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This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Bob Howsam considered himself the last of a breed. A protégé of Branch Rickey, who believed in scouting, player development, and the art of making a deal, Howsam built one of history’s greatest teams, the 1970s Cincinnati Reds, a ballclub that reflected that same Rickey-like approach. And he did so at a t
It's strange to say for someone who has written this blog for nearly seven years, but I've never written in depth about my first Twins game. But I have a good reason for that. I don't really remember it. I've tried to. I've imagined Kirby Puckett legging out a triple. I wishfully think that it was the Orioles so I can say that I saw Cal Ripken in the midst of his streak. But I just don't remember it. Not the day. Not the year. Not the opponent. Not the outcome. But I remember my grandfa
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960 the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series in a thirteen year span. After a slip to third in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For
Are we confident in the Twins handling and developing of Alex Meyer? Does he need more time in AAA? Should he have been called up last June? We don't really know what has prevented the Twins from calling up Alex Meyer. We speculate it is his walk rate. How unusual is it for a pitcher with his stuff to give up a lot of walks in AAA? How would other teams respond? Do all teams wait for their pitchers with good stuff to manage their walk rates? Here are some pitchers and their walks per 9 in
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. John Schuerholz spent 26 seasons as a big league GM, winning 16 division titles, six pennants and two World Series. In Kansas City he oversaw that franchise’s only World Series. After moving to Atlanta he took over a team that had lost more than 90 games for four consecutive years and won the next 14 division titles (excepting the
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Along with our countdown of the greatest 25 GMs in history, we occasioally plan to write about some people who did not make our list (as well as other topics related to baseball operations and front offices). Calvin Griffith is not eligable for our Top 25 because we chose to not include people who also owned the team (although des
I've been looking at the blog section of the site lately and see that it hasn't gotten any TLC since launch. I made some small changes to how the blogs are listed in the mobile section of the site this morning and that got me thinking... I'm not a blogger. I should ask you bloggers what you want changes you'd like to see made to the site. I'm open to any suggestions, though obviously, time constraints may apply to whether the requested changes are feasible or not. So, what would you like to
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Buzzie Bavasi masterfully presided over a Dodger team that won eight pennants (plus twice lost pennant playoffs) and four World Series titles. He was an organization man in an unparalleled organization, filled with talented men like owner Walter O’Malley, farm director Fresco Thompson, scouting director
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Harry Dalton was the GM for three teams over a 25 year period, winning five pennants and contending for several others. His claim to fame was his work in Baltimore, where he made a series of moves to turn a very good team into one of the greatest ever assembled. When Dalton went to work for the Orioles
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. After the 1996 season Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizinga—angling for a new publicly financed stadium–asked general manager Dave Dombrowski what it would take to produce a winner the following season. Dombrowski didn’t prevaricate. He told his boss that he would deliver if allowed to take the payroll from around $31 million (in
Assuming the Twins start the season with 13 position players and also assuming that there are no significant injuries to the leading 13 position players, it seems almost set in stone who is breaking camp for the Twins. Those players will be Kurt Suzuki, Josmil Pinto, Joe Mauer, Kennys Vargas, Brian Dozier, Danny Santana, Eduardo Escobar, Trevor Plouffe, Oswaldo Arcia, Aaron Hicks, Torii Hunter, Jordan Schafer, and Eduardo Nunez. Really only Hicks and Nunez leave any doubt, but it is hard to see
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Frank Cashen had two stints running a big league baseball operation. In his first job he oversaw a budding great team as president and later kept it contending in the GM role as well. At his second stop he took over a long struggling franchise that needed a complete transformation. He succeeded at these
Bud Selig is out as commissioner and Rob Manfred has a variety of issues to tackle as he takes over the reigns of America's past-time. One issue at the forefront is trying to find a way to speed up the pace of play for major league games. Last year the average MLB game lasted over three hours. This comes at a time with a steady decrease in run scoring as baseball adjusts after the steroid spike around the turn of the century. Baseball wasn't meant to be this way. Recent years have seen an in
First, the results. Then, how in the heck I got them. We’ll use Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to assess how well the Twins have drafted in the first round from 2003 to 2011 compared to the rest of the league. From 2003-2011, the Twins’ first-round picks were: 23rd in expected WAR per pick. This is an indication of their consistently low draft position due to successful teams and supplemental round picks. 15th in total expected WAR. The Twins make up ground here due to the additional picks t
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Michael Lewis’s 2003 book Moneyball depicted Billy Beane as the leading figure in the spread of analytics (more broadly: the use of data and evidence) in baseball management. Twelve years later all front offices combine analytics and scouting, and the dwindling number of people who decry this revolution
<img src="http://assets.podomatic.net/ts/19/ad/da/paulpleiss/1400x1400-360x360+237+0_10305445.jpg" alt="itunes pic" /><br />This week we try out to sing the National Anthem at a Twins game, talk about how lame baseball nicknames are in 2015, and Paul tries to figure out what the Twins are doing with Eduardo Nunez. We go down on the pond and talk about Cameron Booser (Jay nicknames him Boose, era of lame nicknames, indeed), and we go all around the league talking beer, baseball and t
Left-handed pitching is something that is an anomaly in professional sports. Well, it's an anomaly all the way down really to youth sports. When talking about straight up natural facts about one's person without any nurturing, only height for basketball seems to compare to the importance of left-handed pitching in baseball. With that in mind, I thought it would be appropriate to give a full Twins-system view of almost all of the viable left-handed pitchers and what they do across the various lev
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Sandy Alderson’s three pennants and one World Series championship, while a first-rate achievement, may not be quite enough to justify his ranking at number twelve. But Alderson’s place in history is enhanced by two considerations: he was the first modern GM to actively introduce analytics, though rudimentary by current standards,
Like the Rebels preparing for the Imperial invasion on Hoth, it’s time to dust off this hunk of junk. She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts. Was that enough Star Wars references in one sentence? Probably not. I’ll see what else I can do for you. We took a bit of a break during the offseason. It wasn’t our plan, we just don’t follow the minor/fall/winter leagues like a lot of others. Instead of struggling to compete with the more knowledgeable writers, and re-hash the sam
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Were we to give Al Campanis credit for all his accomplishments in baseball operations, he would rank much higher than this, perhaps in the top five. Among other things, he was a legendary scout, a brilliant scouting director, and one of baseball’s most influential instructors. He did this over a two dec
Brian Dozier isn't arbitration eligible until next off-season but rumors are already starting to build about a possible extension between the second baseman and the Twins. He is under team control until 2019 when he will be coming off of his age-29 season. There isn't necessarily a rush to get a deal done but a source close to the Twins said to expect an extension in place before the season's start. What would a Dozier extension look like? Last year the Cleveland Indians locked up their All-St
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post.This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. In his 18-year tenure at the Giants helm—the longest of any active general manager—Brian Sabean has witnessed the evolution of the very nature of team building. Sabea
This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. After more than 15 years paying his dues in baseball operations at both the major and minor league levels, Walt Jocketty wanted to become a general manager. He came close four times before finally landing the job in October 1994 with the Cardinals, a club that hadn’t made the postseason since 1987. In his thirteen years in St. L
On Saturday, Tait went 2-for-4 with a walk and his 17th double. The 19-year-old is hitting .219 with 17 doubles and 15 home runs at High-A Cedar Rapids.
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