Thoughts on the end of the Terry Ryan era
The Twins officially parted ways with their long-time (and two-time) General Manager, Terry Ryan, on Monday, with the organization naming Rob Antony (Ryan’s Assistant GM) as the current interim GM. There’s a lot to digest here, so let’s attack it bullet point style:
* Ryan was told a month ago that he would not be asked back for next season, and finally decided he simply didn’t want to finish out the season in a position he knew he didn’t have in the long term. It’s hard to blame Ryan, that would be like breaking up with your significant other and then living together for another seven months.
* Let’s take a minute to note that the praise Ryan has been receiving the last few days is far from simply pumping up someone after they leave. His eye for talent was near-unmatched, as Tom Powers of The Pioneer Press put it, “This is the same fellow whose eye for value spotted Johan Santana during a Rule 5 draft, who acquired Shannon Stewart at the trade deadline, and who received Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano for catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who was going to be replaced by Joe Mauer, anyway.” He did wonders for the Twins, especially in his first stint with the club.
* The timing on this is interesting given the proximity to the trade deadline, one of a general manager’s most important times of the year.
* Speaking of the trade deadline, interim GM, Rob Antony, is going to have a chance to show his bosses what he’s capable of with an important deadline coming up for the Twins. They have a few pieces that will be nice to sell off, and hopefully Antony will pull the trigger.
* Antony might seem to be the odds-on favorite to win the job, but the club has said they are open to an outside hire and given the toxicity of the last six years, they may want to do that. One thing is for sure: The fans want an outside hire. The Star Tribune asked their readers “Should the Twins hire from within or go outside for Terry Ryan’s replacement?” 97 percent of the 1,135 votes have said “Go outside the team” as of Wednesday morning.
* It’s hard to see the logic behind going any direction other than outside of the team. The “pitch-to-contact paired with a bad defense” is one of the worst run prevention models in the history of baseball. The biggest worry has to be that even if the Twins go outside the team with their hire, that the issues are deeper and institutional and may need several years to root out.
* Antony seems like a prime example. He is a man who favors RBI over slugging percentage and has been known to espouse the win being the most valuable stat to judge a pitcher — two ideologies that have been abandoned by nearly all MLB front offices.
* If the Twins don’t go with Antony, the job offers plenty of intrigue, as any GM position is a hallowed job possibility — there are only 30 such jobs in the world — and it’s not like the cupboard is bare. The team has Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, Jose Berrios, and Max Kepler, and anyone hired will know how loyal the team is. There’s also the “nowhere to go but up” appeal thanks to their bottom-of-the-barrel record as of right now.
* The Twins are hoping to make the hire before the end of the season, which seems like a poor idea given that the best possible candidates may be busy on teams that are playing important games all the way into October. That being said, the idea that bringing back manager Paul Molitor (who the team told would be the coach again in 2017) is going to hamstring their search seems silly. Molitor is a solid manager and if the GM really wants to replace him, he/she would only have to wait a year.
* The GM search should give some actual news to follow along with in what has become a lost season on the field. Hopefully the Twins make the right call because given their track record, this next hire is going to be around for a long time.
