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Oh it's real... AND... I'm pretty sure the dude cleared the canvas and showed up a few weeks later with a Dozier hair-sey.

Deep lyric of the day... courtesy of Lonely Island (which popped up on Pandora) "Havin' sex can make a nice man out the meanest..." Ain't that the truth! I blame the media for not emphasizing this point enough in these dark times. How's that for irrelevant?

No posts in 5 minutes? You guys are stallin'!

I'd also like to go on record as saying I don't necessarily think we need to throw everybody in the FO out. Maybe some should go, if they can't add value under the new regime, but my point is more about doing a deeper dive on development, evaluation, and analytics with a larger team. As much as people don't like interviewing for their job when a new manager comes in, it's often a necessary step in making the organization more functional.

A larger team would bring added cost but other successful teams certainly feel it's worth the investment. Adding 20 extra people (hopefully good ones) might run, what $4-5M? That's like two months of Ricky Nolasco. I know you agree with that point, I'm just saying it's negligible in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully ownership will reach the same conclusion. It's not rocket science.

Despite the club's history, I think this move signifies they are ready for such as change and I would be surprised if the hirings stop at a GM. Still... it's a crucial point and it's something that I hope fans and the media will highlight in terms of holding ownership accountable in their efforts to fix this mess. TR was a great person and a highly capable GM in many regards, but the problem is/was always much bigger than one person.

I know. They spent a lot more this year, by design because they are "going for it." Like the Red Sox, the Cubs (who's GM used to be with Boston) has a small-market mindset with deep pockets to boot. The Cubs have done much more than buy wins... I was talking more about the Yankees and Dodgers. And Detroit and Anaheim to some extent. Though they've been less successful this year.

Yesterday I posted about how the Twins have relatively few people in their front office compared to some other teams (such as TB, CHC, PIT). Most other teams put substantial resources into player evaluation and player development. The Twins are behind the curve in this regard. In the past, most of it was left up to Terry Ryan's discretion with input from his scouts and maybe asking Jack Goin the occasional question. Then there was the horrifying quote from Jim Pohlad about "studying other team's media guides" to get a sense of how they structure their front offices. Any business should maintain a working knowledge of their competition, especially in an industry which is this competitive. As shocking as that quote about media guides was, at least it shows ownership is on the right path. They appear ready to fully admit that their approach has not worked (after umpteen +90 loss seasons). So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But what does that look like? According to Spotrac, the Twins rank 21st in payroll in 2016. Successful teams (over the last couple years) who spend similar amounts include Pittsburgh (23rd), Houston (24), Cleveland (25), Miami (28), and Tampa Bay (30). Then there's bigger market clubs like the Cubs, Cardinals, Giants, Red Sox, Rangers, and Blue Jays who do more than simply try to buy wins (sentence edited due to missing word). So what do these front offices look like? What can we learn? You can lookup these teams' front office personnel with simple google searches. By and large, most of the these teams appear to commit more front office personnel to player development and evaluation. Many of these teams have people/programs that specialize in the mental approach of the game. Virtually all have more strategic analysts. What I took away from looking at the front office of winning teams is that they have a lot of people (outside of coaches) dedicated to making their current players better and finding undervalued players. It's not just about one guy taking in some limited input from here and there, and making a call. There's a lot of work being put into player development and evaluation. That's doesn't mean they always get it right and we always get it wrong. But they take a "anything and everything we can do" approach, often employing a large and diverse team. This is a crucial period in Twins baseball history. It's the most excited I've ever been for the team because I never believed they could get over the top with the former/current front office, but unless the club truly follows the lead of better teams and commits more personnel to development, analytics, and evaluation... I (and many other fans, eventually) will be disappointed. Kim Ng? Ben Cherington? Those are interesting names, but frankly, I'm less interested in the name of the new GM and more concerned about whether they will have carte blanc to install the type of front office structure/expansion that is needed to push this team into the 21st century. And I'm not alone. The Strib recently ran a poll asking whether the team should hire from within or look outside for its next GM (link: http://www.startribune.com/poll-should-the-twins-hire-from-within-or-go-outside-for-terry-ryan-s-replacement/387434121/?showPollResults=true). Out of 1,861 responses, 1,800 said look outside. But it's not just about a name. Fans want us to look outside because we need to change the structure and culture of this front office. Terry Ryan is universally regarded as an amazing "baseball man" and human being in general, but he cannot do it alone and our next GM shouldn't try the same approach. We need a GM team.

Let's see... one... two.. ... TWO! That's all we got? Two goddamn hits. I know I'm mixing movie quotes here, but it always reminds me of this scene too: (how'd we ever win 8?)

I agree with Reusse. There may have been some difference of opinions over how to fix this mess, but the main driver behind TR's firing was plain 'ol customer (dis)satisfaction. Gotta find some way to give your fans hope and keep them engaged, and this was the last lever available.

Fun fact... the Twins have 19 people in their "front office" that focus somewhat on player development/evaluation, outside of coaches. Probably even less that actually do "front office" type work. The Rays appear to have at least 37. The Pirates have about as many. Every team I looked up appear to have far more than the Twins. Not shocking stuff, but still I was kind of surprised to see how much personnel other teams were putting toward their player development/evaluation. The Cubs have several people who work on a "mental skills program".

I'd like to think that I'd be smart enough to see it for what it is... a sunk cost. So, I agree with you, but it's still a tough call to make as an owner. My point was more about not entrusting the same guy who made the mess to clean it up.

I'm too lazy to look it up, but have the Twins ever eaten a significant amount of money on a contract? I highly doubt TR's firing is about the manager. The timing also makes it seem like its about something surrounding trading philosophy given that the announcement comes less than two weeks before the trade deadline. That said, if any of us were in Jim Pohlad's shoes, I doubt we'd have the stomach to write a huge check to cover a manager's mistakes, then entrust that same person to undo the mess they made. Why it took this long to recognize the mess is the bigger issue.

So coaching has no impact on player performance, regardless of what the data says? I grant you that proving causation would require a much deeper investigation. However, given this team's struggles relative to what was expected, the question of "Is this team's coaching staff doing all they can to maximize the club's performance?" would be at the top of my list if I was in an owner's chair. We never get any answers about preparation/practice other than "we're working on some things" or at most, "we're trying to get Brian to go the other way more". I dont' know if they necessarily need to publicly state those things, but if I was TR I'd have a long chat with Grossman, Suzuki, and Santana about how their previous clubs got ready to face opponents, versus how the Twins do it. The cliches are wearing very thin. We want results, or barring that, maybe some more detailed explanations of what the club is doing to prepare.

Heard Mauer talking about hitting during yesterday's rain delay and something stuck out. He said he often looks for pitches middle in before he gets two strikes. This seems very non-sensical because he seems to hit pitches on the outer half much better. Mabye it's a case of looking to be quick on inside pitches?

Hey y'all... I posted a hot take on the coaching staff in a separate forum topic. Very interesting numbers regarding how this team has fared pitching in Neil Allen's absence. Spoiler alert... the staff has been a lot worse since he was suspended. If the team didn't start hitting better, it would have been a real train wreck the last month or so. We've only held the opponents to less than 4 runs twice since Allen was suspended (25 games and counting). And, both of those games were very close to the time he was suspended.

Coaching is a really hard thing to quantify, but I've had a gut feeling for a long time that the hitting and pitching coaching (at least pre-Allen) on this club has been sub-par. With the suspension of highly regarded pitching coach Neil Allen, we have a decent sample size to compare how the pitching staff has performed in Allen's absence. Basically, the pitching staff has been quite a bit worse in Allen's absence: Pre-Suspension (4/4-5/25) - 46 games Runs Against Avg: 5.39 Pct. of Games with 3 or fewer runs allowed: 30% Pct. of Games with 4 or fewer runs allowed: 50% Post-Suspension (5/27-6/22) - 25 games Runs Against Avg: 6.04 Pct. of Games with 3 or fewer runs allowed: 8% Pct. of Games with 4 or fewer runs allowed: 40% Given that the staff was probably due for some mean-regression improvement. The fact that they've gotten worse is even more disturbing. Heading into the season, this staff wasn't going to be incredible, but they should be able to do much better than a 5.39 runs against average. Instead, they've gotten worse since Allen's suspension. FWIW, last year they gave up 4.32 runs per game, ranking 9th out of 15 AL teams. Another way to measure coaching effectiveness is to compare players' performance with the Twins to after they left. Here's a list of players who have received significant playing time the last few years, with their performance after they left the club: Aaron Hicks - Twins (2013-2015) OPS+ 81 - Yankees 2016 OPS+ Chris Colabello - Twins (2013-2014) OPS+ 80 - Blue Jays (2015-2016) OPS+ 126 Sam Fuld - Twins (2014) OPS+ 106 - Athletics (2014-2016) OPS+ 63 We seem to have hit on Grossman, though his preparation habits have been noted and it seems as though his success probably doesn't have as much to do with terrific hitting coaching (but maybe some of it is... I don't know). Danny Valencia has been better since leaving the Twins, but he might be one of those classic late bloomers. The Twins were always high on his ability, he just seemed to struggle in converting that ability to in-game performance, sometimes that takes awhile to translate. On the pitching side, Hughes and Santana have performed in line with their career average ERA+, while Nolasco has been significantly worse (though that isn't too surprising given he's been hurt and came from the NL). Tommy Milone has been slightly worse in his time with Minnesota compared to when he was with Oakland, though Oakland is a much easier place to pitch with all that foul territory. Correia and Pelfrey have both been worse since leaving the Twins. Liam Hendricks was fantastic for the Jays last year but has struggled in Oakland thus far - his velocity has increased substantially since leaving the Twins. All in all, it's not as damning as I initially thought outside of Allen's absence. However, a deeper analysis of prospect performance is warranted. It seems as though other teams tend to get better performance from their top prospects earlier than the Twins. It would be interesting to see a comparison of minor league performance to major league performance for top Twins prospects versus other teams. For a club that relies on prospects and doesn't have the ability to stack a roster with high priced free agents, that is probably the most crucial coaching metric to track.

Need a pinch hitter?

There are teams which are ahead of the curve and teams behind it, then there's 50 feet of crap... then there's us.

Wonder what the exit velocity was on Kepler's shot. Nice rope!

Oh Arcia...

How'd Kepler do?

True, but he couldn't have got him with a pistol on that play. Davis had a tremendous jump.

That was the most encouraging AB I'd seen from him this year though in terms of how his swing looked.

Nunez probably catches that ball. Know what I'm saying?