Written By Tom Schreier
I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.
— Twins manager Paul Molitor, Nov. 4, 2014
The word awareness was never explicitly said when Minnesota announced that Paul Molitor was going to be the 13th manager in Twins history, but it was implicitly woven into the fabric of the press conference. As a player, Molitor was aware of what the pitcher was doing to do right before he threw a curveball, or that the left fielder was right-handed and had a cannon but rarely hit the cutoff man. As a coach, he was aware of where batters tended to hit the ball and was at the forefront of getting the Twins — a team that has been accused of being stuck in their ways — to use spray charts and shifts to help them defensively. “He was kind of our guy when it came to shifting,” says closer Glen Perkins, “and kind of getting that implemented into our game plan.”
As a recently-hired manager, he’s also aware of a lot of peripheral issues that are not directly related to what happens on the diamond. He’s aware that people thought he was the frontrunner all along, a notion the Twins did not dispute, and that it was only taking so long for them to make the announcement because he may not be committed. He’s aware that he’s never been a manager at every level. He’s aware that he’s from St. Paul, went to the University of Minnesota and finished his career with the Twins, and that the organization is known to be good to local guys. He’s aware that Joe Mauer, Ricky Nolasco and Aaron Hicks underperformed last season. He’s aware that some disillusioned fans who are sick and tired of losing after four years wanted the team to clean house. He’s aware that the time to win is now and that nobody is gonna sit around and wait for this team to get it together, especially with two of its top prospects — Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton — suffering setbacks due to injury. “There was a time when I was wondering what their debate was internally,” he admitted after the press conference. “Was it more about lack of experience? Was it more about someone younger? Was it more about do we need someone from the outside to get a totally clean slate?”
He’s also aware that despite being a first-ballot Hall of Famer who was named World Series MVP in 1993 and was on the Twins managerial staff last season, he is limited in some of the tasks required by a manager. He’s never filled out a lineup card. He’s never made a pitching change. He doesn’t understand pitching strategy like he knows baserunning. He’s never had to deal with fans booing Mauer mercilessly, or Nolasco acting like he doesn’t care about his poor outings, or Hicks showing up late on a day where he needs a medical evaluation before the game. “Playing, coaching, developing, it’s not the same as being the leader at the top,” he said, adding that he’s not nervous about the unknown. “I certainly was transparent with Terry about I know what I know, and I think a lot of it is really good things, but you have to know where you’re gonna need help.”
Molitor has paid his dues, there’s no doubt about that. Few Hall of Famers who played only a season in the minors, and were in the majors until their 40s, go down to Ft. Myers, Fla. or Elizabethton, Tenn. and speak at length with a player that has no shot at the majors. “He’s gone back into the minor league system,” said Ryan after the press conference. “I don’t think too many Hall of Famers need to go down into the systems and work the way he has.” But nothing he learned in the minors is going to prepare him for this. As Charlie Sheen was reminded in Major League, we wear caps and sleeves at this level, son. This isn’t Ft. Myers, Elizabethton or even western New York; this is Minneapolis. And it does not matter if you were born and raised across the river: If you don’t do your job, you hear about it. Molitor spent the last season in the Target Field dugout, so no doubt he is well aware of that.
Young players like Hicks, Kennys Vargas, Danny Santana will obtain a wealth of knowledge from one of the smartest baseball men on the planet. Even veterans like Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe will pick up a tip or two. “I always try to pick his brain,” said Mauer, a strong baserunner in his own right. “That’s the thing: Doing little things to win ballgames.”
But what about Trevor May, Kyle Gibson or Alex Meyer — three players that are expected to be staples in the rotation for years to come? What, if anything, can he teach them? What about Mauer or Perkins, local guys that have been All-Stars and are used to the way things were under former manager Ron Gardenhire? Will he push Mauer to get back on the field if he’s been out for a while? Will he tell Perkins to tone it down a bit if he goes on an epic rant during a losing streak?
All those are questions that will be answered sooner or later. For right now, Twins fans need to know if Molitor can bring out the best in his players, if at age 58 he’s still open to new ideas and if he is willing to delegate authority, especially when it comes to pitching.
The ultimate question, however, is: How much longer do people have to wait for this team to win again?
Can he bring the best out in his players?
Well, I’d like to think that I really don’t need a whole lot of managing, I guess. As long as I can get in the lineup, I’ve been around here a long time, and I feel like I go out there every night and play the game the right way, and I think that’s what he’s going to expect out of me.
— Joe Mauer after the press conference
This is what Gardenhire did best. Gardy was handed a team that was wasn’t too far removed from being contracted and brought them to the ALCS. Gardy won division championships in a stadium meant for football that literally collapsed under the weight of snow. Under Gardy’s watch Scott Diamond periodically looked like an ace and Chris Colabello was an unbelievable clean-up hitter for a month: Both of those guys went undrafted in a league where thousands of players do.
Gardy was like a crazy uncle. He had a great relationship with most of his players, and at times was more like a peer than an authority figure. He’d crack jokes about how he could pee over 400 yards or that he stopped shaving because he didn’t want a razor near his neck after four straight losing seasons. With that beard, he literally looked like Santa Claus and became the dreaded “Gardy gnome.” As angry as he’d get with incompetent umpires or the media after an insensitive question, he’d come in the next morning and he’d be laughing about something until he was red in the face. He’s probably done a keg stand more recently than you think. He was a player’s manager, without a doubt, and was born with the “gift of gab,” as Ryan put it.
As much as people fixate themselves on the fact that Molitor is from St. Paul and was hired in-house, he’s really quite different than Gardenhire. Gardenhire ended his career at 57; Molitor is beginning his at 58. Gardenhire struggled to stay in the big leagues as a player; Molitor is one of the greatest hitters of all time. Gardenhire was goofy, gregarious and an Okie; Molitor is, in Ryan’s words, “calm, guarded and complex.”
The Twins are getting a change, and that’s a good thing. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” Gardenhire said after being fired in late September, “sometimes people need to hear a different voice.” “I don’t want to take anything away from Gardy; Gardy is a great manager,” says Mauer. “I think that’s gonna continue with Paul, but sometimes hearing that same message in a different way is a good thing.”
The question is if the message will resonate. Mauer needs to be a $184 million hitter; Nolasco needs to be a $49 million pitcher. May needs to take a step forward; Hughes can’t take a step back. Hicks needs to reach his potential as a blue chip prospect; Dozier needs to hit for average. If all of those things happen, this team can surprise the league as a whole next year. If not, this team could be in for another 90-loss season.
Is the age gap too large? Is he open to new ideas?
People can argue whether or not hiring someone within the system is a good or bad thing, but the fact that I have been in this system and the fact that a lot of these guys have been playing here, guys that will be playing here, they knew me when I wasn’t 58.
— Paul Molitor after the press conference
Molitor is old; there’s no way around that. As mentioned before, he’s a year older than Gardenhire and one of the oldest managers in the game. But he was able to connect with players 1-on-1 in the minor leagues and proved that he could do that with the big league club last season. “I certainly enjoy the smaller, 1-on-1,” Molitor admitted at the press conference. “I feel that when you have a chance to interact and develop confidence between you and the person you’re trying to teach things to, that’s probably the best environment for learning.” He has a knowledge of the game that can entice a player, regardless of their age difference.
Perkins remembers him talking to pitchers during Spring Training about the nuances of baserunning, and the fact that everyone tuned in to hear what he had to say. “I know that I’m never going to be on base, I know that if I’m on third base something went horribly wrong,” jokes Perkins. “But hearing him coach, hearing him talk about the things he saw, the things he thought about, it was amazing.”
He also played the game later than most players are able to due to his ability, meaning that he was a 40-year-old teammate to some players in their 20s and was able to find common ground. And, of course, when you have the ability to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, people tend to listen up when you have something to say. Ryan said both at the press conference announcing that Gardenhire was fired and the one announcing that Molitor was replacing him that he wanted to change the presence in the room. According to Perkins, Molitor commands respect when he walks into the clubhouse. “I don’t think you can feel right about getting away with certain things that,” — he pauses for a second, choosing his words carefully — “the culture changes with just us hiring him and him being our leader.”
As far as him being stuck in his ways, he actually appears to be more progressive than the man he is replacing. A criticism of Gardenhire is that while he was a likeable personality and tended to bring out the best in his players, his ability to relate to them in a fraternalistic or avuncular way may have diminished as he got older. And even as the game was changing around him, he was not able to adapt to the influx of new information that has profoundly impacted the game of baseball in the Moneyball era. He’s an old-school guy at heart, and he loves his bunting and doesn’t want to spend time calculating BABIP.
Molitor, on the other hand, isn’t gonna shy away from advanced statistics. “It’s changed a lot, information is incredibly increased. As a coach last year, I saw the 200-page booklets before every series accounting for every possible scenario, situation, statistic,” he says. “I will be open to using what is helpful to me, [stats] that I can apply and not overwhelm players. My concern is that there is so much out there that we try and pass on to players that you see the smoke coming out of their helmet when they’re trying to remember what this guy does on Wednesdays on a 3 p.m. game when he has a guy on third base in the sixth inning with two outs.”
Is he willing to delegate authority?
We all know Paul hasn’t managed. Handling the pitching staff is gonna be a huge piece to any success we have, so we’ve gotta surround him with quality coaches.
— Terry Ryan after the press conference
In order to succeed, Molitor must have a similar relationship with his pitching coach as Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer has with offensive coordinator Norv Turner. Like Molitor, Zimmer is 58, and this is his first time coaching a professional sports team. Zimmer has always worked with defensive players — he started as a secondary specialist and eventually became an elite defensive coordinator — but while he may be an elite defensive mind, the same can’t be said about his offensive acumen. So the Vikings hired Turner, a former head coach whose understanding of NFL offenses is nearly unparalleled.
Zimmer obviously has influence on decisions made on both sides of the ball, but the two are as close as you are going to get to co-head coaches in professional sports. Zimmer knows his limitations — he’s not going to get the best out of Teddy Bridgewater, Cordarrelle Patterson and Jerick McKinnon — so he leaves that up to Turner.
Molitor and his pitching coach have to have a similar dynamic.
Perkins may be enthralled with Molitor’s understanding of baserunning, but it won’t help him — he’s not going to get on base very often. Nor will May, Meyer or Gibson. But his pitching staff, especially the members in their mid-20s, have a lot of growing to do, and they need to be placed in capable hands. Ryan and Molitor will work together to decide who the pitching coach will be — as well as all seven members of the managerial staff — but Molitor has to have complete trust in whoever is handling his young pitchers. “I want someone with experience with that,” he said after the press conference. “This is really important to me because I couldn’t sit here and tell you how to map out getting a 12-man staff ready for the season when you don’t even know who those 12 men are gonna be, and then mixing and matching your innings and all that kind of stuff, so I’m gonna need help with that.”
Ryan knows it’s important as well, and that’s why he says that the process of finding a pitching coach will be done as diligently as finding Gardenhire’s replacement. “We’ve gotta get this pitching straightened out here if we’re ever going to do anything,” he said after the press conference.
He also knows that he has to put talent around any pitching coach if he’s going to succeed. After all, Rick Anderson looked a lot smarter with Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano and Scott Baker on his staff than P.J. Walters and Cole De Vries. “[We] have a lot more revenue in this franchise than we did back in the Metrodome days,” acknowledged Ryan during the press conference. “It doesn’t mean everything, but we’ll be active in free agency as it approaches.” He went on to say, “I’ll use what I’ll get,” in reference to payroll allotment (the Twins were bottom third in payroll last year). “If there is somebody out there that we think is going to help us, we’ll have that ability to go chase that player.” Then Pohlad, the Twins billionaire owner, butted in. “I disagree with Terry, a little bit, with what he said — I’ll use every bit that I get — because I never think it’s really been about that,” he said in front of the cameras and assembled media. “Terry will spend money where he thinks it’s right, and he knows that he has the ability to do that from our standpoint.”
Well, with that said, Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and James Shields are available for the right price, and those guys would make any pitching coach look good.
How soon can he turn it around?
I’m coming here to win. I think that it’s very important to lay that out there, right from the start. Things can change in this game very dramatically at this level.
— Paul Molitor during the press conference
Not much has to be said about this: When the Twins opened Target Field in 2010 they had the ability to become the St. Louis Cardinals of the American League. They dominated the A.L. Central because they were innovative, made savvy trades and got the most bang for their buck with a limited payroll. Instead, they are now on the verge of becoming the Pittsburgh Pirates — a franchise with a history of winning that stunk up the place after opening their state-of-the-art ballpark. Only recently have the Bucs turned things around, and nobody in Minnesota wants to see that kind of futility.
Molitor’s desire to win now was well received among the fans. He knows that the locals have become restless, and that some have started to tune the team out. “I’m not a guy who’s gonna sit up here and go, ‘Hang in there fans, we’ve got help on the way,’” he said in front of the cameras and assembled media. “We’ve had four years of struggle, we’ve had fans that have tried to find a way to stay optimistic — not become apathetic or angry — and we need to reach out to them.” He’s right, and the best way to do so is to win; that’s when they’ll come back to the park. “Just to hear him say it in this press conference — we want to win right away — that’s the same mentality that I have and a lot of guys share in that locker room,” said Mauer. “That was nice to hear him say that and have all you guys hear that, too.”
Ryan seems to be on the same page as well, and he’s been around the game enough to know when things are starting to come together. “Yeah, we want to win. We want a postseason; we want to get into the postseason, just like every year,” he said, straight-faced, following the press conference. “I’m trying to be realistic. Our expectations in that clubhouse should be to make the postseason.”
That sounds great and all, but to borrow a phrase from our Midwestern brethren down in Missouri: Show me, or show us rather. Show the fans that this organization can still develop elite players. Show the fans that this organization is willing to spend. Show the fans that this organization chose the right replacement for Gardenhire. The next time Molitor says that he has no doubt in his mind that he is exactly where he’s supposed to be, he should be standing in the middle of Target Field with the World Series trophy hoisted over his head.
Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.