Is it time for a new GM?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Smith did some things pretty well. The draft and international markets were two places he didn't get in the way and just let his employees do their thing.

 

My only real complaint is how he managed trades on the MLB team. Outside of the Gomez/Hardy deal, every one looked pretty bad after a short period of time.

[drjim]

Smith did some things pretty well. The draft and international markets were two places he didn't get in the way and just let his employees do their thing.

 

My only real complaint is how he managed trades on the MLB team. Outside of the Gomez/Hardy deal, every one looked pretty bad after a short period of time.

I would say significant trades. Smith was actually pretty good at adding minor pieces.

 

But significant trades are obviously what bury a franchise over the long run.

[DaveW]

 

Garza, Bartlett for starters. He helped create a Tampa Bay powerhouse.

That trade obviously didn't work out, but looking back I am mostly fine with it, at the time I didn't like giving up Bartlett as a second piece, but whatever.

 

Delmon at the time was a 22 year old who had just finished 2nd in ROY the year prior, was one year removed from being the #3 prospect in all of baseball and looked like a potential 30/30 guy. Hell when he was 24 it looked like he had a breakout season for the Twins, .826 OPS, 21 HR, 112 RBI and top ten in the MVP voting.

 

Those are the kind of risks I will take all day.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

That trade obviously didn't work out, but looking back I am mostly fine with it, at the time I didn't like giving up Bartlett as a second piece, but whatever.

 

Delmon at the time was a 22 year old who had just finished 2nd in ROY the year prior, was one year removed from being the #3 prospect in all of baseball and looked like a potential 30/30 guy.

 

Those are the kind of risks I will take all day.

I didn't like the trade from day one but not because of the return (though adding Bartlett really skewered the deal beyond all hope).

 

If you're losing the best pitcher in baseball to trade/FA, you do not trade your best young starter at the same time and definitely not for an outfielder.

[DaveW]

 

 

I would say significant trades. Smith was actually pretty good at adding minor pieces.

But significant trades are obviously what bury a franchise over the long run.

He did a pretty damn job at putting together a very solid 2009 and 2010 team

[DaveW]

 

 

I didn't like the trade from day one but not because of the return (though adding Bartlett really skewered the deal beyond all hope).

 

If you're losing the best pitcher in baseball to trade/FA, you do not trade your best young starter at the same time and definitely not for an outfielder.

The Garza/Gardy/Anderson relationship was already poor, and while it sucked to give him up, it's not exactly like he became some ace anyways.

 

His 3 years in Tampa:

3.87 ERA

4.24 FIP

 

They basically gave up a good #3 pitcher for the #3 prospect in baseball, a guy who had .900 OPS potential and 30/30 potential.

[Mike Sixel]

ya, we sometimes forget that Garza and the on field leadership weren't seeing eye to eye......

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Ryan's my GM but he has some really bad blind spots.

 

The "it ain't July 31 we can't judge yet" argument doesn't wash. We are losing bargaining power every hour we wait. Of course we'll be giving up a better prospect than we needed to. Also we needed relief help....weeks ago? Months? We tried some internal things first, which was fine, but Ryan was going to make some deals and right some wrongs after the All Star break, is what we all said before the All Star break.

[TheLeviathan]

Blaming the 2011 collapse on Smith would be like blaming Jerry Kill for the Gophers being bad his first year.

 

 

(And that's not even including horrendous injury luck to Morneau, Mauer, and a host of others. You know, the things that expose a soft AAA talent base)

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Ryan's my GM but he has some really bad blind spots.

The "it ain't July 31 we can't judge yet" argument doesn't wash. We are losing bargaining power every hour we wait. Of course we'll be giving up a better prospect than we needed to. Also we needed relief help....weeks ago? Months? We tried some internal things first, which was fine, but Ryan was going to make some deals and right some wrongs after the All Star break, is what we all said before the All Star break.

To me, it's not even about paying more at the eleventh hour (which I'm not convinced is a real problem that happens consistently).

 

To me, it's the fact that had the Twins shored up the bullpen on July 1st, they could easily have 4-5 more wins than they do right now.

 

4-5 wins. In a month. Think about that for a moment. The Twins are still nipping at KC and they have a huge WC lead if that's the case.

[TheLeviathan]

Ryan has time to redeem himself. He's made strides in his offseason aggressiveness and the only reason this team is even contending is the starting pitching he acquired.

 

But trading at the deadline is still a major weakness in his resume that deserves attention by fans (and likely players) that want to see this team stay in it.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Blaming the 2011 collapse on Smith would be like blaming Jerry Kill for the Gophers being bad his first year.

(And that's not even including horrendous injury luck to Morneau, Mauer, and a host of others. You know, the things that expose a soft AAA talent base)

Smith doesn't deserve all, or maybe even most, of the blame for 2011 but had he not bungled the Santana and Garza trades, the farm system wouldn't have been in such dire shape.

 

Of course, Ryan also put him in a really ****ty situation by leaving right before those decisions needed to be made.

[TheLeviathan]

Most people were fine with Garza for Young. We freaked about Bartlett and the reliever.

 

Santana and Hunter were on Ryan.

[spinowner]

Smith's biggest blunder by far was Hardy for Hoey coupled with signing Nishioka to take Hardy's place. We gave away a very solid SS for nothing. I hope the scouts who evaluated Hoey and Nishioka have long since left the Twins' employ.

[jorgenswest]

I do think Ryan makes the mistake of getting good value and then seeing it as a skill change rather than variation. Did he really believe that the Twins had done something to shift Doumit's and Suzuki's skill level? Did he believe Burton was going to continue to be the pitcher he was in his first year with the Twins? You can't throw out the previous two years and you need to play close attention to aging curve trends when offering extensions.

 

As for catcher, 14 of the top 30 catchers in fWAR were not with their current team before 2014. All moved teams since the offseason the Twins acquired Suzuki. The argument that the Twins had no other options is empty. If Ryan felt he had no other way of solving the catcher problem, then it is indeed time for him to be replaced. 

[drjim]

 

Blaming the 2011 collapse on Smith would be like blaming Jerry Kill for the Gophers being bad his first year.


(And that's not even including horrendous injury luck to Morneau, Mauer, and a host of others. You know, the things that expose a soft AAA talent base)

 

That's kind of a stretch. It was Smith's 4th year.

 

Basically the entire bullpen left and wasn't replaced, he let Hudson leave and salary dumped Hardy to roll with Nishi and Casilla as his middle infield, he ran back with Thome, doubled down on career years of Young/Valencia and counted on Morneau and Nathan for bigger roles than their injuries should have.

 

I'm not saying this all should have equaled 99 losses, but that was a disaster offseason leading into 2011, coupled with really bad luck.

[TheLeviathan]

He royally screwed up the SS position and his Capps deal was awful, but most of it was age and awful luck. And there was nothing from his predecessor to help.

[Loosey]

I am only on page 2 of the thread so maybe I am off track on this thought.

 

I am in the camp that the team truly needs to evaluate the front office including Terry Ryan.  I don't think you need to make a blockbuster trade to be a good GM.  However, you do need to make tough decisions on who and when to make trades with guys that may be prospects, and guys who may have peaked and you know it but other teams don't.  Terry doesn't do that. 

 

He reminds me of the guy in my fantasy football league.  He is always offering trades, but they are always very one sided and won't do a trade unless it is 200% in his favor.  I feel like Terry Ryan might be that guy.  And that is what may be the problem.  He is unable to distinguish if a trade is good unless it is overwhelmingly good.  He can't see the small incremental wins a trade may have. 

[MileHighTwinsFan]

Crazy what a tough 10 game stretch and anxiety around the trade deadline brings out in people. Any reasonable baseball fan would see the big picture here and realize that A) This team is currently in position to make the playoffs and The trade deadline is not past and there still remains a waiver deadline on Sept. 1.

 

I encourage folks to see the bright side and the long view here.   

[TheLeviathan]

And say what you want about his role in the collapse, but he did more for the teams contention efforts in 2010 than Ryan has done for all of his comtending teams combined.

[jimmer]

 

So I give credit to Ryan for finding a 40 yr old to play RF, because they had nobody better. But that's not rebuilding. And I don't give him a lot of credit, because a team shouldn't be in the position of having zero big league outfielders in the first place.

Yup.

 

I remember looking at the 40 man roster last year on MLB.com roster listing and realizing how many were listed as OFs that weren't actually OFs. Nunez, Santana, Parmellee, Hermann and Colabello (dpending on if you think he belongs out there or not). 

[jimmer]

 

Crazy what a tough 10 game stretch and anxiety around the trade deadline brings out in people. Any reasonable baseball fan would see the big picture here and realize that A) This team is currently in position to make the playoffs and The trade deadline is not past and there still remains a waiver deadline on Sept. 1.

 

I encourage folks to see the bright side and the long view here.   

Most of the issues being talked about have been talked about a good chunk of the season, certainly well before the last 10 games.  I think everyone enjoyed the winning sure, but most were never blind to the fact that there is still little MLB quality and /or MLB proven talent on this team.  We've been talking about catcher most of the season, shortstop most of the season, the bullpen most of the season, OF defense most of the season, etc. These problems still existed despite the winning.

[Mike Sixel]

As pointed out above, nearly half of the best catchers were acquired by their team since Suzuki was brought here.....so, ya, there were options.

 

As pointed out, this bullpen had failure written all over it at the beginning of the year. You know, when this GM built it. The lack of trying younger guys earlier to see if they were the answer, or moving Duffey to the bullpen, not protecting Gilmartin so they could keep guys on the 40 man they won't call up, those are all on this GM.

 

He did a great job with Santana and Hughes. He may have done a great job getting May (hard to tell, since they won't use him at all, maybe they know something we don't, that's what I'm told all the time. If they aren't using a guy, they must not like the guy as much as we do). Other than that, I'm not sure what else has been fixed in the last 3-4 years.

 

Losing a lot of games so you can get higher draft picks, maybe he did that too.

[jimmer]

 

Garza, Bartlett for starters. He helped create a Tampa Bay powerhouse.

Losing Bartlett has to be one the most exaggerated losses ever. We was horrible with us and good like one season after he left.

 

And why is Ryan praised for the Span trade because he traded from a perceived area of strength(CF/OF) for an area of weakness (young power pitching) and yet Smith is still being slammed for doing the same thing.  He traded from a perceived area of strength (SP) for a weakness (young power bat who happened to alos be a #1 overall pick, former #1 prospect, 2nd in ROY voting). The thinking behind both trades were the same and both failed miserably at the execution.

[DaveW]

 

 

Losing Bartlett has to be one the most exaggerated losses ever. We was horrible with us and good like one season after he left.

 

 

I agree, but it did seem silly because the Twins didn't have any reasonable in house replacements at the time.

What was the name of the RP they gave up? THAT is what I remember people being really up in arms about, then of course that guy went on to do nothing.

[Mike Sixel]

 

Losing Bartlett has to be one the most exaggerated losses ever. We was horrible with us and good like one season after he left.

 

And why is Ryan praised for the Span trade because he traded from a perceived area of strength(CF/OF) for an area of weakness (young power pitching) and yet Smith is still being slammed for doing the same thing.  He traded from a perceived area of strength (SP) for a weakness (young power bat who happened to alos be a #1 overall pick, former #1 prospect, 2nd in ROY voting). The thinking behind both trades were the same and both failed miserably at the execution.

 

Because all the bad things are Smith's fault, and Ryan is infallible and unquestionable?

[drjim]

Losing Bartlett has to be one the most exaggerated losses ever. We was horrible with us and good like one season after he left.

 

And why is Ryan praised for the Span trade because he traded from a perceived area of strength(CF/OF) for an area of weakness (young power pitching) and yet Smith is still being slammed for doing the same thing. He traded from a perceived area of strength (SP) for a weakness (young power bat who happened to alos be a #1 overall pick, former #1 prospect, 2nd in ROY voting). The thinking behind both trades were the same and both failed miserably at the execution.

Praised? You overstate that. I think people accept the process considering where the Twins were at at the time.

 

Trading a SS and SP for a corner OF and a utility guy is a bad idea.

[MileHighTwinsFan]

Context is everything.  Teams like Toronto and Kansas City have a singular focus on the present.  The Twins, because of their stock of talented, but inexperienced talent have to balance the short and long term.  I think we all agree that it remains to be seen how our prospects will develop - so banking on one while dealing another is fraught with unnecessary risk.

 

Less than a year ago - most would have agreed that Vargas and Arcia were core elements of the rebuild. Today, things look different.  A year from now, it could look different again.

 

I think that patience is critical, particularly in the next 24 hours.

[drjim]

Because all the bad things are Smith's fault, and Ryan is infallible and unquestionable?

I generally think decisions made by Smith can be considered his fault. Do you suggest a different standard?

[jimmer]

 

Praised? You overstate that. I think people accept the process considering where the Twins were at at the time.

Trading a SS and SP for a corner OF and a utility guy is a bad idea.

he was praised hard for that trade and was still being so up until early this season. People saying how he fleeced the Nats (such a high prospect for such an supposedly average and declining CF), etc.  And then still praising the thought process behind the trade as it started to look worse.