Gene Glynn, the coaching staff and the minor league managers

Gene Glynn wears a Rochester Red Wings cap while
visiting the baseball park in his native Waseca before
spring training in 2013. (Free Press photo by Pat Christman)

The Twins on Wednesday announced two hires for the major league coaching staff, Waseca native Gene Glynn will be the third base coach and Rudy Hernandez will be assistant hitting coach.

Two points about Hernandez before I move on to Glynn.

• Hernandez is a 14-year veteran of the minor league system and a native of the Dominican, which makes him, I believe, the first native Spanish speaker on the coaching staff since Tony Oliva retired. 
• The "assistant hitting coach" title is new to the Twins, but it's pretty much the norm for the "seventh coach" around baseball. Teams were permitted seven uniformed coaches starting in 2013. (The number is capped because uniformed coaches accrue service time in the pension plan.) The Twins didn't add the seventh coach until 2014 (Paul Molitor) and gave him different duties. Now they're joining what has emerged as the conventional alignment.

Glynn, of course, is the headline hire here. He's been the manager at Triple A Rochester the past two years and was interviewed last month for the managerial job that went to Molitor. Now he'll be on the major league coaching staff and, as is the fate of all third base coaches, blamed by fans every time he sends a runner who gets thrown out and every time he holds a runner who never scores.

I presume Glynn will also have a hand in infield instruction, his forte for years in the Montreal Expos farm system. And he has several years of experience as a scout with Tampa Bay, which I find intriguing because I've long had doubts about the Gardenhire staff's aptitude for evaluating current ability.

Glynn has also been working for a few winters now as a coach in the Venezuelan Winter League, which leads me to believe that, while not a native Spanish speaker, he probably has some ability in that language. 

The Twins still have four coaching slots to fill: Pitching coach, bullpen coach, bench coach and first base coach.

With Glynn moved to the big league staff, the Triple A job is open. A popular theory has Doug Mientkiewicz ticketed for that position. That may happen, but I think the organization would be better off with Mientkiewicz at Double A Chattanooga, which is where Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, Jose Barrios, Jorge Polanco and a host of other important prospects figure to open 2015. Chattanooga figures to be the most important job in the farm system. 

The estimable Seth Stohs thinks Jake Mauer, who has run teams at three levels for the Twins, is a likely successor to Glynn in Rochester. I can see that. The Twins have also gone outside the organization repeatedly for Triple A managers, and that might well be the route they take. 

Subtract one candidate, assess

Chip Hale has 2,728 fewer managerial victories
than the man to his left in this photo, Tony LaRussa.

One candidate for the Twins managerial job was scratched Monday. Chip Hale took the job in Arizona.

Which leaves the Twins with six known candidates and perhaps more to come.

We know of inside candidates Gene Glynn, Doug Mienkiewicz and Paul Molitor, and of outside candidates Sandy Alomar Jr,, Torey Lovullo and Joe McEwing. There's a very real chance that the search is now on hold while one or more candidates now coaching teams in the playoffs -- specifically John Russell of Baltimore and perhaps Jose Oquendo of St. Louis -- finishes the season.

It would be unfair to pin a specific label on any of the six -- unfair but tempting. They are all, without doubt, unique blends of personality and experience. Yet we can slide each into an individual slot:

• Glynn is the proven instructor and minor league veteran.
• Mientkiewicz is the young gun, just five years removed from his own playing days.
• Molitor is the Hall of Famer, with all the respect that carries.
• Alomar Jr. is the Spanish speaker.
• Lovullo is the guy from the sabermetric organization.
• McEwing is Mientkiewicz from the outside.

If Russell -- who was the first outsider to be specifically tied to the search in media reports -- is indeed a candidate, his pigeonhole would be "the recycled manager."

Again, these guys all are more complex than those brief sentences.

My (emphatically outside) view on this group:

• I prefer Mientkiewicz over the field.
• Of the outside candidates, including Russell, I prefer Alomar Jr. because of the language component. The Twins have so many Latin players of importance coming up, but their track record with such talent under Ron Gardenhire was spotty.
• I still expect Molitor to get the job, in part because it's easier to imagine Mientkiewicz on Molitor's staff than vice versa.

Gene Glynn's managerial influences

Gene Glynn at spring training in Fort. Myers.

Gene Glynn, currently the manager of the Twins' Triple-A affiliate and candidate for the major league job, is something of an athletic legend in the Mankato area: Mr. Basketball at Waseca High in 1975, a star at Mankato State in both basketball and baseball.

Unlike the other known in-house candidates who've had interviews, Glynn never played in the majors. He played seven years in the Montreal Expos farm system, then went into coaching.

He had 13 years as a coach in the majors for four teams -- but oddly enough, really only two managers:

1994-98: Colorado Rockies, under Don Baylor.
1999: Montreal, under Felipe Alou.
2000-02: Chicago Cubs, under Baylor. (Baylor was fired in midseason; Rene Lachemann had the reins for one game, then Bruce Kimm was named interim manager.)
2003-06: San Francisco Giants, under Alou.

After that, he scouted for Tampa Bay before taking the Rochester job for the Twins. He's kept the Red Wings at or above .500 in each of his three seasons.

Glynn's minor league skippers, as listed by Baseball Reference, are Bob Bailey, Larry Bearnarth, Rick Renick, Buck Rogers and Alou. Rogers and Alou, of course, managed major league teams for years; Rogers shows up on Paul Molitor's list as well. (The manager for Glynn's first season is not listed on BA.)

I view Glynn as a dark horse candidate. Unlike Molitor and Doug Mientkiewicz, Glynn hasn't been directly involved in the development of prime prospects Byron Buxton or Miguel Sano, nor of such secondary prospects as Kennys Vargas, Eddie Rosario or Jorge Polanco. (He has had Danny Santana, Josmil Pinto, Alex Meyer and Trevor May.)

What he does bring to the table is  experience at instructing (his role in the Montreal system before being hired for the Colorado job) and scouting (Tampa Bay).

The coaching chopping block

Joe Vavra, on the job
for seven seasons, was
the newbie on the
coaching staff.

It was quite the purge at Target Field on Thursday, the day after the Twins completed a second-straight season with the worst record in the American League.

By the time Terry Ryan finished meeting one-on-one with the coaching staff, only manager Ron Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson were left in their accustomed positions — and they on one-year deals.

Bullpen coach and spring-training scheduler Rick Stelmaszek, who joined the coaching staff while the team was still playing at Metropolitan Stadium, was the first to get the ax — and when that word broke, the implications were obvious. If Stelly was getting pushed out, nobody was safe.

Rick Stelmaszek
had been with the
Twins for 32 years.

Also gone: third base coach Steve Liddle, first base coach Jerry White, and trainer Rick McWane. Bench coach Scott Ullger and hitting coach Joe Vavra are being reassigned to outfield instruction and infield instruction respectively; these do not figure to be major league positions, but I suspect we'll get a fuller spelling-out of things today, when Ryan, owner Jim Pohlad and team president Dave St. Peter meet with reporters.

This kind of purge is fairly common with other organizations, but not with the Twins. Even when the managers changed under Pohlad ownership, the coaching staffs remained largely intact.

Scott Ullger, at
various times, has
been the first base
coach, the hitting
coach, the third base
coach and the
bench coach.

From my perspective, the coaching staff the past several years has had two significant omissions: First, there was no native Spanish speaker. I suspect that part of the problem the Twins have had with such players as Francisco Liriano, Carlos Gomez and Alexi Casilla has been communication.  Second, the only infielders on the staff since Al Newman was fired after the 2005 season were the manager and the hitting coach, neither of whom should be expected to be focused on making sure the shortstop is properly positioned or on refining the second baseman's pivot.

Removing five of the six coaches opens plenty of opportunity for new faces. It is being widely assumed that the Triple A staff — Gene Glynn, Bobby Cuellar and Tom Brunansky — will be brought in, and Paul Molitor has apparently indicated an interest in returning to the coaching staff, which he left when Gardenhire became manager.

Let's see:

Jerry White had the
longest major league
playing career on
the staff: 11 seasons.

Manager: Gardenhire
Pitching coach: Anderson
Bench coach: Molitor (replacing Ullger)
Hitting coach: Brunansky (Vavra)
Third base coach: Glynn (Liddle)
First base coach: ? (White)
Bullpen coach: Cuellar (Stelmaszek)

Glynn and Molitor are former infielders, so that concern of mine is met. I don't know that the Spanish speaker concern is. 

Molitor would likely become the backup manager, a role Ullger has filled under Gardenhire — taking over after ejections or if Gardy is ill. And if the belief that Gardenhire is now on a short leash is correct, Molitor might be the new manager in waiting.

Gene Glynn gets the Rochester job

Gene Glynn as a coach for the San Francisco Giants.

A bit of a surprise, and a bit of a hometown pick -- Glynn is from Waseca, which (for those of my readers unfamiliar with southern Minnesota) is within the Free Press coverage area, and was a multi-sport star at what was then Mankato State and is now Minnesota State, Mankato.

He's been involved in professional ball in one way or another since college -- minor league player, minor league manager, major league coach (13 seasons, for the Expos, Giants, Rockies and Cubs; he followed Don Baylor and Felipe Alou from job to job), scout. His resume is pretty typical of a baseball lifer -- a variety of jobs with a number of organizations.

There were a number of names publicly associated with the opening, and Glynn's was not among them, which is why I called his selection a surprise. While I'm doubtless biased in his favor, I would think his varied background  will be a plus. He knows minor league life; as a scout the past five years for Tampa Bay, he should be a good talent evaluator; with 13 years of coaching in the majors, he should carry some credibility with his charges.

One thing's for sure: Rochester's tired of losing. The Red Wings have lost 90-plus games each of the last two seasons, and Tom Nieto, the former manager there, got the ax in large part because the Twins value the affiliation with Rochester and don't want to lose it. It may be the minor leagues, and the theoretical emphasis is on development -- but Glynn is expected to win games too.

It would certainly help his cause if the big league team doesn't need to use the disabled list so blinking much.