Was the last regime really worse than the current Front Office?

[cHawk]

17 minutes ago, RpR said:

Yep, R. Strange McNamara thought he was one of the smartest people in the world, shizzam!

Stick to the topic please. Thanks.

[wsnydes]

23 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

I don't think either is worse than the others. Ryan was a great GM in the mid-90s through 2010ish... The reliance was on scouting and trusting the scouts and loyalty and a lot of those things. 

Then the game changed. Ryan didn't want to change. Doesn't mean his style or baseball mind is any worse or less than the new guys, just a different mindset. 

The current front office uses much more technology and analytics while still using the scouting voices and other metrics on every decision. That is the game today. 

The new regime uses lots of a variety of data points to make any decision. It's more formal. Terry Ryan's run was based on fewer data points, but relied on the eyes and some stats, etc., and it was some just gut feel. That's how they got David Ortiz for Dave Hollins, or Joe Mays for Roberto Kelly, etc. 

And, I think what we've learned, is that regardless of method and data points and all that, a lot of many free agent signings are the same, or the type of player is the same, or some of the philosophies ultimately are the same. Every front office is going to have good moves and bad moves if given enough time. 

And now the front offices are all the same, so it's kind of back to an even playing field in that sense. 

 

This is good perspective.  Different skill set for a different time.  One isn't necessarily better, just perhaps more appropriate for the given era.

[tony&rodney]

I have responded to the comparisons between front offices in the past. It flamboozles me to hear such harsh judgments. Without revealing any personal associations, I can say with confidence that we should understand that baseball front office folks have solid backgrounds and pretty amazing skill sets, although these are varied in background. 

The game has made some changes and for those who manage to follow baseball closely in the next half century there will be further changes to and within the game. It is a reasonable reaction to be critical of moves or inaction but the attacks on the expertise of those in baseball management is nearly always off base. The owners make the biggest decisions - how much money is going into the team and then management responds.

The Twins have decent people running their team at this time and they are still learning. A person like Terry Ryan had enormous respect in the industry and success as well. It isn't necessary to compare the different front office personnel.

[ashbury]

A good front office has to have a lot of positive qualities, and it's the negative ones that can spell failure.  Frankly we haven't had an all-around good one since MacPhail.  Arguing about which among Ryan/Smith/Falvey's regimes was worst is simply talking past one another, pitting one fault against another, when the job actually requires near-flawless execution..  Unless Falvey's gambles show definite evidence of paying off in 2022, I'll be ready to move on.  There are always young and ambitious junior executives ready to be given a chance in the big chair; that's how we got our current guys, and it may just be bad luck it hasn't worked better. 

[wabene]

9 hours ago, Squirrel said:

Not sure how you quoted that above with me saying that. Just for clarity, that was a statement @chpettit19 made, not me.

 

Now that is some sweet irony, lol.

[TheLeviathan]

The current regime made several great, impact offseason moves as newbs and gave us some great seasons.  They have made some really smart trades.  What we don't know is how their drafting will pay off.

But for that info, thanks to Covid, we may need to wait just a bit.  So they get an incomplete with reasons to be hopeful and some to be wary about.

Ryan was no longer a good GM and hadn't been for some time.  He let the game pass him by and the results show it. So as of today?  As Brock said: F < I.

[dgdynasty]

Largely the old FO was and is just different from this FO. Arguments can be made for better or for worse for that group.

The vote on this FO is still out, as we still need to see what most of their prospect acquisitions can do.

Sadly, the biggest takeaway from both is that competitive windows are small and spaced out, and the tendency is hope to win rather than use resources to improve our chances.

[Prince William]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

The current regime made several great, impact offseason moves as newbs and gave us some great seasons.  They have made some really smart trades.  What we don't know is how their drafting will pay off.

But for that info, thanks to Covid, we may need to wait just a bit.  So they get an incomplete with reasons to be hopeful and some to be wary about.

Ryan was no longer a good GM and hadn't been for some time.  He let the game pass him by and the results show it. So as of today?  As Brock said: F < I.

Yet 2-3 seasons ago there was a division winning club with mostly players from a GM that time passed by.  It is funny how that works

[Prince William]

2 hours ago, ashbury said:

A good front office has to have a lot of positive qualities, and it's the negative ones that can spell failure.  Frankly we haven't had an all-around good one since MacPhail.  Arguing about which among Ryan/Smith/Falvey's regimes was worst is simply talking past one another, pitting one fault against another, when the job actually requires near-flawless execution..  Unless Falvey's gambles show definite evidence of paying off in 2022, I'll be ready to move on.  There are always young and ambitious junior executives ready to be given a chance in the big chair; that's how we got our current guys, and it may just be bad luck it hasn't worked better. 

MacPhail left the team in horrible shape, setting up the doldrums of the mid 90s for the Twins. MacPhail built a team, remodeled it with bandaids and left with a reputation .

[TheLeviathan]

10 minutes ago, Prince William said:

Yet 2-3 seasons ago there was a division winning club with mostly players from a GM that time passed by.  It is funny how that works

Are we counting Bill Smith or Ryan?  And, as has been pointed out, those players raised their profile with help from this FO.

[Prince William]

22 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Are we counting Bill Smith or Ryan?  And, as has been pointed out, those players raised their profile with help from this FO.

The people who worked for Smith in scouting worked for Ryan. Ryan in the past said the scouting director picked the players. It was Deron Johnson under Smit and Ryan v. 2.0  . Given the player's ages, is it the FO or is it the player's maturation? The development of position players drafted by this front office seems lacking compared to the last one

[wsnydes]

7 hours ago, Prince William said:

The people who worked for Smith in scouting worked for Ryan. Ryan in the past said the scouting director picked the players. It was Deron Johnson under Smit and Ryan v. 2.0  . Given the player's ages, is it the FO or is it the player's maturation? The development of position players drafted by this front office seems lacking compared to the last one

The maturation topic was discussed on the first page of this thread by @chpettit19.  As for the position players drafted by the current FO, they're just breaking into the big leagues.  The current FO's first draft wasn't until 2017 and saw one minor league season cancelled.  Hardly a reasonable point of comparison at this point.

[TheLeviathan]

9 hours ago, Prince William said:

The people who worked for Smith in scouting worked for Ryan. Ryan in the past said the scouting director picked the players. It was Deron Johnson under Smit and Ryan v. 2.0  . Given the player's ages, is it the FO or is it the player's maturation? The development of position players drafted by this front office seems lacking compared to the last one

And many of those same scouts still work for this FO.  Smith signed the IFA that this team rode to success recently yet we somehow give Ryan credit for that?  Worse yet in your post, Ryan gets credit when you claim he openly didn't draft the players or have any say in that?  Well, if Ryan wasn't drafting people, he was a no-show in FA, and barely traded when we were bad or good....what are we actually giving him credit for?  Keeping a nice office chair warm?

Towards the end, that actually sounds about right.  I'm disappointed in some things this FO has done (and not done this offseason) but it's clear Covid and now the lockout have dramatically impacted their timeline.  I'd hate to fire them on the precipice of their team building strategy coming to fruition.  The pitching talent looks really, really enticing.  As you say, and I agree with you, their position players leave a lot to be desired.  But let's see how things play out, that's the incomplete grade for me.

The past FOs were clearly either wildly incompetent at trading (Smith) or basically useless (Ryan).  Seems easy to declare that, as of now, this FO is still ahead of them.

[MABB1959]

22 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

So you want to watch the majority of teams this FO has produced by using the stats? Falvey's teams have a .527 winning percentage. All his stats have gotten us 2 division titles and a wild card birth after being a laughing stock for 5 of the previous 6 seasons. They have also brought in players who performed better here than they did with other teams. Are you going to add that into your BBT stat?

Listen, I get it, 2021 was a complete and total disaster. Not trying to suggest you forget or ignore that, but take it for what it is. 1 season. In your earlier post you talk about liking to watch Cruz play. They brought Cruz in. So he's at worst a neutral in the BBT stat, right? You're mad with the current world of professional sports. The Dodgers just lost Corey Seager. The Red Sox traded Mookie Betts (and Manny Ramirez back in the day). The Cubs just traded their entire WS core. This isn't a Twins problem, this is a baseball (and really, sports as a whole) problem. Being mad at this specific FO for doing what everyone else is doing seems misguided. It's just how sports work now. 

I guess I am mad at all of baseball changing it to a stat driven game.  The 2 division titles and wild card berth are kind of worthless when they did not win one playoff game but the seasons were much more fun.  Which players came here and did better? Would love to know.  The Red Sox and Cubs have many "all-stars" to root for.  We are down to Sano, Buxton and I would throw in Polanco.  We haven't had an exciting closer for at least the last 5 years.  I HATE the pitch limit,  Maybe all other teams yank the pitcher at 5/6 innings or when they get in a jam and not allowed to work themselves out of it.  We had a fun group of players with the Eddie's, Byron, Cruz and Austudillo.  How many of the Twins players would you recognize if you walked past them on the street?  Maybe I have a rosy glasses but would need to go back probably pre-target field to the Kirby Puckett days or the mid 2000's that had Mauer, Mourneau, Hunter, Cuddyher, Bartlett, Radke, Liriano, Santana, Nathan, etc.  Feels like we have been in "re-build" mode since then.  Dumpster diving instead of signing top players, etc.  I could just be seeing the negative but it is hard to ignore a team that hasn't won a play-off game since 2003?  

[MABB1959]

11 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

Are we counting Bill Smith or Ryan?  And, as has been pointed out, those players raised their profile with help from this FO.

Division winning but not a single playoff game win.  

[Major League Ready]

The FO gets positive marks for extending Polanco, Buxton, and Kepler.  The Polanco deal was really smart and they found incentives to get it done with Buxton while mitigating some of the risk associate with an injury prone player.  They got very good value out of the Maeda / Odorizzi and Berrios trades.  Cruz / Donaldson / Pineda / Schoop / Cron / Thielbar were all good FA signings.  Wisler was a good waiver pick-up.

The biggest negatives for me were giving up Ynoa and Gil.  Sure, they were very young but they were high upside guys traded for players with minimal upside.  Happ was also a bust.  I have no problem with Shoemaker.  That was a low risk deal with upside.  I am just slightly upset with Baddoo because I can see why they did not think they needed to protect him.  Tyler Wells was a mistake.

All said the positives have outweighed the negatives.   If the pitching prospects pan out, the positives win rather decisively.
 

[chpettit19]

3 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

I guess I am mad at all of baseball changing it to a stat driven game.  The 2 division titles and wild card berth are kind of worthless when they did not win one playoff game but the seasons were much more fun.  Which players came here and did better? Would love to know.  The Red Sox and Cubs have many "all-stars" to root for.  We are down to Sano, Buxton and I would throw in Polanco.  We haven't had an exciting closer for at least the last 5 years.  I HATE the pitch limit,  Maybe all other teams yank the pitcher at 5/6 innings or when they get in a jam and not allowed to work themselves out of it.  We had a fun group of players with the Eddie's, Byron, Cruz and Austudillo.  How many of the Twins players would you recognize if you walked past them on the street?  Maybe I have a rosy glasses but would need to go back probably pre-target field to the Kirby Puckett days or the mid 2000's that had Mauer, Mourneau, Hunter, Cuddyher, Bartlett, Radke, Liriano, Santana, Nathan, etc.  Feels like we have been in "re-build" mode since then.  Dumpster diving instead of signing top players, etc.  I could just be seeing the negative but it is hard to ignore a team that hasn't won a play-off game since 2003?  

Matt Wisler, Jake Odorizzi, Kenta Maeda, Nelson Cruz, Josh Donaldson (compared to his Atl season), Michael Pineda, Jonathan Schoop are the names off the top of my head who improved their performance in Minnesota. I'd have to look up more names, but there's probably more. Every team has hits and misses when it comes to trading and signing. If you find me a team that has had nobody improve upon leaving and have improved everyone they brought in I'll give you my paychecks for a year. It just doesn't happen.

The Cubs have nobody to root for on their team right now. Kyle Hendricks maybe? They traded every good position player they had. Taylor Rogers and Tyler Duffey have been 2 of the best relievers in baseball for the last 3 years. I mean what are we complaining about? They have elite bullpen arms but they don't use them as strict closers so we're mad? And, yes, every team in MLB yanks pitchers after 5/6 innings. The Twins are not an outlier when it comes to starter length. Did you watch the playoffs? The Astros were averaging less than 3 innings a start from their starters for much of the postseason.

The Twins have never signed top players. And they likely never will unless a CBA puts in a salary floor/cap. I get your complaints and I don't even disagree with the idea that it's not good that sports teams are such revolving doors of players now. It definitely makes it hard on fans who don't follow the league as a whole. But your complaints are really about the sports industry and not the Twins. MLB has always been a stat driven game, the stats that "matter" have just changed. And I don't like the changes either. I work in baseball analytics and hate what they're doing to the on field product.

As for the playoff losses. There's no real answer beyond small sample size bad luck. Nobody was picking Atlanta to win their first series let alone the World Series. It's crazy to have a team lose this many games in a row, but I don't know that we can read that much into it. The Dodgers have had the best team in the league for half a decade and only have 1 ring. The Braves used to run out 3 HOF pitchers in the same rotation and got 1 ring from that. The playoffs are just a random one month sprint.

[TheLeviathan]

47 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

Division winning but not a single playoff game win.  

Ok....sure....let's include playoff "success" for our previous regimes.  You know, the ones who have set all-time sports records fpr postseason futility.

Yup....I change my stance bow to F- <<<< I

[TwinsDr2021]

22 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

The FO gets positive marks for extending Polanco, Buxton, and Kepler.  The Polanco deal was really smart and they found incentives to get it done with Buxton while mitigating some of the risk associate with an injury prone player.  The got very good value out of the Maeda / Odorizzi and Berrios trades.  Cruz / Donaldson / Pineda / Schoop / Cron / Thielbar were all good FA signings.  Wisler was a good waiver pick-up.

The biggest negatives for me were giving up Ynoa and Gil.  Sure, they were very young but they were high upside guys traded for players with minimal upside.  Happ was also a bust.  I have no problem with Shoemaker.  That was a low risk deal with upside.  I am just slightly upset with Baddoo because I can see why they did not think they needed to protect him.  Tyler Wells was a mistake.

All said the positives have outweighed the negatives.   If the pitching prospects pan out, the positives win rather decisively.
 

Don't mean this to be argumentative, but I would say Maeda, Odo and Cruz were great moves, Pineda the first time maybe great as well, minus the suspension and all, the second time was OK to good?  Donaldson IMO was good, others seem to think it was horrible, Schoop/Cron/Thielbar were all good compared to the salary they got.

Trades like Ynoa and Gil, don't bother me (sure it would be nice to have some prospects on the younger end of the age scale, but Gil was traded 4 seasons ago and hasn't done anything in the majors yet (29.1 innings IMO isn't anything). It has been 5 or so seasons since trading Ynoa, and out of the 140 innings the braves pitched to win the world series he got 1. So to me those trades don't bother me at all.

My negatives of the front office, is how they have done a bad job of evaluating the prospects they inherited. Seems like the ones they held onto failed and the ones they left go have fared better, which may or not be true, just seems that way. There inability to communicate a plan to the fans, continuing to employ Rocco.

100% agree if the pitching prospects pan out, they will have hit a homer and both will move onto brighter pastures.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

I generally think of myself as being pretty positive about the front office but wow, some of you are giving them a lot more credit for free agency than I do. I consider Cruz their only well above average signing, not including their "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" bullpen approach.

Donaldson was fine. Schoop was fine. Cron was fine. Pineda was fine.

Then there are a bunch of pretty garbage signings, particularly on the pitching side.

I'm giving this front office a pass for their prospect pipeline in the short-term but I'm not terribly impressed by it yet either.

I can think of just two areas this front office has legit impressed me: their trades for middle-of-the-rotation arms that became front-end arms for at least one season and their transformation of how catching prospects are drafted and trained defensively.

[KirbyDome89]

15 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

And, as has been pointed out, those players raised their profile with help from this FO.

Nature vs. Nurture, and a rather slippery slope? I don't if we can accurately, or fairly, separate the successes from the failures in the overlap group. 

[nicksaviking]

15 hours ago, Prince William said:

MacPhail left the team in horrible shape, setting up the doldrums of the mid 90s for the Twins. MacPhail built a team, remodeled it with bandaids and left with a reputation .

McPhail wasn’t worried about making risky trades or putting too much payroll on a couple of risky free agents. If Ryan had the guts to keep getting the Morris’ and Smiley’s the team might not have had such long droughts.

He copied (improved upon) McPhail’s hometown Dave Winfield signing with guys like Molitor and Steinbach, but he never had the stomach to pay for pitching. We’re going on about 30 years of that problem now.

[TheLeviathan]

40 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Nature vs. Nurture, and a rather slippery slope? I don't if we can accurately, or fairly, separate the successes from the failures in the overlap group. 

Fair, but if you think analytics has value to on-field performances I don't think its that unfair to separate them.  Hell, I think if we had hired them after Bill Smith we might have seen completely different career tracks from Sano, Buxton, etc.

[wsnydes]

10 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Fair, but if you think analytics has value to on-field performances I don't think its that unfair to separate them.  Hell, I think if we had hired them after Bill Smith we might have seen completely different career tracks from Sano, Buxton, etc.

Interesting point, especially with Buxton.  With all of the screwing around that they did with his swing early on, it would be interesting to know what would have happened with a different approach or if they just left him alone.  He didn't take off offensively until he bet on himself and did what he wanted to do.

[bean5302]

"analytics" are neither magic spells nor fairy dust you can sprinkle on players. Analytics are computer calculated statistics to spot historical trends. The same thing good scouts and coaches do but with lots and lots of raw data instead of inherently visualizing things and comparing to historical experience of other visuals. I haven't seen anything the Favley and Levine front office has to hang their hat on right now. I'm sure there will be plenty of information this year.

I don't see any significant improvement in Sano or Kepler or Odorizzi or Pineda vs. what they were before Falvey got a hold of them. Falvey & Levine seemingly get a lot of undeserved credit for Garver, who they nearly ran out of town. Garver took the initiative. Garver made Garver better. Buxton made Buxton better by not listening to coaches and just putting on 30lbs of muscle.

Ultimately, I think this topic boils down to: Is the current FO better than Terry Ryan's 2nd tenure? Maybe? Ryan's 2nd tenure was bad and we have the final history to prove the case. We don't have any final history on Falvey, but as of right now, this moment, the two front offices look fairly similar to me in terms of grades, but Falvey's work is only half way done. He could knock it out of the park still.

[Brock Beauchamp]

19 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Falvey & Levine seemingly get a lot of undeserved credit for Garver, who they nearly ran out of town. Garver took the initiative. Garver made Garver better.

Mitch Garver disagrees with this take on Mitch Garver’s defensive improvement, for the record.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mitch-garver-wasnt-catching-strikes-so-he-changed-his-catching-stance/amp/

[cHawk]

6 hours ago, MABB1959 said:

I guess I am mad at all of baseball changing it to a stat driven game.  The 2 division titles and wild card berth are kind of worthless when they did not win one playoff game but the seasons were much more fun. Which players came here and did better? Would love to know.  The Red Sox and Cubs have many "all-stars" to root for. We are down to Sano, Buxton and I would throw in Polanco. We haven't had an exciting closer for at least the last 5 years.  I HATE the pitch limit,  Maybe all other teams yank the pitcher at 5/6 innings or when they get in a jam and not allowed to work themselves out of it. We had a fun group of players with the Eddie's, Byron, Cruz and Austudillo.  How many of the Twins players would you recognize if you walked past them on the street?  Maybe I have a rosy glasses but would need to go back probably pre-target field to the Kirby Puckett days or the mid 2000's that had Mauer, Mourneau, Hunter, Cuddyher, Bartlett, Radke, Liriano, Santana, Nathan, etc.  Feels like we have been in "re-build" mode since then.  Dumpster diving instead of signing top players, etc.  I could just be seeing the negative but it is hard to ignore a team that hasn't won a play-off game since 2003?

Which players came here and did better?

Do Maeda, Wisler, Thielbar, & Odorizzi not exist?

Maybe all other teams yank the pitcher at 5/6 innings or when they get in a jam and not allowed to work themselves out of it.

The Dodgers led the league this past season in Starter IP, with 843.1. Over a 162 game season, that’s 5.1 IP per game. The Rangers were last in the league at 798.2. Over a 162 game season, that’s 5.0 IP per game. That’s just how the modern MLB works.

[gunnarthor]

2 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

McPhail wasn’t worried about making risky trades or putting too much payroll on a couple of risky free agents. If Ryan had the guts to keep getting the Morris’ and Smiley’s the team might not have had such long droughts.

He copied (improved upon) McPhail’s hometown Dave Winfield signing with guys like Molitor and Steinbach, but he never had the stomach to pay for pitching. We’re going on about 30 years of that problem now.

If you recall correctly, the early 90s were when Pohlad starting complaining about payroll. Shane Mack wanted 500k more and the Pohlads balked. He signed a 2/8m deal with Japan (a record at the time). Part of the reason McPhail left was because of payroll cuts. 

The fact that we've had three different GMs and no significant headway on payroll is a pretty good indication that this is an ownership problem, not a FO problem.

[gunnarthor]

22 minutes ago, cHawk said:

Which players came here and did better?

Do Maeda, Wisler, Thielbar, & Odorizzi not exist?

 

I think you're giving a bit too much credit to small sample sizes. Sure, Maeda had a great 11 game stretch in 2020. But that wasn't anything out of the norm for him. He had 11 game stretches like that every year with the Dodgers. He's made 32 starts for the Twins and his line is 12-6, 173 ip, 110 ERA+, 1.9 WAR. That's pretty much in line with what he's done his entire career but a bit worse than his best season (his rookie year).

Same issue applies to Odorizzi. Yeah, great season in 2019 but 2018 and 2020 existed too. One solid season, a piddling season and a disaster, injury plagued season. Basically, the Twins paid nearly 34 million for 4.5 WAR spread over three seasons. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

21 hours ago, ashbury said:

A good front office has to have a lot of positive qualities, and it's the negative ones that can spell failure.  Frankly we haven't had an all-around good one since MacPhail.  Arguing about which among Ryan/Smith/Falvey's regimes was worst is simply talking past one another, pitting one fault against another, when the job actually requires near-flawless execution..  Unless Falvey's gambles show definite evidence of paying off in 2022, I'll be ready to move on.  There are always young and ambitious junior executives ready to be given a chance in the big chair; that's how we got our current guys, and it may just be bad luck it hasn't worked better. 

While I’ve been very critical of Ryan in this thread, I’d like to point out that I consider his terms as two separate entities.

The second term was bad, IMO, particularly given that his only success was that first draft. It was four years of mostly ugliness after that.

But I disagree with you that his first stint wasn’t legitimately good. To take a Metrodome team with its payroll limitations and build a team that had nine winning seasons in ten was more than good, it was very good, borderline extraordinary. Sure, he didn’t do that final thing to push the team over the top in any given year and that’s a black mark on his record but the Twins were downright dominant for a decade and it’s because of Terry Ryan. Unlike the arguments we’re having now about Bill Smith vs Terry Ryan vs Derek Falvey and who gets what credit for which player, those 2000s teams were entirely of Ryan’s making.