Minnesota Twins: rebuilding after Terry Ryan

With Terry Ryan’s departure the Minnesota Twins have a chance at a fresh start. What will it take to rebuild the Minnesota Twins back into an MLB contender?

With Terry Ryan’s departure the Minnesota Twins have the opportunity to rebrand and rebuild an organization that has had its struggles over the last few (being generous) seasons. Terry has been in the big leagues since 1972, witnessing the game ebb and flow over the last forty years in baseball.

The 2010 inaugural season at Target Field was the last time the fanbase got excited about the product on the field. Both attendance and wins have dropped ever since. The Pohlad family is great about holding onto their own, but this was a necessary change.

With baseball struggling to snatch viewers under the age of 50, having a poor product, in a small market, is truly a recipe for disaster. Should all the blame be placed on Terry Ryan, of course not, but it’s a good starting point.

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I was fortunate to grow up as kid in Minnesota in the 1980’s. Some of my fondest sporting memories are the Twins 1987 and 1991 World Series runs. What was it about those late 80’s and early 90’s Twins clubs that caught the attention of every kid on the block, simply put, those teams won ball games consistently under the leadership of Andy MacPhail.

MacPhail had a great eye for talent and he knew how to keep the good times rolling. Every Minnesota Twins fan over the age of thirty can tell you stories about Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Dan Gladden, Jack Morris, Shane Mack, Greg Gagne, Chuck Knoblauch, Tom Brunansky, Al Newman, and Bert Blyleven. Pillars of the organization at the time, and MacPhail understood how to build a club around them. It started with a great farm system, keeping great talent, and bringing in players that contributed.

So how can the Twins get back to those glory years? They should start by hiring someone from outside the organization. Something is definitely broken and it may take a person that isn’t caught up in this abysmal system to fix.

My vote is to blow the whole thing up. It’s time for the Pohlads to find a buyer and move forward in a new direction. The Twins ownership group feels like a loaf of bread that’s just starting to mold, time to trash the loaf, pull out the wallet, and hit the grocery store. The Pohlads however, seem to be allergic to spending.

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Fans of the Minnesota Twins deserve some excitement after helping to fund a beautiful ballpark that sits half empty at most home games. I don’t have an answer as to who to bring in, but I do know there are a lot of young brilliant minds out there that are yearning to get a shot. Whether it’s Billy Beane and his “moneyball” mentality, or an old school mind that doesn’t understand a spreadsheet, I really have no preference, any change would be a step forward at this point.

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