Joe Posnanski has a man crush
Is it possible that Joe Posnanski is in love with Ron Gardenhire? He recently wrote a winter meetings recap and dedicateda paragraph to his lunch with Gardy. Now, I think Posnanski is a great baseball writer and I read almost everythingbaseball related he publishes. But this man is in love with Gardenhire. I can see how reporters like him, he seems to be very open and is good for sounds bites with his “aw shucks” manner. However, this piece kind of upset me. He said he thinks Gardy is the best manager in the game, but he then goes on to say if he watched all the games, saw how Gardy managed the bullpen, watched every single on of Nick Punto’s at bats he might think differently. What now? So you like Gardy because he is nice, that’s cool, I’m sure he is. But don’t go and say he is the best manager in the game without much basis. I get your point that if the players like the manager, they tend to play harder. However, that isn’t always enough. Gardy is a good manager, but the best in the league? What is that based on? Tony LaRussa arguably gets just as much, if not more, out of the same level on talent. In 2006, when he won the world series he had David f-ing Eckstein as his starting SS. He is worse than Nick Punto. Outside of Puljos, the Cards didn’t have an overly talented bunch. So I’d say the “getting the most out of the least” argument doesn’t really hold that much water.
Despite the name of this site, we think Gardy generally does a good job, but has serious room for improvement. Now Posnanski, a national columnist, is underminingeverything we are trying to do here. Damn. This is really more of a rant against Posnanski just saying things in a column without really backing it up. “Gardy is great, I don’t really watch him on a regular basis, but he is great”. Let the people who watch the Twins day in and day out do the talking, Joe. There are readers on this site who love Gardy and everything he stands for, and I respect that because they know A LOT about Twins baseball so they have more than no legs to stand on.
If he had to write this piece I wish he would have replaced “Ron Gardenhire” with “Twins baseball”. The Twins have really played this way for a while, I guess if you want to put a face to it you can, but we all know that the throwing strikes, and emphasis on defense is somethingthe organization stresses from draft day on. Not something Gardy institutes when players arrive in his clubhouse. He reinforces it, yes. And since the Twins don’t really keep any of the worthless free agents they sign, that’s not an issue.
So, in summation, I would like to state that Ron Gardenhire is getting WAY too much credit for how this franchise has fared. During all those crappy years under Tom Kelly we were stockpiling draft picks to get the players we have today. Maybe this is a sport-wide issue. Managers get way too much credit for the success of their organization. Its different than college football, where the head coach is in charge of recruiting players, developing players, and coaching the game. So from now on, if we want to praise the Twins, we really should remember everyone who contributes. Gardy is really a figurehead. Stan Cliburn (and his brother, I think its Stu or some other weird alliteration) are probably the best managers in the system.
Another thing I don’t like about Gardy, is he is loyal to a fault. I’m all for supporting your guys, and I like that he won’t sign an extension until his staff is signed. However, someone needs to take Ullgerbehind the woodshed and just end it. He is bad at everything, and the fact that he is the manager if Gardy is ejected or has to leave the team or whatever is just downright terrible. Terrible.
Well, that is my Friday morning rant. Have a good weekend everyone.
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Posnanski often writes about how he thinks Gardy is the best manager in baseball; his basic point is that every season, every expert in the country picks the Twins to finish fourth or fifth, and at the end of the season they’re always in first or second, and therefore the constant-exceeding-expectations must fall on the manager.
I think the reason we constantly exceed expectations is because the people setting the expectations are all in NY and Boston. And I’ve met a lot of people who live there, and most of them aren’t aware that Minnesota is a real place. A common first question is: “Are there buildings there?” We get picked to finish last because they don’t know anything about us, not because there’s any reason we won’t be good. So it’s not that Gardy’s good, it’s that people from the east coast are ignorant assholes who should realize that they’re really just a very small part of the country that keeps screwing everything up for the rest of us. And also that the Twins are a good baseball team, year in and year out.
I think Posnanski’s wrong about Gardy, but I understand his viewpoint given that he sees the expectations from an outsider’s perspective and sees from afar that we always “exceed” them. And I appreciate the fact that he recognizes that if he saw what Gardy does on a daily basis he probably wouldn’t think much of him.
Mainly, Posnanski’s probably just envious that the Royals don’t have a manager with the wherewithal to pick the team up by its bootstraps and pull it out of its perennial suckiness; from an outsider’s perspective, that’s what it LOOKS like Gardy did around the turn of the century. After a decade of sucking, we suddenly started winning. It’s the dream of every shitty team. But it’s misguided. It wasn’t the manager. It was a well run organization that finally got its talent through the system, and was patient enough never to sell out, waste money, or lose prospects to push forward to a useless 80 wins. That’s the lesson shitty teams need to learn.
Oh yeah. And Ullger needs to spend some time on the business end of Delmon’s bat. We need a good, violent explosion from Delmon that leaves Ullger incapacitated and unable to come to the stadium and make everyone on the team worse. I say it has to be Delmon because he’s the biggest, strongest guy on the team and he swings the hardest. Also Bat Tossing Incident.
Yeah, that reinforces my point nicely. Gardy is flat out getting too much credit going forward. Can you imagine if the Twins were run like the Astros are run? They trade prospects for worthless vets midseason and finish the season double digit games out of a playoff spot, and barely near .500. I think the players would play hard for most managers. Joe Maddon, Tony LaRussa, Mike Scoscia. If a manager has a job, its because the players play for him. If the players DID NOT play hard for Gardy, he wouldn’t be a manager. So I don’t get why that is such a huge deal. I’d say that is par for the course, getting players to play hard for you isn’t something special, its managerial 101. It makes you a manager, not a good manager. Being a good manager is what you do with that effort.
At least Gardy recognizes the “the bare minimum you need to do in order have the job makes you great at that job” thing.
According to Gardy, “Delmon is a great player. He had a sprained ankle. He came to the stadium every day. He’s a great baseball player.”
HE CAME TO THE STADIUM? That’s what makes someone a great player? Seriously, if you paid me like a baseball player and told me all I have to do is come to the stadium every day, I could be the starting shortstop for the Minnesota Twins? That’s really how it works?
No. It’s not. This is the real world. Not crazy Gardy-land. Just showing up and doing the minimum possible amount of work doesn’t make you “great at your job.” Are you crazy?
That said, while I’d definitely put Gardy in the Maddon/Scioscia tier of managers, there are definitely some crappy ones out there. I don’t know their names because they suck and their teams suck. But … Mariners, Orioles, Nationals, et cetera. Also, teams struggle with their managers in the first third of every season. They fire the guy after a couple of the players say the manager doesn’t necessarily make them work harder than they would anyway. The new guy doesn’t make a difference. Everyone is confused. Then they do it again the next year, because they can’t remember that this happens every year and it never makes a difference.
But, you say, they were showing up! They were great managers!
That’s why you fire them. So they stop showing up. Thus, not great any more. Thus, firing them was the right move. This is insanity. This doing the bare minimum thing has really infuriated me. I’m going to go do some work.
I find it amusing how showing up to the stadium with an injury is a badge of honor. Is not showing up an option? If you don’t you will be fined/suspended/fired. Plus all the physical therapy and whatnot is at the stadium. Maybe its just his phrasing, but it seems like a dumb thing to say.
Yeah, it’s not like players have the option of just not showing up. Like when Casilla’s alarm didn’t go off and he was 10 minutes late to practice. He got benched for multiple games for that.
So “showing up” makes you great.
Being late by 10 minutes means you suck too much to be allowed to play.
What would “not showing up” get you? Killed?
Not showing up will get you a sentence of hanging out with Nick Punto everyday for a year. Death would be better.
Hey if you had to hang out with Punto maybe you could get him drunk and reveal the secret he knows about Gardy. Or just get him drunk so Gardy won’t be able to put him in the lineup. Or just get him drunk for fun. Punto actually seems like he’d be a fun guy; just not that great a baseball player.
Unfortunately, those are the people out there voting for manager of the year awards and they see about 3 Twins games a year. Personally, I prefer Keith Law’s opinion on Gardy (he thinks that Gardy ranks in the bottom 10% of the league managers), which is based on analysis…
Analysis? Is that some sort of witchcraft?
I really don’t mind that Gardy is always highly regarded in the manager of the year voting. I’d say he’s probably in the top 5 or 10 in the majors.
Really, that’s more of a statement on everyone else than it is about Gardy himself.
But the reason writers vote for Gardy is because the Twins come to town and win, and the writers say “How could the Twins possibly beat us? I’ve never heard of any of their players, and I know all about our players. The manager must really be getting a lot out of those nobody players.”
It all comes back to a complete lack of education among the people who set expectations and vote. They don’t even know the name of the star of our team, who won the MVP and the Home Run Derby.