There's very little innovation listed in this post. What is listed is a solid, fundamental way of approaching baseball scouting and management, which is perfectly fine. Innovation can be important but only when it works... and it often doesn't. There's nothing wrong with not being innovative about everything. But to compete in the market without innovation, you have to be really good at your fundamentals. Scouting, drafting, picking the right pieces at the right time to complement existing pieces. Ryan was very good at doing this from 1998 to 2005-ish, after which the team fell off a cliff with the biggest aspect of fundamental-based, non-innovative managing: the draft. Some of this was poor decisions, some of it bad luck. In the end, it meant failure. Ryan doesn't have to re-invent the wheel to win in baseball. He has to trust his baseball acumen, hire the right scouts, and focus on the things he excels at doing. Can he do that? Hard to say... the results in Minnesota thus far have been atrocious but his drafts look good, his trades look pretty good, and he's doing a lot of things right. Only time will tell whether it's enough.