Terry Ryan: Joe Maddon had "sincere interest" in Twins job

[John Bonnes]

In today's press conference, Terry Ryan said multiple times that he talked directly to Joe Maddon about the Twins job. Afterwards, he gave a little more detail when asked by John Shipley how interested Maddon was in the Twins job.

 

"I think, with the discussion we had, I think there was sincere interest. But unfortunately or fortunately, it came to a close in a hurry because the Cubs thing escalated so quickly he had to make a call."

 

I don't know what paradigm people are viewing this thing through, but it sounds like Ryan had some interest, and Maddon had some interest too, but the Cubs were not going to take "No" as an answer. 

[Seth Stohs]

No question there was conversation but clearly the Cubs made more sense for him.

 

It didn't matter what the Twins offered. The Cubs would have topped it.

[Linus]

You mean we TD posters had an ongoing stroke over all this for nothing?  Can't believe it.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Berardino is a good source but glad to hear that Ryan was involved after all.

[Thrylos]

The Twins should had offered Maddon the top job in the organization, like LaRussa has in AZ, have St. Peter report to him and deal with the stuff he deals, and have Maddon bring in his own front office and manager etc.  If he wanted to manage on top, let it be.

 

They blew it...

[jokin]

You mean we TD posters had an ongoing stroke over all this for nothing?  Can't believe it.

 

I don't think there was any "ongoing stroke" over this at all.  To the contrary, it played out exactly as most of us suspected when the announcement that Maddon was on the market was first made.

 

1) Ryan lacked the moxie or wherewithal to even score a sit-down interview with Maddon.

 

2) The organization lacked the imagination to consider dangling an even more enticing job to Maddon to up the ante over the Cubs and other potential suitors.

[Linus]

I don't think there was any "ongoing stroke" over this at all.  To the contrary, it played out exactly as most of us suspected when the announcement that Maddon was on the market was first made.

 

1) Ryan lacked the moxie or wherewithal to even score a sit-down interview with Maddon.

 

2) The organization lacked the imagination to consider dangling an even more enticing job to Maddon to up the ante over the Cubs and other potential suitors.

OK, I guess we will have different definitions / opinions.  Go back and re-read all the related posts and tell me people weren't overreacting (the nicest word I can come up with) over the potential non-Twins involvement with regards to Maddon.

 

I'm fine with whatever opinions people have abut the Twins and their successes / failures.  Just be real about it.  When people spout off and then it turns out to be not true, just own up - don't make excuses.

[The Wise One]

What the Ryan detractors do not seem to realize that there are a few candidates for a job that you do not have to interview. Maddon has enough of a body of work anyone should know what he is about as a manager. Ryan was in contact. Maddon wants the job, or he doesn't. The Twins job was Maddon's leverage to get what he wanted out of the Cubs. I do not think he interviewed with the Cubs FWIW.

[Squirrel]

I don't think there was any "ongoing stroke" over this at all. To the contrary, it played out exactly as most of us suspected when the announcement that Maddon was on the market was first made.

 

1) Ryan lacked the moxie or wherewithal to even score a sit-down interview with Maddon.

 

2) The organization lacked the imagination to consider dangling an even more enticing job to Maddon to up the ante over the Cubs and other potential suitors.

Whether or not 'ongoing stroke' were the correct words to use to describe posters' responses to this issue, I can tell you that this issue resulted in several post deletions and editing, pointed and non-pointed warnings given, PMs with individuals, and two in-thread warnings. To me that indicates that there were those getting over emotional about things ... on both sides of this issue. Again, at some point, we need to accept when we just won't ever agree instead of digging in for more.

 

As to your first point above, I don't think Maddon was ever coming here to manage the Twins no matter what moxie TR has or lacks. Personally, I'm not convinced the ethics of all surrounding Maddon to the Cubs was on the up and up, but that's just my own 'conspiracy theory' and a different issue.

 

As to your second point, I don't think many were ever seriously pushing for Maddon to be more than the Twins manager, other than Thrylos and one or two others who made suggestions specifically of that. More threw that thought out there as an aside of 'If not this maybe that.' I think it's an excellent thought, though, and perhaps a missed opportunity, but I don't think it's the result of the organization lacking imagination. I think that one is solely on ownership.

[Major League Ready]

It is quite presumptuous to assume Joe Maddon has the skill set for the "top spot".  That skill set is substantially different than the Manager position.  Maddon has absolutely no experience is such a role to suggest he would excel in such a role.  None if us know nearly enough about his abilities specific to this role to suggest it would be a good idea to reorganize the organization to accommodate a Maddon hire.  There was absolutely no way someone with Jim Pohlad's business background was going to make that kind of rash move so it makes very little sense to be upset the Twins did not offer Maddon the top spot.

[nicksaviking]

Well if Ryan and company don't want over-reaction from the fan base, perhaps they should start refuting reports when they state things like the Twins have had no contact with Maddon.  I'd feel pretty comfortable in saying that the more cloak and dagger the authority is, the more conspiracy theories are generated.

 

Keeping quite has it's advantages, plenty of them, and I think it benefits the Twins more than it hurts them, but they, and their supporters then need to accept the fact that the detractors are going to be forced to draw their own conclusions if next to no information is forthcoming.  In fairness, Ryan and the Twins rarely seem to be bothered by this, it's more so their supporters.

 

Not that I'm suggesting that the dissenting opinions shouldn't be civil.

[iTwins]

I'm glad to read that Terry Ryan did, if fact, talk to Maddon. That's all I really wanted out of all of this. We all knew Maddon likely was bound for Chicago - but the Twins HAD to do their due diligence and give him a call. When it was first reported that they hadn't, I think that's when many (myself included) lost it.

 

I'll take Mr. Ryan's word for it - he made the call. That's good enough for me.

 

Now, on to Paul Molitor's plan for turning things around.

[jharaldson]

I don't know what paradigm people are viewing this thing through, but it sounds like Ryan had some interest, and Maddon had some interest too, but the Cubs were not going to take "No" as an answer. 

 

And in the minds of many Twins fans Ryan went in assuming "no" was the answer and unwilling to fight for Maddon.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Put yourself in Joe Maddon's shoes for a moment: what would it take to choose the Twins over the Cubs?

 

I think the obvious answer to that question is "A ridiculous amount of authority and money."

 

And if I was Joe Maddon, I'm not sure even that would do it. He's walking into an almost perfect situation in Chicago and if he leads that team to glory, he'll be immortalized in Chicago. Smart front office, gobs of money, probably the best farm system in baseball... There's no real downside and as much upside as a guy could ever want. As Maddon manages what might be his final position in baseball, the Cubs offer everything the Twins can offer plus piles and piles of money, both for Maddon and roster payroll.

[Squirrel]

Well if Ryan and company don't want over-reaction from the fan base, perhaps they should start refuting reports when they state things like the Twins have had no contact with Maddon.  I'd feel pretty comfortable in saying that the more cloak and dagger the authority is, the more conspiracy theories are generated.

 

Keeping quite has it's advantages, plenty of them, and I think it benefits the Twins more than it hurts them, but they, and their supporters then need to accept the fact that the detractors are going to be forced to draw their own conclusions if next to no information is forthcoming.  In fairness, Ryan and the Twins rarely seem to be bothered by this, it's more so their supporters.

 

Not that I'm suggesting that the dissenting opinions shouldn't be civil.

Your last sentence hit it on the head.  I'm not suggesting we can't disagree.  If we didn't there wouldn't be a forum for discussion.  Disagreement is healthy and I like discussion; often I hear ideas I hadn't thought of and it opens my mind to a different way of seeing things.  But how we disagree is the crux and that's where action was taken as I mentioned above.  While much of what the Twins do can irritate us all from PR to decisions to off the cuff remarks that don't come off well from decisions we think should be made and aren't and vice versa ... whatever they do/will do/have done/think they should do and don't that will cause us ire, we are still responsible for our own actions.  Allowing for a certain amount of venting is good, but when the arguments start getting overly emotion and personal, down to inferring that other posters are blind to reality, and beating the horse dead and then some, then it stops.  You can blame the Twins and what they do all you want, and as I said, they certainly give us plenty of fodder, but how we respond to it is on us.

 

Sorry for the thread jack, but I wanted to make this clear, as a moderator, before we start beating this horse again.

[twinsnorth49]

zzzz

[Willihammer]

There was at least a 5 day lag between Maddon exercising his opt-out (on the 23rd) and Lavelle reporting (on the 28th) that the Twins "will contact" (future tense) Maddon. Twins fans reacted based on the reports we had.

[jharaldson]

Put yourself in Joe Maddon's shoes for a moment: what would it take to choose the Twins over the Cubs?

 

I think the obvious answer to that question is "A ridiculous amount of authority and money."

 

And if I was Joe Maddon, I'm not sure even that would do it. He's walking into an almost perfect situation in Chicago and if he leads that team to glory, he'll be immortalized in Chicago. Smart front office, gobs of money, probably the best farm system in baseball... There's no real downside and as much upside as a guy could ever want. As Maddon manages what might be his final position in baseball, the Cubs offer everything the Twins can offer plus piles and piles of money, both for Maddon and roster payroll.

 

I think something that has been undersold in this is the stadium.  Wrigley is great for history but awful to work in.  Players, Managers, reporters all hate it.

 

 

 

Clubhouses: Wrigley has cramped clubhouse, as you'd expect in a 98-year-old park. The visitors are housed in a space smaller than the locker room at the junior high I attended in small-town Iowa. The home side isn't much bigger. This is awkward, because you spend half your morning trying to stay out of people's way which, frankly, is impossible to do. On the other hand, there are fewer places for the players to hide. They manage to do it anyway. At the Cell, everything is plush, spacious, and modern. ADVANTAGE CELL

 

Dugouts: This is really the same story as the clubhouses, though there isn't any difference in the width of the respective dugouts. In both cases, you have to remember to duck coming out up the steps from the tunnel if you're taller than Hack Wilson. Six-foot-eight Cubs pitcher Chris Volstad is sure to suffer a concussion at some point this season. The Cell has lots of head room. ADVANTAGE CELL

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=16481

 

It was identified as the least sanitary ballpark:

 

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/15503536-573/wrigley-field-is-the-least-clean-ballpark-in-the-majors.html#.VFpGWfldV8E

 

I think a GM who was really trying to get Maddon to come here would have played up this angle and talked about the workplace environment Maddon would need to be in.  Especially after Maddon spent a decade at a crappy stadium in Tampa.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I think something that has been undersold in this is the stadium.  Wrigley is great for history but awful to work in.  Players, Managers, reporters all hate it.

 

Wrigley is undergoing a massive retrofitting this season. Yeah, it won't be as nice as TF but ultimately, I think home stadium has as much to do with a manager's decision as your office cafeteria. Sure, it's nice to have but ultimately, it's way down the list on which job you take.

[JB_Iowa]

Timing is everything,

 

A phrase comes to mind:  a day late and a dollar short.

 

In this case, several days late and probably lots of dollars and several years short.

 

Let's move on.

[ashbury]

What the Ryan detractors do not seem to realize that there are a few candidates for a job that you do not have to interview. Maddon has enough of a body of work anyone should know what he is about as a manager.

"So, Mister" [looks down at paper] "Maddon, tell me a little about yourself.  I see you were most recently manager for the" [looks down at paper] "Tampa Bay Rays.  Tell me, is that one of the minor league teams for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays?"

[ashbury]

Smart front office, gobs of money, probably the best farm system in baseball... There's no real downside...

... except for the one little detail that a good man was going to be fired as a direct consequence, in order for there to be a job for him to take right now.

 

I don't suspect tampering on the part of the Cubs; I expect they were as surprised as anyone to learn of his sudden availability, and they moved on it fast. 

 

But I can't get past this aspect of the deal, both from the team's perspective and from Maddon's. 

 

If Maddon looked ahead to the next time he would accidentally run into Renteria, at spring training or whatever, and the awkwardness didn't make him ask himself, "is this really the person I want to be?", well, I don't know what to say.

[ashbury]

I'm sorry, jokin, but it's precisely comments like this that stir things up.

Moderator's note: That's enough of the personal bickering; ChiTown already asked once.  Please take it to the Private Messaging system TD provides, but in any case keep the personal back-and-forth out of the forums.

[Mike Sixel]

I don't get why it is bad for managers to be FA that take someone's job, but it is ok for players to do that. It's how business works.

[bird]

"So, Mister" [looks down at paper] "Maddon, tell me a little about yourself.  I see you were most recently manager for the" [looks down at paper] "Tampa Bay Rays.  Tell me, is that one of the minor league teams for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays?"

 

[Heard over the din at his favorite watering hole in Chicago] "Hey Joe, there's a Terry Ryan on the phone for you." Joe: " A what? Hey, bartender, another beer and chaser here. Tell Jerry I can't talk right now, but I'll have my people call his people some time."

[ashbury]

I don't get why it is bad for managers to be FA that take someone's job, but it is ok for players to do that. It's how business works.

If that's in response to my post, the differences are several.  For one, rarely does one player lose his job as a direct result of the team signing a player - there are 25 (or 40) jobs per team and one slot being filled does not dictate anything else.

[Mike Sixel]

What? The DH loses his job when one is signed. SP lose their jobs. RP lose their jobs. Signing a 3B right now in Detroit would cost the current 3B his job. I literally have no idea what your argument is.

[ashbury]

What? The DH loses his job when one is signed. SP lose their jobs. RP lose their jobs. Signing a 3B right now in Detroit would cost the current 3B his job. I literally have no idea what your argument is.

Miggy didn't lose his job when the Tigers signed Fielder; he moved to third and someone else got affected.  We talk about what happens to Plouffe when Sano comes up, but it would be the same if we signed someone better as a FA; the discussion turns on moving Plouffe to RF or wherever, and someone else would be the 25th man who loses his role.  It's not neat and simple when a FA is signed.  So that's not a good analogy to use.

 

Available managers (e.g. ones serving as talking heads on ESPN or Fox) are usually loath to discuss jobs where there is currently an incumbent.  You can say they are just being tactful or whatever, but it clearly doesn't pass the smell test to them, not even the blowhards and self-promoters.

 

Unlike in business analogies, the market for MLB managers consists of exactly 30 jobs, neither more nor less from one season to the next.  By contrast, if Ginny Rometty decides she wants to leave IBM and gun for Mary Barra's job at GM, the job market is a lot more flexible for them both than in baseball.  But I wouldn't invite them both to the same cocktail party.

 

I can't imagine it being awkward for Molitor to run into Gardy the next time, or to run into Lovullo.  "Congratulations, man."  I can't imagine it not being awkward for Maddon/Renteria.

 

Baseball managers are a lot closer to an exclusive fraternity than other jobs in baseball or than most jobs in the Real World.  IMO Maddon broke ranks, and I would love to have a conversation with someone like Ryan or Molitor to get their insider take on this firing/hiring. 

 

Maybe they'd tell me I'm all wet.

 

A conversation with Maddon himself would also be illuminating, even if I got my head bitten off while he explained to me why how he did this was A-OK.

[old nurse]

Miggy didn't lose his job when the Tigers signed Fielder; he moved to third and someone else got affected.  We talk about what happens to Plouffe when Sano comes up, but it would be the same if we signed someone better as a FA; the discussion turns on moving Plouffe to RF or wherever, and someone else would be the 25th man who loses his role.  It's not neat and simple when a FA is signed.  So that's not a good analogy to use.

 

Available managers (e.g. ones serving as talking heads on ESPN or Fox) are usually loath to discuss jobs where there is currently an incumbent.  You can say they are just being tactful or whatever, but it clearly doesn't pass the smell test to them, not even the blowhards and self-promoters.

 

Unlike in business analogies, the market for MLB managers consists of exactly 30 jobs, neither more nor less from one season to the next.  By contrast, if Ginny Rometty decides she wants to leave IBM and gun for Mary Barra's job at GM, the job market is a lot more flexible for them both than in baseball.  But I wouldn't invite them both to the same cocktail party.

 

I can't imagine it being awkward for Molitor to run into Gardy the next time, or to run into Lovullo.  "Congratulations, man."  I can't imagine it not being awkward for Maddon/Renteria.

 

Baseball managers are a lot closer to an exclusive fraternity than other jobs in baseball or than most jobs in the Real World.  IMO Maddon broke ranks, and I would love to have a conversation with someone like Ryan or Molitor to get their insider take on this firing/hiring. 

 

Maybe they'd tell me I'm all wet.

 

A conversation with Maddon himself would also be illuminating, even if I got my head bitten off while he explained to me why how he did this was A-OK.

Baseball managers work on the whim of someone else. They all know that going into the business. There should be no awkward moments because of hiring and firings. Now when Epstein meets any of his hired Cubs managers there might be a problem as a really doubt any of them should feel like they should have been fired. The fired manager shouldn't blame the guy who came later. Renteria  knew sooner or later he would be fired. The reason now might be more palatable than Sveum's firing.

While there may be more jobs heading global 2000 companies, there is still a finite number of jobs and a larger pool of people to do the job.  More jobs, more competition for the same job, maybe less options for a similar job.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I don't feel too bad for Renteria, as the man is still collecting a paycheck. An ugly situation for sure but I can't get too upset about it.