They are being aimed right at your chest, Skippy. One of the reasons to watch and listen to the Twins is because of their manager. Players like playing for him and he gets what he can from them. I’d like to win the WS every year also, but I think that is more of an ownership issue than a managerial one.

I think Gardy does a good job of keeping the players loose throughout the year, which is a good thing and has probably contributed to our many comebacks in his tenure. I think he uses his bullpen well in the regular season when he has a deep, good bullpen. This year, when he only had a couple dependable guys, he ran them into the ground, refusing to use anyone else in close situations. That cost our bullpen badly this year. I also think he micromanages his pen once the playoffs start. Really, in general, his in game strategy is usually pretty uncreative and sometimes erratic.

I think he’s a bit too jumpy getting starters out of the game. Most of our starters had a problem in July and August getting into the later innings, they got tired. He often will pull a guy out of the game after a strong inning just because he’s got 90 or 95 pitches or so. While I’m all for saving guys arms, I think it’s important to let them go over 100 now and then when they’re looking good, even when the team doesn’t NEED it, just so they learn how to do it. If you never do it, you won’t know HOW to stretch those last 10-15 pitches out of your arm healthily and effectively.

I’ve never been a big fan of his lineup construction, although this year, it wasn’t as much of a problem, we had about the best lineup we could get. I hope that is Young or Cuddyer re/emerge as middle of the order bats Gardy will look back at the Mauer hitting two scenario.

In the past, I’d faulted Gardenhire’s hesitancy to trust younger players, but he was much better with that this year too. I don’t know if it was because this was supposed to be a rebuilding year, but he trusted his young starters, really finally fell in love with Kubel and didn’t let Monroe steal too much of his time, as I was afraid he might. He stuck with Gomez, even as he struggled. He went with Span, which proved to be a huge move (one that many around here, including me, disagreed with at the time).

I don’t think he prepares our hitters for the playoffs well. Whatever it is, our hitters have always gotten into the playoffs and laid big eggs. We’ve lost a lot of low scoring games in October this decade where our pitchers looked great under pressure and our hitters looked nervous and jittery.

And despite what the national media preaches, he doesn’t seem to have too much interest in drilling the little things, since most of the players that came up post TK don’t have that same level of “little thing polish” that TK’s guys did. It’s probably because he’s so laid back.

So while I think he has a couple of important and large strengths, I also think he has a long list of weaknesses. I used to think he was one of the worst managers in the game, but after looking around the league for the last several years, quite frankly, there are a LOT of worse managers than Ron Gardenhire, though that may speak more to the uncreative and cronyistic reality in the hiring of managers across Major League Baseball more than Gardenhire’s excellence.

He’s a players’ manager, which has its plusses and minuses. The -plus is guys really like pleying for him and generally have fun doing so.

The minus is his loyalty can get out of whack and he ends up using guys when he shouldn’t (ahem, Rincon, Bass, Guerrier). I’ve heard people say: Gary was just proving a point there—he wanted to show Bill Smith that the guy was done and he had to do it in big games to send a message. I think that’s just messed up.

Overall, you can’t argue with results. But I still think this year was a missed opportunity. Even if he goes i a different direction in half of the games in which he ran out Rincon, Bass, and Guerrier in close and late situations, you gotta believe the Twins win one more game.

What do big-league baseball players do with their socks after the game? Do they put them in their cubicle? Leave them on the floor? Take them home and wash them? Or something else?

It’s a question that anyone who has spent even a little time in a big-league clubhouse can answer. And if you have spent some time there and you know the answer to that simple question, it suggests that you might be knowledgeable enough about what goes on behind this game to move on to ask the bigger questions, such as what’s the purpose of a manager, and how good is this one, etc.

If you do not know the answer to that simple question, you don’t know what goes on in a big-league clubhouse, and if you don’t know that, you know so little about the game that it’s not worth your time to ask big questions, regardless of how many fantasy baseball titles you have won.

Tom Kelly was usually rude, or borderline rude, to the callers on his radio shows. The guy just had no time for people who didn’t know anything about running a ballclub, and he let it be known.

TK knew by the question whether the caller had good insight into the game and whether he was worthy of bitching about Rick Reed. If it was clear to Kelly that the caller was a clueless stooge, no matter how long that caller had been purchasing season tickets, Kelly just basically said, “Go to hell. You are an idiot. I don’t pretend to know about your job as a marketing manager, because I never did any marketing or spent any time in an office. Don’t tell me how to run my club when you have never played the game past Little League. Watching and understanding are mutually exclusive.”

And he was right. You can bitch about the way that restaurant you just ate in is run, but just eating in restaurants doesn’t mean you know anything about running one.

Gardenhire is always polite to callers, even to those whose questions reveal that they clearly know nothing about the game.

I’m not relating this to show what a great guy Gardy is, I’m relating it to say that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” and what most baseball fans have is a little knowledge.

Being a fan of anything, or not being a fan of it, is not the same as understanding it. Gone With the Wind was an awful, overrated film, and even if I try to imagine myself back in the day that it debuted, it still seems pretty goddamned awful. But I wouldn’t have any idea how to make that film.

Every time I complain about the Twins seemingly being unprepared in a certain game or certain siuation in a game based upon on-the-field performances by Twins, I get hit with a backlash saying that there is nothing that could be done about it because the players failed. It had nothing to do with the manager.

I just don’t buy that argument. There has to be some responsibility borne by the manager, whether it be based upon the players’ mentality in a certain situation or which players are used and for what. It could be something as simple as practicing double-plays 10 more times a day during spring training, but there has to be some responsibility given to the manager. (I do not claim to have the answer in my back pocket; however, and would be loathe to pick a good replacement manager if RG were he to be replaced—a scenario that is extremely unlikely based upon the Twins’ history and the media fascination with RG.)

I don’t think Gardy is the worst manager in MLB. I am sure there are a bevy of very bad managers, much worse than he. I do think he is mediocre at best. I also don’t claim to have the answers, but simply blaming the players for every loss doesn’t sit well with me.

….loved playing for Tom Kelly (at least in the early days), but clearly he was a much different kind of manager than RG.

But then why do Leyland and Guillen sing Gardenhire’s praises for being one of the best managers in the game? Not mediocre, one of the best. Do they say it just for the media?

If not, they clearly know more about baseball and managing than we do, because if we know more we are awfully stupid to not be managing in the majors. Yet they think he’s great.

Why?

Media fascination with Gardy? The media were fascinated with Billy Gardner, and that’s about the last time the Twin Cities media was fascinated with a manager.

I have no answers for your question. Maybe that is what they believe or maybe it is just what is supposed to happen in the good old boys network. I am sure if you asked Gardy about Guillen or Leyland, you would likely get the same response.

PS-I certainly didn’t imply the local media, but the national media, which seem to love Gardy, especially the boys and girls at ESPN.

…they all do.

It’s the old you don’t crap where you eat thing.

Whomever you think is the worst manager in baseball is not going to get trashed by announcers. I don’t think you will find anyone on ESPN ripping on Eric Wedge (or insert other modestly capable manager here.)

(Full disclosure: I don’t watch Sports Center or any baseball-related gab shows, so I am presuming these guys were not ripping someone like Ned Yost when he got fired.)

By default, Gardy will get some nods from the national announcers because of the Twins’ budget. I’m not saying this should not be the case, but to me, that’s the starting point. Or a starting point.

It has nothing to do with Gardy, and everything to do with the story. It immediately becomes a David-Goliath storyline if the Twins are playing a lot of teams, like the Red Sox or Yankees or Angels, and for some reason people love little choo-choo that can stuff.

They love that at TwinkieTown. Look at how many people here wanted Randy Ruiz in the big leagues and got all excited about the guy. He wasn’t even a factor, really. The Twins would have gotten more out of keeping Craig Monroe.

Ruiz played a handful of games all of September. He got a couple of key hits before that, but did most of his damage against guys who were borderline AAA-big leaguers. Craig Monroe would have played more, and he would have gotten a couple of key hits. But Monroe was the veteran, and Ruiz was the guy with the storyline. Free Randy Ruiz. People eat up that stuff.