Minnesota Twins: Hitting the Reset Button

Nov 4, 2014; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Minnesota Twins manager

addresses the media at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

I played my fair share of video games back in the day. “NHL ’94” and “Charles Barkley’s Shut Up and Jam” immediately come to mind. However, my favorite was “Madden ’95”. My first and forever love was football, so this made a lot of sense. Over my “Madden” career, I’ve now led the Vikings to many Super Bowl victories on various editions of the game. My first is the most memorable though.

My Video Vikings were having a historic campaign. I rode Terry Allen and Warren Moon to a perfect regular season. I rolled through my first playoff game and breezed into the NFC Championship Game. I was going to ride a wave of emotions all the way to the first championship in Vikings history…until I lost in the NFC Championship Game. Even the fictional Vikings couldn’t make the Super Bowl! It was one of those games where the computer made me fumble for no reason multiple times, I missed field goals, and I just lost. Now, I have a temper to this day, but it pales in comparison to pre-teen Tom. As soon as the final whistle blew and the loss was official, I went blind with rage, and either shut my Sega off altogether or hit the reset button, I don’t remember which. Immediately after, I felt pretty lousy about myself. If I couldn’t earn a championship, I didn’t deserve one. Still, that didn’t stop me from firing the game back up, winning my do-over by 20 and subsequently win the Super Bowl after the fact.

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No one comes to this site to read about my Sega exploits, so why even bring it up? Even though it was not a noble act, it is time for the Twins to do the same thing I did almost 20 years ago; Get mad, hit the reset button and start over.

The good news is that this process has already begun. Ron Gardenhire seems like a truly stand-up guy and had a lot of success in his time as the Twins manager, but it was time to make a change. There have been some country club rumblings about hiring Paul Molitor as his replacement, but he never seemed to be one of Gardy’s guys, despite being on the payroll. The next important change is on the roster. There are already rumblings about the team’s payroll staying the same. If true, that still does not preclude the team from making moves to improve a mediocre team. The pitching simply needs to get better. Phil Hughes was a revelation, but Ricky Nolasco was an abomination. More needs to be done. Picking former National League pitchers off of the scrap heap is a tried and true method of failure. Time to get more creative.

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The tomato juice bath to wash off the last four seasons of stink cannot end there. After a horrendously unlucky season for our top prospects, it is time to get them back on track. We have all been hearing for years that Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, Trevor May, Alex Meyer and others are the future. It is imperative that progress is made on making that dream a reality, otherwise another season will ultimately go down as a failure.

After the clown show the last few seasons have been, the more change, the better. The Twins just announced that they are changing their home uniforms for 2015. Important? Well, no, but sometimes all change is helpful. Incidentally, I like the new clean look, although I understand why some are not fans of the gold for gold’s sake trim. Even if they were clearly worse that the jerseys they are replacing, change can be good.

It is hard to imagine things getting worse than they have been the last few seasons for the Twins. Out with the old, in with the new.