Updates On The Front Office Search

My brother went to four different high schools, one year apiece.  He didn't enjoy it one bit. it likely cost him a full baseball scholarship.

Yeah, moving in high school is rough. I moved after my freshman year, lost all my friends, had to start anew, and was derailed off an AP track (ie. college credits in high school) through laziness/inattentiveness from my CA high school counselor (who was a moron). I was 15 and had no idea the long-term effects that would have on college.

In short, moving your high school kids halfway across the country can and should have a big impact on parents' job choices.

(not that I resent any of that happening, but it did happen and should be acknowledged)

But that is not about coming to Minnesota....it would preclude any move...yet some here are convinced, apparently, that it is a Minnesota problem. Or, I am reading it wrong

Sure, but sticking within an hour flight (and hell, even driving distance) of your kids for large chunks of the year could have played a role in the decision.

But really, it's all speculation.

I'm mildly concerned that "people" have reportedly declined interviews but I need a few more actual names before I consider it a real problem.

I really hope this is just a lot of noise surrounding two legitimate candidates who liked their current (or coming) deals and not an ownership meddling problem.

My 2 cents, I'll forgive the Cherrington thing.  Simply put, when you're job seeking, you'll be looking at both options, and while the search firm may or may not have known that, Cherrington is going to play both sides of that.  He's going to want to see the better opportunity, which I'm sure is a combination of salary, family, likeliness to succeed, etc. 

 

AA is a bit different here, in that he only cites family. Perhaps that is true.  He wouldn't be the first to turn down a good opportunity for things like that. It also may be a convenient excuse.  The problem is that we see a lot of smoke with the owner (Nolasco signing, Molitor comments, etc.) that indicates that Pohlad has more control than perhaps he should. That does concern me.

 

As for the Twins FO being a bit behind, well yeah. That's probably at least part of the reason why we are looking at 100 losses this season. I would think that this wouldn't a deterrent to a perspective applicant. If anything, it's an opportunity to make your mark so to speak. That said, there is a real issue with a competing job (say Toronto) looking more appealing in that sense (easier to succeed), but the only way it's a deal breaker is if the owner is coming out and saying that they cannot modernize it, because he doesn't want to double his scouting staff or something like that. That would be a big problem.

 

Not sure I buy the Minnesota winters thing.  Yeah, they suck. Yeah, they are worse than Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, etc.  But I don't see the deterrent there, unless Pohlad keeps the heat at 62 in the winter.  The team HQ is in Fort Myers.  I'm guessing they spend a lot of time there in the winter anyways.

Yep, I agree with everything in this post. We can speculate all day and choose whichever narrative best fits our viewpoint but at the end of the day, there are so many variables and so little public information available that we don't have the slightest idea what we're talking about.

I am shocked - SHOCKED! - that both Cherrington and AA not just turned down the position but declined to even be interviewed. Individually they are kind of understandable - Cherrington more so - but I'm still very surprised. 

I view this as a positive, relatively speaking.

If you decline an interview, it's likely you have personal reasons to decline even considering the position. You haven't met with ownership, you don't have a real idea of the inner workings of the company, and you're declining to even learn and consider if the position is right for you. There's something outside the company that is preventing you from meeting with them at all. The reasons for this happening are as long as my arm: family, current positional happiness, general quality of life, etc.

If you decline after an interview, that generally means there's something about the company that's wrong and you want no part of it.

Who here hasn't taken an interview mostly out of curiosity, only to walk away and say "nopenopenope"? I've done it several times.

I don't think that quite works at this high level, though.  The Twins aren't some random unfamiliar company to Cherington and Anthropolous, even if they've never met with the owner before.  Add in what they probably heard from the search firm and other industry contacts recently, and they probably have enough information to be comfortable making a judgement without an interview.

Sure, the Twins are a bit more of a known commodity but unless those guys know something really damning about Twins ownership, don't you think they'd at least take an interview if they were interested in a POBO position right now?

All it requires is one day of their time and zero dollars spent on their part, after which they'd walk away fully comfortable in whatever decision they decide to make.

It seems really weird to refuse meeting with someone for a highly sought after position if you're interested in filling that role with one of just 30 teams in the league. The risk is virtually zero to sit down and hear out the other party.

I'm not shocked.  Neither of them "needed" this job -- they've been there before, presumably they have some money in the bank.  Moreover, reports suggest we didn't reach out to Cherington until recently, when he was already pretty far along with Toronto.

 

I still share some of your worry, though.  Hopefully we don't see a guy like McLeod turn us down, that would be a bad sign.

First paragraph: it seems they may have screwed up with Cherington and that's disturbing. They had plenty of time to contact him and get him into the interview process and if it's true that he declined because he was already in the process of negotiating with Toronto, that's the kind of easily preventable mistake that shouldn't be happening in September of 2016.

Second paragraph: huge (and I mean huge) red flags should go up around Twins Territory if McLeod interviews and declines the position. That means ownership is probably broken and non-baseball people are making unreasonable baseball demands upon the future head of their baseball operations.