Link Roundup: Coonelly's In, Terry Ryan's Out

by Charlie Wilmoth on Sep 13, 2007 2:02 PM EDT in News

-P- It's official (for real this time): Frank Coonelly will be the Pirates' next CEO.

-P- Terry Ryan is out as the Twins' GM; he'll be replaced by assistant GM Bill Smith. Assessing Ryan's tenure is difficult, because the Twins' success has probably had more to do with the weakness of the AL Central (though it's obviously not weak anymore) and the constant stream of great talent coming through the Twins' minor league system than with moves Ryan made at the big-league level. In fact, Ryan often made things tough on himself by relying on dubious vets (Tony Batista, Carlos Silva, Rondell White) and no-stick infielders (Nick Punto, Juan Castro). He also waited way too long to call up Justin Morneau and to put Johan Santana in the rotation.

Still, though, Ryan traded for Santana as a Rule 5 pick in 1999, and he pulled off one of the greatest trades in the past decade by dealing A.J. Pierzynski for Francisco Liriano, Joe Nathan and Boof Bonser. And his record - four division titles in the last six years, with a tiny payroll - is undeniable.

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Another strike against

I would add the resolution of the David Ortiz / Doug Mientkiewicz situation to the list of poor decisions made by Ryan.

I'd take him for my team, though, if I thought he could duplicate his success developing prospects.

by scoreboard on Sep 13, 2007 3:35 PM EDT reply actions

Ortiz

I don't know how much blame Ryan deserves for that. Mientkiewicz, at that time, was 27 and had already had one good season. On top of that, the Twins were flooded with decent corner types on the bench and in the minors (Mike Restovich, who looked like a good prospect at the time, plus Matt LeCroy, Bobby Kielty, and then Justin Morneau and Lew Ford at AA... they also had Michael Cuddyer, who looked like a good big league hitter they had no obvious place for). You could say they should've gotten rid of Mientkiewicz, or Jacque Jones, instead, but Jones was coming off a good season, and Mientkiewicz was at least reliable and good defensively. Ortiz was injured all the time, not all that young, and was not anybody's idea of a good defense first baseman. And he was entering a free agent market in which his type of player was highly undervalued, which is why the Red Sox were able to get him and Jeremy Giambi (who'd had a 145 OPS+ the season before) for next to nothing, and why Kevin Millar almost went to Japan that offseason even though he'd had 141 and 131 OPS+s in the previous two seasons.

Clearly Ryan screwed that up, but it was a massive market inefficiency that only Theo Epstein and Billy Beane seemed to have figured out. If only two other GMs knew what the hell was going on, it's hard to fault Ryan too much. He had an overabundance of a type of player that was highly undervalued by the market, and it's not hard to see why he felt Ortiz was too unreliable to keep. I think Ortiz's power surge after that should've surprised just about everyone, especially given his age, conditioning and injury history.

by Charlie Wilmoth on Sep 13, 2007 3:54 PM EDT up reply actions