July 19, 2016

Gleeman and The Geek #265: Replacing Terry Ryan

For this emergency, midweek "Gleeman and The Geek" episode we talked non-stop about the Twins firing Terry Ryan after 18 seasons as general manager. I also wrote about the firing and what comes next for the Twins at Baseball Prospectus.

Gleeman and The Geek: Episode 265

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This week's blog content is sponsored by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association and their website MNFarmTeam.com, which is sponsoring "Gleeman and The Geek" all season.

6 Comments

  1. Well, that was an interesting show! I just have a horrible feeling about how this is going to play out. There will be some token outside interviews but the job will go to someone internally. Maybe not Antony, but someone… Krivsky, Deron Johnson, Bill Smith again… maybe even Torii Hunter. But whoever it is, they will have strong ties to the Twins. I would bet my life savings on it.

    Comment by Ryan Glanzer — July 19, 2016 @ 10:33 am

  2. Without an accompanying house-cleaning and replacement GM at-hand, this is worrisome. If the Twins were a tech company, they would be market-driven vs engineering-driven. And they have fired their lead (only?) engineer just before project release (trade deadline). Terry Ryan may be a slide-rule hardware guy in a C++ world, but at least he is an engineer.

    After the news broke, the Detroit TV crew mentioned that the Twins post-Ryan would still be looking “to win in 2017” – understandable given their youth but is a message eerily consistent with their ongoing hesitancy to ever go into full-rebuild mode. This hurt them in 2010, as they went for the fool’s gold that was the AL Central crown and failed to move veterans when they should have.

    Based on Ryan’s now obsolete public assertion of certain trade deadline activity, speculation on his firing shouldn’t discount the possibility that engineer Ryan was finally convinced of the need for full rebuild but couldn’t convince his weak-kneed market-driven bosses who are simply too fearful of the fans who might miss Ervin, Kurt, or Trevor. If true and if a Ryan full-sell mode was too scary, how scary will it be for them to consider an outside GM hire? And without Ryan, how can they not totally mess up any trades that they may talk themselves into in the interim?

    Could it be after all the years of data driven baseball management by their MLB peers, the Twins still don’t know what they don’t know?

    Comment by Gary Fuka — July 19, 2016 @ 2:43 pm

  3. Loved the episode guys! I think Ryan did a good job the first go around but I am not sure if he really understood how the game changed while he was gone on the 2nd go around. But in 3 – 4 years we will see how well he drafting talent in these 90 loss seasons.

    A side not I noted that you guys were talking about the Trade deadline and how you will be doing this podcast at the deadline on the 31st. Its weird and hard to believe but this year’s deadline will be Aug 1st., because Manfred didn’t want last min trades to be going on while games were in play.

    Comment by Jeremy — July 19, 2016 @ 4:10 pm

  4. Of the Ryan years, there were several good ones that were still only on the high side of mediocre, several on the low side of mediocre, and the rest were just atrocious.
    I see John’s point that the playoffs can be kind of a crapshoot, but the Twins were going into each playoff series without the tools to compete. One starting pitcher, (or maybe two) could hump it up to 90 once in a while, but the rest looked about like Tommy Milone. This was Ryan’s design; success meant being just good enough to hang in there. And they didn’t most years.
    The feeling of futility came from knowing that the Twins could never be one of the best teams, and that it was by design.

    Comment by arfendale — July 19, 2016 @ 10:26 pm

  5. John’s comments in this episode were outrageous. Truly, truly truly outrageous.

    Comment by michael — July 22, 2016 @ 9:51 am

  6. John has a right to an opinion and then to try and back it up. I would have liked to hear Aaron handle the discussion with more maturity, however. That would have made it a little easier to listen to. That was a bad podcast.

    Comment by 1982Twins — July 23, 2016 @ 9:31 am

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