Pohlad: Gardenhire will get extension
Twins CEO Jim Pohlad said before Game 3 of the ALDS that it's ''a no-brainer'' that the manager will receive a contact extension. Gardenhire is signed through 2011.
Pohlad, who said he believes the Twins will be a playoff threat for years to come, appreciates that Gardenhire hasn't clamored for a deal.
''He's not very demanding in that regard,'' Pohald said. ''We know the relationship. He's going to be our manager for a long time.''
From the Strib.
over 1 year ago
less cowbell, more 'neau
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Any coaching changes?
Maybe something to shake things up a little.
it’d be great not to lead the league in GIDP again.
Pohlad should come here and write a fanpost
He could call it EXTEND G
And Money Man Mauer why are you not hitting?
Busy counting counting your money!
by what_would_gil_thorp_do on Oct 10, 2010 8:11 AM EDT reply actions 5 recs
I have no problem with Gardy coming back
We lost because of Mauer, Thome, and Kubel. Kubel didnt even get 1 hit!?!?!
Yuck
by clutterheart on Oct 10, 2010 9:08 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
+1
Yeah, he’s not the problem. He uses the players management gives him very well. This sweep was ugly but it doesn’t change the fact that the Twins had a great season.
he believes the Twins will be a playoff threat for years to come
Shouldn’t this be rephrased to something like: “he believes the Twins might actually become a playoff threat in the coming years”?
+1 hahahaha
"I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it . . ."
by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on Oct 10, 2010 11:24 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm glad
Frankly, I think most Minnesotans have become spoiled with winning the division 6 out of 10 years. I’m glad Gardy is coming back because we’ve had real success with him. We may not have playoff success with him but maybe, just maybe, we aren’t that good of a team when compared to the other teams in the AL and I don’t think that’s Gardy’s fault.
Not his fault his players don't step up when the heat is on
as a manager, there’s only so much you can do to get your players ready to go, the rest is up to them
"Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror" ~George Carlin
by thewild_viking_twins on Oct 10, 2010 5:42 PM EDT up reply actions
Oh boy.
This will certainly get them going.
2010 Postseason: FTY.
by fischean on Oct 10, 2010 9:57 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
After that series this isn’t the news I was hoping for. Gardy has made it pretty clear as long as he is manager this team will be nothing more than central division champs. What’s disappointing is that most Twins fans I know are okay with this. The difference between the Twins and other good teams is that we (media/fan base/front office) don’t call for change. We are very quick to accept everything that happens and move on. I am not normally one to blame the manager, but something, anything, needs to change. This was embarrassing.
by Butch Huskey's Breakout Year on Oct 10, 2010 10:00 AM EDT reply actions
Division Champs
As a fan who suffered through the early-mid 80s and the mid-late 90s, I’ll never, ever take a division championship for granted. Winning in MLB is more difficult than in any other sport – how would you like to be a fan of the Pirates or Royals right now? I guaranty any of them would trade places with us.
Of all the Twins’ problems right now, the manager is about 80th on the list. They lost because they don’t have a real power pitcher, a real RH DH option, and a real center-fielder. Gardy does a credible job with the talent the GM gives him. If you want to blame anyone, blame the GM for constructing a roster where the only viable bench options are backup catchers and futility infielders.
by matthew0211 on Oct 10, 2010 11:06 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I understand what you are saying. I am not trying to put all the blame on Gardy, though there certainly seems to be a fire that is missing in the clubhouse, whether that be the coaches and/or the players. Regardless, it should be an interesting winter with all the decisions the FO has to make. Thanks for bringing me back down to earth…..I would hate to be a pirates fan.
by Butch Huskey's Breakout Year on Oct 10, 2010 12:07 PM EDT up reply actions
Good.
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Not surprising
Disappointing, but not surprising.
I guess there’s still hope the Twins trade Mauer :-)
Maroon and Gold Headquarters: The Daily Gopher
You should make a "Trade Mauer" fanpost!
"Don't take life for granted, because tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us." -Kirby Puckett
"When he dove I slapped Nick Punto." Gardenhire on Mauer's head first dive into 1B.
by less cowbell, more 'neau on Oct 10, 2010 11:14 AM EDT up reply actions
I was joking ......
…. but I don’t think he or anyone else should be off-limits.
Maroon and Gold Headquarters: The Daily Gopher
Except for that pesky "no-trade" clause in his contract.
Sorry, no hope for that either! :D
"Don't take life for granted, because tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us." -Kirby Puckett
"When he dove I slapped Nick Punto." Gardenhire on Mauer's head first dive into 1B.
by less cowbell, more 'neau on Oct 10, 2010 12:12 PM EDT up reply actions
What an illadvised move that was!
Could you imagine the crying and threatening of murder, had the Twins not signed him and he would be going into FA with the Yankees ready to grab him?
by twinscrazy_german on Oct 10, 2010 2:23 PM EDT up reply actions
Yes, but
if he isn’t going to do what he did in 2009 again, he is way too expensive. We may not have had a winning option there (can’t let him go, can’t keep him) How well timed (for Mauer) was that season!
Then again, maybe he’ll be better again next season.
This isn’t surprising, and I don’t mind it. A big part of the Twins’ success is their organizational continuity. Granted, maybe sometimes continuity can hinder a team (e.g., something in their formula allows them to win the division most years but limits their potential come playoff time). Let’s hope they have the ability to take a step back and examine where they can improve.
That said, do I think the Yankees are in the Twins’ head? Absolutely, and Gardy might be a chief culprit. I just look at Game One, first inning, Span leads off with a single, and Gardy immediately calls for a sac bunt from Hudson. It got a polite applause from the crowd, but one-run strategies aren’t going to get you very far playing the Yankees in the postseason, particularly in inning 1 of game 1. I’m just guessing he, like the team, was playing too tight. I mean I won’t say they did or they didn’t punt away a big inning. But Gardy’s job is to put them in a position to succeed, and that’s just an example where he failed to do it (IMO), and might’ve done so because he was already pressing. I do consider that decision symptomatic of the team’s mindset going in.
That said, I think there are some overall problems at the organizational level that are more of a factor than Gardy. They still rely too much on pitch-to-contact types, which don’t play well against high-calibur offenses. The pitchers they do have that show some strikeout ability—Liriano, Baker, Slowey—have wavered between shakey and flakey and haven’t earned the team’s trust fully. They don’t have a true ace. Their up-the-middle players, outside of Hudson who’s a FA, probably didn’t have the years the club expected.
Anyway, it was another frustrating conclusion. But I’m excited to watch how they move forward. With the pipeline once again looking like it might produce some young players, maybe they’ll go back to a more athletic style than we’ve seen recently.
Gardenhire is not the only difference between us and the Royals or Pirates
So to say if we change him we’re going to fall into a decade of sucking is misguided, in my opinion.
I’m extremely disappointed in this, but it doesn’t surprise me because they’re selling tickets. So long as the money’s coming in, there’s no need to change anything if money’s the only goal.
Whether or not Gardenhire is a good playoff manager will be proved by the actual games, not by contract extensions. Maybe he’s been unlucky and we’ll break through one time. But I tend to think so long as he’s the manager, we’ll keep following this same formula and exit meekly from the playoffs, with a “Thanks for the invite. Everybody drive safe when you leave.”
I don’t know, to me pretty soon winning the division won’t be any different than the late ‘90s were. I don’t get the joy from winning in the regular season that I did in 2002-06 or even later. Now it comes with the knowledge that we’re not going to do anything with the wins. Our season’s just going to be 3-4 days longer and more depressing of a finish than had we been eliminated in game 163 or a week before that. To me that’s not really fun.
I know there’s a difference in philosophy between the “win once but win big” and the “win consistently but never win it all” concepts but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Just because you’re not winning the division doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be the Twins of the late 90’s for a decade of losing. With the front office we have now, their drafting has been very good and getting better, in my opinion. If we have a down year or two, they’ll get solid players with those high draft picks and we’ll be competitive very quickly.
No one has less perspective than sports fans. So we haven’t won in the playoffs. There are worse things in life. We win the division consistently, are treated to a contending team each and every year to enjoy for months at at time. I’m sorry, but not winning the World Series is not a failure. If you think it is I have to wonder what kind of standards you apply to yourself in your own life.
by jjstraka on Oct 10, 2010 2:25 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
I never said this is the be all and end all to life
Where in my post did I say my life was horrible because of this? It’s not. I have a great life and I know most people are far less fortunate than I am. I’m just saying as a baseball fan, winning the division really isn’t that enjoyable any more. I no longer feel like I’m watching a contending team. There’s a difference between a winning team and a contending team (if you’re referring to contending for the World Series). We’ve most certainly been the former, but I no longer watch in the summer thinking we’re the latter like I did in the early part of the decade or that I hoped we could be in the later part of the 90’s. In the later part of the 90’s I at least had hope that we’d eventually win another world series. Right now I don’t see that happening any time soon. As our talent level has risen, we’ve gotten progressively worse in the playoffs. So when you say “we’re treated to a contending team to enjoy for months at a time” that doesn’t really apply for me. I have friends that are Yankees fans that I don’t even bring up baseball around because they just rip on the Twins, and what can I say?
So before you say I have no perspective, realize that the statement only applied to watching baseball and the enjoyment I get from that. Not to anything else.
I'm glad, he's Bobby Cox v.2
Gardy makes decisions, but in the end, the players need to get it done….they haven’t. Hopefully that will change.
Baseball reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.-Terence Mann/James Earl Jones in FoD
-1
It is true that players have to get it done; however, it slices both ways. On the one hand, Gardy gets the praise for leading the Twins to the divisional title, but he is somehow completely exempted from blame when it comes to playoff preparedness—then, all the fault falls on the players.
Ironically, if we take that line of reasoning, the manager doesn’t matter, so it shouldn’t matter who coaches the team during the regular season. Hence, if they hired my mother as manager, she would have more-or-less the same success as Gardy (of course, she would in the playoffs, regardless).
In fact, I agree with stelvis10 because I happen to think that the manager is a vital element to winning in playoff baseball. I’m not sure how many of TT bloggers were around to watch the 1987 Twins playoff run, but if you were, there should be no question in your minds that the Twins won in playoff baseball because a) they were bettter prepared than their opponents, b) they were exceeding confident and c) they performed at the peak of their games. All of these can be directly tied to how they were coached and prepared by Tom Kelly. The difference between the Tigers and the Twins that year?? As monumentally huge as in any year, based upon records and stats. The Tigers should have crushed the Twins into iron ore filings (MN reference here), but they didn’t because they were out-coached and out-managed.
If I perceived next year as being any different than this year, I’d say, “Hey, let’s keep Gardy.” But I am confident the same thing will happen if the Twins get to playoffs.
And, I don’t buy the argument that Gardy is the best that is out there; I’d say he’s an average manager. There are many talented coaches who I think could deliver the Twins additional divisional titles, IMHO. Nevertheless, as long as Gardy takes the position of cow-towing to the front office, I believe he can stick around as long as he wants. That’s the sad part of this whole debate.
Let the poison arrows fall where they may :-)
"I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it . . ."
by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on Oct 10, 2010 11:20 PM EDT up reply actions
I'd only be for letting Gardy go
If there was a really, really good replacement waiting in the wings, like Joe Torre or Paul Molitor. Otherwise, I’m fine with him staying. I appreciate what he’s done, but I sometimes wonder if a different manager might be a step forward. You just never know, decisions like that are difficult to consider…in this most recent series, the players definitely shoulder most of the blame.
by MarshalltheIrish on Oct 14, 2010 1:27 AM EDT up reply actions
Great to hear Gardy is getting an extension!
Gardenhire represents and manages the Twins very well. During his 9 years managing the Twins he has led them to 6 AL Central Championships and had only one season finishing below .500. Five times he’s been runner up for coach of the year. He has always made good decisions before and during games and backs his players and team. I don’t think the Twins could hire a better manager than Gardy right now and I believe Gardenhire really loves it here in Minnesota. I hope Pohlad will give Gardy another 3 year extension like he did back in 2008.
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