirmed on arrival in NY that week that in talking to Cashman he’d learned that the Yankees were asking about him before the deadline, and the trade was under discussion.
Well, Ichiro was signed prior to 2001, so that’s one right there.
Before 2002, I don’t think the team really thought they needed to do much tinkering.
So you’re really talking about the off-seasons following 2002 and 2003, seasons in which the Mariners won over 90 games, so the need for significant improvement wasn’t really that obvious.
Or does the PR machine crank out the “wow, it was a great, unexpected season and we’re going to build on this year’s success?â€
This one gets my vote.
Ah, that’s the no-brainer to say that about ANYTHING. I’d say it even if I were to DFA Sexson and Turbo, dump HoRam and Weaver, and bring in RR-S, Campillo and Morrow.
#59: Well, we didn’t make the playoffs and it was an aging team, so something probably needed to be fixed. . .
#58: Yet, nothing got done until Nellie shot his mouth.
This management team thought it was a good idea to trade Soriano in order to get HoRam, in the offseason.
If they’re willing to make that kind of a move in the offseason, I’d prefer they not even have a phone line CONNECTED around the trade deadline, when everything is even mor overpriced.
#33: And who trade Guillen and replaced him with Rich Aurilia? Not Gillick.
You cited Carlos Guillen as an example of a player who left because of “Lincoln’s binding budgets.” That is an untrue statement. Carlos Guillen had no say in leaving the team. He was still under team control. The team decided to get rid of him (following his legal and chronic injury problems). The team did not trade him to save money, because they replaced him with a more expensive free agent. The budget had nothing to do with it.
re 64
I think a simpler explanation than “the front office was being cheap” is that “the front office is being incompetent.”
Re: 65
With the acquisitions on Parrish and R. White, the future does not look to bright either…
62 – Making the playoffs is a lousy measure of success, because whether you succeed or fail is largely based on the strength of the other teams you your division.
Making the playoffs in the 2006 NL Central is something roughly half of all teams could do, while making the playoffs in the 2001 AL West is something usually only one team in all of baseball is good enough to manage in any given year.
Evan: Eh?
Do you want to type that last paragraph again, because I don’t understand clearly what you mean.
68, I think Evan is talking about the number of teams who would post a win-loss record similar to the winner of the ’06 NL Central as opposed to the number of teams who post a record similar to the ’01 M’s, who won at a .716 clip.
The Twins under Ryan, as I’ll remember, have a far more distinct personality than other teams. I’ve always associated them with:
1) Smart, aggressive farm-system development. (For a time, it seemed that they were bleeding Quad-A outfielders — Brian Buchanan, Chad Allen, Mike Ryan, Michael Restovich, all the way back to Butch Huskey)
2) Unwillingness to be dragged into premum free-agent bidding wars, even to retain their own
3) Bizarre fealties to weak slap hitters — Denny Hocking, Pat Meares, Luis Rivas, Cristian Guzman, Nick Punto, Jason Tyner. (This actually goes all the way back to guys like Randy Bush and Gene Larkin, who got way more playing time than their talent warranted because their were “Twins types of players.”)
I, and I think everybody would be curious to see what Ryan could do with a bigger bankroll.
DMZ, can you give us a specific reason, or a source, as to why you so firmly believe Bavasi will be back next year? I’m just not so convinced, and I hope you’re wrong.
I can’t speak for DMZ, but his position would make a lot of sense with no source, and the only specific reason being that if the M’s ownership hired and fired and ran the team in a rational fashion, a metric fuckload of other decisions would’ve made differently. With that context, the fact that it seems reasonable, or at least possible, that Bavasi won’t be back next year is itself a good reason to expect he will be.
3) Bizarre fealties to weak slap hitters — Denny Hocking, Pat Meares, Luis Rivas, Cristian Guzman, Nick Punto, Jason Tyner. (This actually goes all the way back to guys like Randy Bush and Gene Larkin, who got way more playing time than their talent warranted because their were “Twins types of players.â€)
Part of this perhaps had to do with playing in the Metrodome.