Category: Twins

It didn’t take long for speculation about Ron Gardenhire’s job security to start.  By Wednesday of last week, six days after the 0-4 Twins had opened the 2012 season, speculation about whether Gardenhire would last the season as Twins manager had started including including a column from Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan.

For Gardenhire loyalists—and there are many—such talk must be further evidence of how dysfunctional our sports society really is.  “The win today or you’re gone” mantra in athletics seems to gain momentum every few years.

A look at the Gardenhire file shows a lot of winning.  Now in his 11^th season managing the Twins, Gardenhire’s teams have won six division titles.  He was American League Manager of the Year in 2008 and 2010.  Off the field he’s made himself available for local causes and his good-natured personality has long resonated with fans who approached him as strangers and left as friends.

Twins general manager Terry Ryan told Sports Headliners his franchise has someone special in Gardenhire.  “He’s everything you’re looking for in a manager,” Ryan said.  “”If he wasn’t here, he’d be snapped up in a day.  He’s that good.  He’s got the on field (skills).  He’s got the off field.  He’s got the knowledge.  He’s got the respect.

“For me, this (job) was made for him.  He’s a member of this community as much as he is a manager of the baseball team.  This is where he belongs.”

Ryan said Gardenhire, 54, meets all the criteria needed in a manager—from leadership to dealing effectively with the media.  “You put 10 things down that you want a manager to do, he does them all well,” Ryan said.  “So what more can you ask?”

The Twins are off to a 2-7 start but Ryan believes the talent is available to be a competitive team, better than last year’s 99 loss club, the worst record for a Gardenhire club and only the second to play under .500 baseball.  Ryan said the 2011 season was an “aberration” and wasn’t the manager’s fault.

“You can’t pin that on (former general manager) Bill Smith,” Ryan said.  “You can’t pin that on Ron Gardenhire.  We’re gonna pin it on the organization.  So if you take that out of the equation—which I do and have—we’re talking about the manager of the year in 2010.  That’s about all I need to say.”

Expect former Twins closer Joe Nathan to pitch with extra adrenaline this weekend when his new team, the Rangers, plays a three game series at Target Field.  There’s no guarantee, of course, that Nathan will be relieving in the games but former Twins shortstop Roy Smalley, now a Fox Sports North analyst on Twins telecasts, told Sports Headliners players want to make a statement when they compete against ex-teammates and former fans.

Nathan, often among baseball’s best closers when he pitched for the Twins from 2004-2011, signed as a free agent with the Rangers during the last offseason. Tonight’s game in Minneapolis will be the first that Nathan has been in a Rangers uniform against the Twins.

“It’s not just any other game when you compete against your old club,” Smalley said. “He doesn’t want to come in and not do the job.”

Smalley played for the Rangers, Twins and Yankees.  He never wanted to look at his former teammates and know they had defeated him.

Smalley said Nathan will have more “butterflies” pitching here against the Twins than when Minnesota goes to Texas.  “The juices flow more when you come into your former park,” he said.  “It will be easier for him to pitch in Texas.  He doesn’t want to fail in front of all these (Twins) fans.”

Nathan has been given the closer role with the Rangers.  His record is 0-2 but he has saved two games.  His ERA of 9.00 reflects some difficult moments in the young season and is worse than the 4.46 he had last year with the Twins.

In 2011 Nathan was making a comeback from 2010 elbow surgery. He wasn’t the Nathan of old and the Twins decided that a 37-year-old coming off surgery with a fast ball in decline wasn’t worth the two-year, $14.5 million deal the Rangers reportedly offered.

Smalley has no doubt the Twins made the right decision.  “To pay that kind of money for a 37-year-old when a team is rebuilding doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.

In Nathan’s prime his fast ball could be clocked up to 97 miles per hour, according to Smalley.  Now he might be throwing it in the low 90’s.  “I have never known any pitcher, other than maybe Nolan Ryan, not to lose velocity when he gets older,” Smalley said.