The numbers prove the Terry Ryan era had to end in Minnesota
In the end, there are only the wins and the losses, what those come to. If that seems unfair, as it leaves out the abiding human characteristics of kindness and dignity and loyalty and honesty, well, this is the life he chose. It’s enough to know Terry Ryan probably respects what the wins and losses came to in the end. Though the final number may not measure the man, it almost certainly measures the general manager. They keep a daily tally of these things in the newspaper. So Ryan’s Minnesota Twins were terrible again, and on Monday he was fired, the last acknowledgement of his kindness, dignity, loyalty and honesty being that he was not “fired” but “relieved of his duties.”
Jerks get fired. Not Terry Ryan.
The news came to me in a text from a National League scout that read: “I’m sick about Terry Ryan. One of the truly humble and upstanding men that I’ve met in this game. When team went on playoff runs years ago he never blew his own horn. Great baseball man. Universally respected amongst the rank and file. Just saying.”
Geez, I thought, did he step in front of a bus?
Well, in a manner of speaking. Maybe this is what happens when old values and small markets converge, and five years ago Ryan resumed command of a baseball operations department he’d once run with great success. The Twins are 103 games under .500 since. They were competitive in one of those five seasons, and are especially irrelevant in 2016, and so the slow-hand Twins made the out-of-character decision to not simply can their leader and friend, but to do it two weeks before the trade deadline.
The next man up is Rob Antony, a Twins lifer and Ryan loyalist who may or may not be the long-term solution. It appears Antony will serve until Twins owner and CEO Jim Pohlad has a better idea.
The common view of the Twins is they lag in the area of new analytics, though unless you’re walking those hallways and invited into those meetings every day that could be simplistic. What we know is trades have gone bad, prospects have not lived up to the hype, and free-agent signings haven’t worked, which is the story of how every organization arrives at the day it paints over the name on the general manager’s door. We’ll soon learn how deep this will get, if an overhaul is coming that will take out Paul Molitor and department heads as well. What will be more important, of course, is the 25 men in the dugout every night, as they have not been very good for too long, which is how we got to today, because someone was responsible for putting them there.
Now someone – Antony, presumably – will begin the process of taking them out of there, and has two weeks to decide the fates of Ervin Santana, Trevor Plouffe, Kurt Suzuki, Eduardo Nunez, even Brian Dozier, among others. The people who rank such things generally like the Twins’ farm system, and this is the chance to go long on the future. Really, what choice do they have? Go full Astros and sort it out in four or five years.
So we say farewell to an era that most would agree had to end, because that’s what the numbers said. It is either irony or symmetry that Terry Ryan and David Ortiz would leave in the same season, as that one transaction so many years ago – on Dec. 16, 2002, Ryan released Ortiz – speaks to the life of the general manager. In 2002, the Twins would win the first of three consecutive AL Central titles, and four in five years, and six in nine years. A decade after a World Series championship, the Twins had reemerged as a power. Ortiz was a career .264 hitter with 38 home runs. The life you choose.
Ryan stepped down as general manager in 2007, returned in 2011, and here we are. The counting of the wins and losses hadn’t stopped, had only paused, and now that his duties have ended we’ve only to learn who’s more relieved.
