Fire Gardy

So the Twins are probably out, after last night’s demoralizing loss to the Tigers, when Carl Pavano was finally smacked around by a Tigers lineup that probably should have been getting to him all along. And now, while we’re all feeling down about it, and we’re all dreading the upcoming offseason — offseasons in Minnesota are always too long, with varying levels of hype but a consistently minimal amount of action.

But in the wake of The Sano Signing,* perhaps change is afoot with the Twins organization.

Another key: Twins ownership stepped up. Jim Pohlad was said to be as excited as anyone with the organization when told about Sano. “Let’s go get him,” Pohlad said.

Seems to me that’s pretty promising; if the owner gets excited about winning and is willing to spend money to do it, things could finally get interesting around here.

* Yes, I am going to call it The Sano Signing, and I’m going to do it because I see it as a turning point for the organization. Miguel Angel Sano may well crap out. He may actually be 20 years old right now. It might turn out that he’s not capable of getting around on a 95 mph fastball, or can’t pick up a breaking ball. Calling it The Sano Signing is not about getting excited about Sano himself. It’s about getting excited about the aggressive new stance of the Twins’ front office. Yes, it’s a risk. But it’s a risk the Twins took. Now we get to hope that they take more risks, and that some of them work out.

A little while back, Reusse complained bitterly that the Twins were still hanging around; he posited that it would have been better if the team had fallen far enough behind that they could be sellers rather than buyers, and that they needed to restock the farm system at the expense of the present, and that he didn’t want to have to care any more. Many fans agreed with him, as they seem to do for some reason (why else would he still have a column?).

But while the Twins were buying, they were clearing a few guys out of their farm system. Some of them hadn’t been around long, others were banging on the door of the majors, and others weren’t but had been around long enough that they needed to be protected from the Rule 5 draft.

Meanwhile, they were quietly changing directions in anticipation of reloading the system, perhaps with a different kind of player.

A couple weeks ago, they let go of Cliburn, the Rochester manager; they said the organization was moving in a different direction.

There hasn’t been much additional information about that since, but today’s article about Sano had this bit in there:

The Twins, looking at their minor league system, realized that they had a lot of players who, on the 2-through-8 scouting scale, would end up as threes or fours.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that that might have something to do with the change in direction, and with letting Cliburn and others go — perhaps the Twins felt there are guys within the minor leagues who value these 2’s and 3’s too highly, and it’s preventing more talented players from rising (or even entering the system in the first place). Maybe Cliburn was one of them.

Yes, the Twins are probably out of it now. They “contended” until the final week of the season, and while that’s no consolation prize, it did at least give us a full summer of baseball. And now, maybe they’re shaking things up a bit.

That’d be a good thing.