Bosio, Anderson and Gardenhire

It was impossible to imagine Ron Gardenhire managing the Twins without Rick Anderson as his pitching coach. The duo, old buddies during their playing days with the mid-80s Mets, supposedly made a pact back then -- if and when Gardy got a big league managing job, Andy would be his pitching coach.

And so it was, for 13 seasons, many good and some not.

Which made it noteworthy that, when Gardenhire landed the dugout job in Detroit, it was with a different pitching coach. The Tigers has already hired Chris Bosio, discharged by the Chicago Cubs when Jim Hickey became available. Gardenhire did get to bring Anderson on as his bullpen coach, but Bosio was imposed on him by the higher ups.

And on Wednesday, the higher ups removed Bosio, reportedly without any input from Gardenhire, over something Bosio said to an unspecified team employee. From the Detroit Free Press:

The nature of Bosio’s comments — and who they were directed toward — were not disclosed by (general manager Al) Avila. It is not clear whether those comments were racial, sexual or otherwise bigoted in nature.

Gardy, in the above linked piece, speaks highly of Bosio as a pitching coach but added: “This organization has to act and they did."

And so Gardenhire has Anderson as his pitching coach once again.

Gardy's Detroit opener

Ron Gardenhire's regular season debut as Detroit's manager went extra innings, but he wasn't around to see the end. He got ejected in the 10th inning, or maybe the 11th, after the replay umps in New York overturned what sure looked to me like a run for the Tigers and ruled it an inning-ending out.

Ron Gardenhire kicks dirt; umpire Tony Randazzo
kicks him out.

Gardy's reaction was familiar to Twins fans, even if the warmup jacket wasn't.

Mad Gardenhire is my kind of Gardenhire.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 30, 2018

Dingell, for those unaware, is a retired congressman from Detroit who spend 60 years in the U.S. House.

The Tigers lost 13-10 in 13 innings, which is probably indicative of how this season is going to go for Gardenhire. Dingell may get to see a lot of "mad Gardenhire."

I was following the game on MLB Network, which was carrying the Tigers broadcast. The announcers were praising the slide of Nick Castellanos, which was just silly. Had he gone to the inside of the plate, there's no way catcher Francisco Cervelli could have reached him. (I'm not sure Cervelli did as it was, but the replay crew thought so.) Instead, he slid slightly toward foul territory. It was not an ideal slide, and the announcers were silly to claim otherwise.

Pic of the Week

Ron Gardenhire is notably trimmer this spring
 than he was in his final years with the Twins.

Many challenges await Ron Gardenhire as manager of the Detroit Tigers. I was and remain dubious that this job is a good fit for him. The Tigers are all-in on a tear-down and rebuild project, which means play the kids, and Gardy's consistent pattern with the Twins was to prefer an experienced player to fix problems.

But I suspect the biggest problem is lifestyle. Managing is a stressful job, and it was pretty obvious to even the casual onlooker that Gardenhire was getting much heavier and less healthy with every passing seasons in Minnesota.

Three seasons and a bout of prostate cancer have passed since Gardenhire was fired by the Twins. I didn't think he'd get another opportunity to manage, but the Tigers hired him, and he's largely reunited his old coaching staff (Rick Anderson, Steve Liddle, Joe Vavra). He sounds happy this spring. Let us hope that the likeable Gardenhire isn't going to resume killing himself with the stress this time around.

Notes, quotes and comment (manager edition)

The Washington Nationals announced Friday that Dusty Baker won't be back as manager next year.

That's a mistake on the Nats' part.

Baker may not be regarded as a tactical genius, but there are few better at handling a clubhouse of star egos. At 68, he probably isn't a good choice for a rebuilding team, but the Nats are in win-now mode. The Nats have a really good roster, and they have Bryce Harper for at least next year.

Baker fits there. I can't name anybody who fits better.

---

The Tigers made Ron Gardenhire's hiring official Friday.

One thing I took from the stories of his press conference: He says he weighed 275 pounds at the end of his Twins tenure. He's down about 40 pounds from that, he says.

Let us hope he handles the stress of managing in a more healthy way this time around.

Gardy in Detroit

The word Thursday evening was that the Detroit Tigers had settled on Ron Gardenhire as their next manager, and the Boston Red Sox had settled on Alex Cora.

Neither deal was completely done, but assuming that nothing goes wrong in wrangling the contract details, Gardy will be back in the AL Central.

And good for him. I don't think Detroit is a particularly good fit for him, not that anybody is likely to win with the Tigers for a few years. It's an organization with an over-the-hill core and a weak farm system.

The good news is that ownership --with the passing of patriarch Mike Ilitch -- recognizes the necessity of rebuilding. The bad news is, they haven't much to rebuild with.

I don't view Gardenhire's strengths and weaknesses as a good fit for a rebuilding team. He was, throughout his tenure with the Twins, inclined to prefer proven players and impatient with youngsters. That was understandable when the Twins were contending, but during the last few seasons it was counterproductive. I don't know for sure that Oswaldo Arcia or Liam Hendricks would have turned into viable major league regulars with steadier opportunities; what I do know is that neither developed as hoped.

A team in the Tigers position, I think, would do better to go with a younger, even inexperienced, manager, one less beholden to his past.

I thought, and wrote, that Gardenhire's strengths fit well with the Red Sox. What he doesn't have, and the Sox may well have required, is a history of working with the advanced metrics in vogue today.

It's possible that the past season, spent working with Red Sox alum Torey Lovello with the Arizona Diamondbacks, taught Gardenhire what he was missing with his previous resistance to the new stats. Gardy's about the same age I am; I'd like to think that I'm capable still of growing. But I also know that it's harder for me to accept change.

Anyway, I don't jeer at this:

Source: In interview, #Tigers were impressed by Gardenhire’s openness to sabermetrics, which evolved during his tenure with #DBacks. @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) October 20, 2017

I also won't jeer at those who want to see the evidence.

Ron Gardenhire and the Red Sox job

The Boston Red Sox announced early Wednesday morning that John Farrell was out as manager. Within hours, Ron Gardenhire was linked to the opening.

Unlike the Detroit job, Boston appears a good fit for Gardenhire. 

Gardenhire prefers established players and set lineups. In my estimation, his weakest point as a manager is his (in)ability to accurately judge the current skill set of a player. The Red Sox currently boasts eight regulars and a catching platoon. Gardy is not adept at lineup juggling; this team doesn't need that. They don't figure to have spring training position battles to judge. 

The Saux have several big-name starters in their rotation and a stellar closer, but have had some issues of late in the middle of their bullpen. In my estimation, Gardenhire's greatest strength as a manager is handling the pen. The list of relievers who pitched better for Gardenhire than for anybody else is long, starting with Eddie Guardado, J.C. Romero and (to a lesser extent) LaTroy Hawkins through Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon and Dennys Reyes to Glen Perkins and Jared Burton.

I don't know that he's going to get the job. But it would make sense.

Gardy's cancer

It's a bit surprising to me to realize that I haven't noted here the prostate cancer diagnosis of former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, which he revealed at the start of spring training.

Not that I have anything insightful to say about prostate cancer or its treatment, but I can't imagine how many words I've written in this blog, approving or frowning, over the years about Gardenhire.

He's not involved with the Twins anymore, of course; he's the bench coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

And best wishes to him, both with the new job and with the cancer treatment. No matter how trying the record his last few years with the Twins, I know of no reason to wish the man ill.

Notes, quotes and comment

Gonna interrupt the stream of "Handbook" posts for a few days and catch up on the news.

Awards season

Nothing on the National League side to comment on: Everything is as it should be. Kris Bryant won the MVP as expected; Max Scherzer was certainly deserving of the Cy Young;  Corey Seager merited designation as the Rookie of the Year; and Dave Roberts works as Manager of the Year.

On the AL side, the voters acknowledged the obvious in ROY (Michael Fulmer) and Manager (Terry Francona). But the other two awards deserve some comment, in one case because of old-school voting and in the other for new-school voting.

Mike Trout -- clearly the best player in baseball the past five years --  won his second MVP. I expected it to go to Mookie Betts, who obviously had a superb season and played on a team that won. The writers, this time, gave it to the best player even though it wasn't anything resembling a career year for him and even though his team was far from contention. And even though a wide range of September game broadcasts, when discussing the MVP possibilities, excluded Trout from the possibilities.

Trout in the past five seasons has finished second, second, first, second and first in MVP voting. He could easily have won all five seasons; the competing metrics that attempt to merge fielding and hitting into one figure often disagree, but they all agree each year that Trout is the best player in the American League.

The Cy Young voting was interesting, not least because of the Tweet storm it provoked from model Kate Upton, who is romantically involved with runner-up Justin Verlander. Rick Porcello won, even though Verlander had more first-place votes (14 to 8).

Had I a vote, I probably would have put Verlander at the top, but I also would have researched the question more thoroughly. A quick glance at Porcello's numbers suggest a stronger statistical case than I realized when the award was announced Wednesday. He's not an embarrassment as the winner.

But the biggest piece for Porcello was probably the gaudy won-lost record (22-4). Verlander was "only" 16-9. Perhaps most telling were the voters who ranked J.A. Happ (20-4) ahead of Verlander -- or, in the case of the two Tampa Bay-chapter voters who provoked Upton's ire, left Verlander off their ballots completely but found room for Happ. The only thing Happ had going for him was the won-lost record.

Old-school voting prevailed in the Cy Young contest, new age in the MVP.

Gardy in a dugout

Arizona hired Ron Gardenhire, not as manager but as bench coach. So he will presumably be advising new skipper Torey Lovello -- supposedly the runner-up to Paul Molitor when the Twins were replacing Gardy -- on when to bunt or change pitchers.

I've been skeptical that Gardenhire would get another managerial post. Taking a bench job at least puts him back in the game.

Korn Ferry fired

The search firm the Twins used to find Derek Falvey as director of baseball ops got axed by MLB this week because it was basically going to the same well (the Cleveland organization) over and over again to find candidates.

There does seem to have been a lack of diversity, not only racially but in background, of the people Korn Ferry promoted to teams for important front office positions. But I also suspect that owners wanted the kind of people Korn Ferry provided -- young, analytic, educated. That's certainly what I expected the Twins to demand, because it's what was lacking in the previous leadership model.

The search that produced Falvey was one of the last Korn Ferry did, and it may be that it was the last straw. But Falvey seems to be what the Twins bosses wanted.

Bringing back Gardy

Ron Gardenhire
is back in the
organization.

Ron Gardenhire spent last season getting paid not to manage and hoping to land a dugout job for this year. The latter didn't happen, and the former ended. On Monday the Twins announced that Gardy will be a special assistant to the general manager, a role that will involve touring the minor league affiliates for instruction and evaluation, plus some major league scouting.

This is basically the role Tom Kelly has played for years, but Gardenhire's dugout predecessor apparently has decided to cut back on the travel, which is understandable.

I've no problem with the instruction role of Gardenhire's new job. The scouting and evaluation portion, I'm not so sure about. My sense of his lengthy managerial tenure is that evaluation was one of his weaker points.

To be sure, the evaluation process is collaborative, and an outsider such as me cannot be sure how much of a decision came from the manager and how much came from others in the organization. But a few (admittedly cherry picked) lowlights from Gardenhire's reign seem traceable to him:

2005-06: With shortstop Cristian Guzman departed, Gardenhire persisted in playing veteran Juan Castro and found (or invented) reasons to sit Jason Bartlett. This only ended when Terry Ryan released third baseman Tony Batista and sold  Castro, giving Gardy really no other option.

Early 2009: I remember a piece in one of the metros in which Gardenhire bragged that pitching coach Rick Anderson wanted Glen Perkins to be a relief pitcher, but Gardy knew that Perkins was a starter. Turned out Anderson had the better handle on Perkins.

Late 2009: Gardenhire buried Carlos Gomez, deciding that Delmon Young was the better player. Even in September, with Justin Morneau sidelined by his fractured vertebra, Gardy filled the lineup hole with a platoon of Brendan Harris and Jose Morales at DH (which moved Jason Kubel to right and Michael Cuddyer to first). Today, of course, Gomez is a two-time All-Star and lineup fixture, while Young is out of the game.

2014: The Twins opened the season with Kubel and Bartlett on the 25-man roster, even though both appeared practically useless in spring training.

There are other questionable evaluations that I don't think can be blamed on Gardenhire as directly as these.

All told, this is not a track record that makes me believe I want Gardy having a major voice in deciding, for example, which of Oswaldo Arcia, Max Kepler and Eddie Rosario should be the long-term left fielder.

From the Handbook: Molitor tactically, Part I

2015 was something of a novelty for Twins fans: They got to see a new manager after 13 seasons of Ron Gardenhire calling the shots. And before Gardy, there was 14-plus seasons of Tom Kelly.

What, specifically, did Paul Molitor do differently in terms of moves than Gardenhire?

Here's a sizable difference: Consecutive days of use by relief pitchers. Gardenhire at one point (2007-2010) averaged more than 100 RCD a year. But his final four seasons, he was down to 82, 82, 78 and 82. Molitor shot that up to 123 last year, roughly a 50 percent increase, and notably more than Gardenhire's high of 115.

Five pitchers had at least 13 consecutive days usage for the Twins last year; Blaine Boyer led with 20.Two others had nine. Only three Twins relievers had 13 RCD in 2014, none with more than 17.

I think this is worth bookmarking. Ryan Pressly had nine RCD in his 27 appearances for Molitor, then he got hurt. Boyer spent time on the disabled list. Aaron Thompson had 13 RCD, lost effectiveness and was sent down, never to return. Pitchers get hurt, and some of these guys were and are marginal major leaguers anyway, so I'm reluctant to declare a bright line of causality. but this is worth monitoring. Molitor was aggressive about using relievers on consecutive days. It's possible that is counterproductive.

To cherry-pick some other possibly interesting data points: Gardenhire used an average of 125 lineups a year, with a high of 135 in 2005 and low of 97 in 2006. Molitor's 124 is right around Gardenhire's average.

Gardenhire's teams averaged 135 steal attempts and 51 sac bunt attempts; Molitor in 2015, 108 and 44. (Gardenhire's two lowest bunting years were his final two seasons). Molitor also stole less often in 2015 than Gardy did in 2014 and bunted more frequently. 

Gardenhire's hitters over his career had the platoon advantage 62 percent of the time. Molitor's hitters this year, 59 percent of the time. I believed, and declared often, that Molitor was more attuned to the platoon advantage than Gardenhire was, but this suggests otherwise. (I suspect the difference is that Gardenhire had a number of left-handed hitting regulars over the years that he simply refused to platoon despite the numbers, such as Jacque Jones and Jason Kubel; they faced more righties than lefties simply because there are more righties than lefties. Molitor's regulars tended to be right handed.)

Molitor put runners in motion 132 times, the closest of any manager to the AL average of 136. Gardenhire averaged 128 (but in his first two years, just 44 and 37; in 2012 he was up to 207). 

Gardy, Black and Baker

A few days ago, the Washington Nationals had settled on Bud Black as their manager. On Tuesday, they officially announced the hiring of Dusty Baker.

In between came an apparently contentious contract negotiation with Black, who found both the length of contract and salary too small. The Nats have gotten a reputation for low-balling managers, and that is apparently by design, Their initial offer to Black was a one-year contract; meanwhile, Don Mattingly got four years from the Miami Marlins, and the Fish have made a habit of paying people not to manage them.

The Black fiasco should be an embarrassment for the Nationals, but I suspect Baker's actually a better choice for Washington. For all his sabermetric and tactical shortcomings, Baker's well-established as a handler of egos, and that might be the biggest specific task for the manager of that squad.

And while he was justly criticized for his mishandling of a talented set of young pitchers during his tenure with the Cubs, Baker appears to have learned from that experience. He was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds when Johnny Cueto emerged as a star. In 2012 the Reds led the National League in run prevention; in 2013 they were fourth, this in an extreme hitter's park. in those two years, nine Reds made at least 30 starts. That's not a record that fits his reputation as a pitcher-killer, but that reputation ought to be outdated by now.

The Nationals had high expectations entered 2015, and failed to come close. There will be a good bit of roster churn there this winter, but they will still have Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer, and they will continue to have high expectations, perhaps higher than they ought to be.

---

Meanwhile, in San Diego, the Padres have reportedly offered Ron Gardenhire the bench coach job. That provoked this tweet (from a reporter who confidently informed the world that Rick Sofield would be the Padres skipper less than 24 hours before Andy Green was hired):

The #Padres offered bench cch job to Ron Gardenhire, as @dennistlin reported. Better chance of Donald Trump becoming Hillary's running mate

— Scott Miller (@ScottMillerBbl) November 3, 2015

Assuming that Gardenhire doesn't need the job financially, I would think it's a question of: What's the best route for gaining the managerial job he really wants? My guess is that he (and his agent) will figure that he's better off remaining a free agent and waiting for somebody to get canned in midseason.

To be specific, there was a widespread expectation that Detroit would fire Brad Ausmus after their disappointing 2015, and that Gardenhire was his most likely successor. Ausmus has been retained for 2016, but the leash is probably short. There's a genuine logic to Gardenhire deciding to decline any coaching jobs to keep himself available for a managerial post.

Gardy getting shut out

Andy Green, most recently third base coach for the
Arizona Diamondbacks, will manage the San Diego Padres.

For a good while on Wednesday, Internet reports -- or perhaps I should say Internet rumors, considering how it all ended -- had Ron Gardenhire getting the San Diego Padres managerial job. Late in the night, it was suddenly Rick Sofield's job. And on Thursday afternoon, the Padres held an actual press conference with their actual hire: Andy Green.

Other than the obvious lines on his resume -- he's 38, hit exactly .200 in 265 major league plate appearances over four seasons, all  with Arizona, bounced around the minors as a player, managed four seasons in the minors for the Diamondbacks before getting back to the majors as a coach -- I don't know anything about Green, so I'll pass on saying good hire or bad hire. San Diego's been a oddy comfy job for managers -- Bruce Bochy lasted there forever. and Bud Black held the job for more than eight years without much success -- but the new front office might be swinging the pendulum the other way. We'll see.

No, the thing of interest here for me is Gardenhire. I wrote in the Monday print column that I thought the former Twins skipper a better fit for the Washington job than the Padres position, but apparently the Nats are going with Black, who checks the "major league experience" block as well as Gardenhire does and is at least reputed to be more in tune with the analytical approach to the game than Gardy is. The Black hire isn't official yet, and the Dodgers and Marlins haven't made their announcements yet either, but right now it appears Gardenhire won't have a helm going into spring training.

What we aren't seeing in this year's wave of hires is a strong bias for skippers who never managed on any level. Green has. Black has. Don Mattingly, who is said to be taking the Miami job, has. To be sure, Scott Servais in Seattle is a novice, so that trend hasn't died out completely, but it's not as pronounced as in the past few offseasons.

Still, front offices aren't backing off their insistence that the dugout bosses use the new analytic information they are being supplied with. I suspect that, fairly or not, that's an issue for Gardenhire as he tries to land a new position.

Ex-Twins watch: Ron Gardenhire

Ron Gardenhire isn't going to be the Detroit Tigers manager, notwithstanding last month's Internet rumors. But he apparently will be interviewed by the San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals for their vacancies.

My sense of those organizations is that Gardy is probably too old-school for the Padres' new-wave front office. The Nationals, on the other hand, appear to want an old-school manager, and after two years of first-time skipper Matt Williams, emphatically crave experience.

Which is the better job? Well, the Nats have the best player in the league in Bryce Harper, and even if Jordan Zimmermann leaves as a free agent, the rotation will still feature Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. There's going to be considerable turnover on the Washington roster, but there will be enough there to justify an expectation of winning now.

The Washington job also comes with the sizable shadow of the end-of-the-season scuffle between Harper and Jonathan Papelbon. Whoever gets that job will have to deal with some sizable egos and ... personalities.

I've been a bit skeptical of Gardenhire's chances of landing a second managerial job; teams have been downplaying retreads in favor of novice managers, which I believe is a direct result of front offices wanting skippers who will use the new world of information. That is probably not one of Gardenhire's selling points. But the Nationals appear to be in the market for what Gardy does offer -- a dugout boss who's been there.

Notes, quotes and comment

The Twins went from a difficult-to-swallow extra-inning loss on Wednesday to an embarrassing, can't-anybody-pitch one on Thursday.

Score eight runs, you ought to win. All the Twins accomplished with eight runs was force the Angels into a save situation.

A game and a half out of the second wild-card, 16 games to go.

---

Ron Gardenhire has been strongly linked with the Detroit Tigers managerial job since last month, when Dave Dombrowski was fired as club president. This week the Star Tribune's LaVelle Neal wrote that Gardy's agent has been "in contact with more than one club about a possible return, according to someone close to Gardenhire,"

Which sounds like the former Twins manager is trying to drum up some competition for his services, or at least the illusion of competition.

The overwhelming trend in dugout bosses in recent years has been for inexperienced managers who are likely to be more receptive to front office "suggestions" than the old hands. Gardenhire does not fit that trend. I find it difficult to imagine that he's going to have multiple teams to choose from.

---

I don't believe I've made mention of this before, but both Max Kepler, the outfielder-first baseman who tore up the Southern League for Chattanooga, and Jose Berrios, the right-handed pitcher whose absence from the September call-up list stirred some fan displeasure, were named to the mythical all-prospect teams by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline.

On Thursday, Kepler hit a pair of homers, one a grand slam, as the Lookouts evened the Southern League championship series with Biloxi.

Notes, quotes and comment

The word out of Chicago (where the Twins spent Thursday's off day) was that Kurt Suzuki's knee felt good enough that it was deemed unnecessary to see another doctor.

If that assessment is accurate, that's good. I certainly expected at the time of Wednesday's collision that Suzuki's season was over. We'll see, obviously, how all this plays out.

---

Plenty of Ron Gardenhire talk the past few days out of Detroit, where the chatter is that owner Mike Ilitch has decided that Brad Ausmus won't return as manager and that the 86-year-old owner wants Gardy as the dugout boss.

I can't help but notice that Al Avila, the new general manager in Motown, is barely mentioned in these reports. It's all being driven, apparently, by Ilitch. As a general rule, when owners start making basic baseball decisions, it turns out poorly.

One aspect in which Gardenhire is an obvious good fit for Detroit: His bullpens in Minnesota were generally quite good, and the relief corps in Detroit were, for both Ausmus and Jim Leyland, frequently the weakest point of the roster. And Gardy's preference for veterans fits well with an organization with one of the game's weakest farm systems.

The arrow is pointing down for Detroit right now. It's not a job positioned for immediate success, even with Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander on the roster. But Gardenhire wants to manage again, and there are only 30 such jobs.

Notes, quotes and comment

Catching up on a few items from the past week:

Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press had this piece on Kurt Suzuki's skepticism about pitch-framing stats. The Twins catcher had so much skepticism about sabermetric evaluation that Berardino couldn't fit it all into that story and spilled it over into this blog post.

And you know what? I don't care that Suzuki hasn't read up on WAR or walked through the math that insists that the very best players (Mike Trout for example) account for only a handful of wins. That's essentially useless information for a player. It will matter if he harbors ambitions of someday having a baseball job that involves player evaluation, but for what he's doing now, it's immaterial.

---

Lynn Henning of the Detroit News had this analysis of the challenges facing the Tigers' new general manager, Al Avila.

Noteworthy in my eyes is his assertion about who would replace Brad Ausmus as manager should Avila make a change:

The expectation would be Avila and owner Mike Ilitch will opt for 57-year-old Ron Gardenhire, the former Twins general who wants to manage again, and who knows the division intimately.

Gardy would certainly (as Henning says in the piece) represent a return to the old-school approach to managing -- more seat-of-the-pants, less use of analytics. It would certainly run counter to the overall trend.

---

Josmil Pinto, sidelined for much of the season with concussion issues, is playing again. He's getting some at-bats as a designated hitter in the Gulf Coast League, the Twins' lowest stateside affiliate, and he's not expected to get behind the plate again this year.

I don't expect to see him in the majors this year.

Ron Gardenhire, Craig Counsell and the Brewers job

Craig Counsell (right), in his first week as Milwaukee
manager, chats with outfielder Ryan Braun during batting
practice after taking the job.

Ron Gardenhire made it known last month that he wants to get back into a managerial job somewhere, and when the Milwaukee Brewers reacted to their poor April by firing Ron Roenicke on Sunday night Gardy was quickly linked to the new vacancy.

And then the Brewers filled the vacancy with internal candidate Craig Counsell.

I wasn't buying the notion that Gardenhire "fit Milwaukee like bratwurst in a bun," the phrase Scott Miller of Bleacher Report/TBS Sports used in a tweet. Three names: Carlos Gomez, Kyle Lohse, Matt Garza. Those are three key players on the Milwaukee roster who played for Gardenhire in Minnesota and clashed with him in one way or another. In each case, somebody had to leave town, and at the time it wasn't Gardenhire.

I'm not saying it's impossible for Gardy and those players to co-exist. I would think it better not to conduct that chemistry experiment a month into a season that has already gone sour.

As for Counsell: The former major league infielder is the latest in the wave of no-experience-required managerial hires. A substantial proportion of today's skippers never managed on any level before landing their current jobs. In the Al Central alone, there's Brad Ausmus (Detroit), Paul Molitor (Minnesota) and Robin Ventura (White Sox). This trend intrigues me, and I continue to regard it as a manifestation of the increased control front offices are exerting over managers.

Life after Gardy

Ron Gardenhire at Monday's press
conference.

Ron Gardenhire didn't go kicking and screaming when fired Monday, He took part in the press conference, made a few jokes, and even said removing him from the managerial job might be the best thing for the team: "A different voice, a different face."

Meanwhile, Terry Ryan emphasized that the next manager may not be a current Twins employee. When Gardenhire was hired in the wake of Tom Kelly's retirement after the 2001 season, the known candidates were on the coaching staff: Gardy, Paul Molitor and dark horse Scott Ullger.

There's no shortage of legit in-house candidates this time around, starting with current coaches Molitor and Terry Steinbach. Ullger is known to want to manage but probably has no chance at the job. From the minors, there's Doug Mientkiewicz. (Jake Mauer is also racking up an impressive resume in the farm system, but the presence of his younger brother on the roster probably precludes Jake as a serious candidate in Minnesota.) I've seen Gene Glynn and Jeff Smith mentioned, but I can't believe either would rate above Mientkiewicz.

If Ryan and Company go outside the organization, a name to be aware of is Dave Martinez, currently bench coach for the Tampa Bay Rays. Martinez, as Joe Maddon's understudy/protege, figures to be more openly attuned to the analytic approach to running a team than was Gardenhire (who was, I am convinced, more aware of the numbers than he wanted us to believe.) There are plenty of other outside possibilities being floated -- Torey Lovello from the Red Sox, Chip Hale (former Twin form the Tom Kelly era) from Oakland, Jose Oquendo from the Cardinals -- and almost all come from more openly sabermetric operations than the Twins.

I do not take the Ozzie Guillen chatter seriously; that's just talk radio nonsense. I do want the revamped coaching staff -- and there are likely to be changes -- to include at least one native Spanish speaker. There are just too many young Latin players of importance in this organization to allow things to get lost in translation.

My guess right now is that Molitor and Mientkiewicz are the two most likely choices, but that sense stems in part from past practice. My personal preference would be Mientkiewicz, who would be the most likely to have a decade-plus tenure. But I think it's more likely that Molitor would be the pick with Mientkiewicz added to the coaching staff.

Ron Garden-fired

Ron Gardenhire during his last game as Twins manager.

So it happened Monday: The Twins dismissed Ron Gardenhire as manager.

I'm not celebrating.

The suspicion here is that Gardy got ousted for the wrong reason: To appease the columnists, talk radio loudmouths and critical Internet voices, none of whom have any responsibility for anything in the Twins organization.

It's possible that the ax dropped for a good reason, such as the possibility that Gardenhire and the front office were at cross-purposes on how certain players should be used.

The most likely case would appear to be Danny Santana. Gardenhire was reluctant to play the rookie at shortstop, even when he had two other center field options in Aaron Hicks and Jordan Schafer. Both Terry Ryan and his assistant GM, Rob Antony, said repeatedly this month that Santana is viewed as a long-term shortstop, even as Gardy persisted in using Santana in center.

My sense on this possible source of friction is that Gardenhire is more correct. I don't think Santana is going to be a quality shortstop. If Santana has a future as a one-position player, I think that future is at a spot he has yet to play in the majors (left field).

But we've seen signs that Gardenhire and Ryan had different views on the talent before -- see Gardenhire's similar reluctance to play Jason Bartlett in 2005-early 2006 -- and they've worked it out.

We'll see who the Twins fill the job with -- and how his approach to the game differs from Gardenhire's. My sense is that this might be akin to what happened when Ted Turner fired Bobby Cox after the 1981 season. Somebody asked Turner at the press conference, "What kind of manager are you looking for?" Turner replied: "Someone like Bobby Cox."

If the Twins are looking for someone like Gardenhire, they probably shouldn't have fired the real one.

Ron Gardenhire's bullpen use

Anthony Swarzak:
48 games in relief,
96 innings — an
unusual workload
in a 2013 bullpen.

Monday's post -- about the uniqueness of some of the in-game strategies of departed veteran managers Dusty Baker, Davey Johnson and Jim Leyland -- led me to take a quick look at Ron Gardenhire's entry in the just-released Bill James Handbook.

Gardy didn't led the league in anything, but one thing about 2013 jumped out at me, and I'm surprised I didn't notice it when it was happening: he had a career low in the use of relief pitchers on consecutive days. In fact, only four AL managers, five in all of the majors, had a lower figure than his 78.

Heavy use of relievers on consecutive days had been a hallmark of Gardenhire's, although he has only once led the league in that (2008, with 115; he matched that number the following season).

I'm inclined to blame/credit the change on the circumstances. The Twins didn't have a lot of four-game winning streaks, or or six-wins-in-seven-days stretches; those are the kind of short runs that have often had Gardenhire going to his top relievers day after day. 

And this year, Gardenhire used his long men (Anthony Swarzak and Ryan Pressly) as true long men. Swarzak had 10 relief outings of at least three innings, Pressly seven; without attempting to actually research it, it feels like Gardenhire didn't have 10 such outings from his entire bullpen for his managerial career. (Swarzak led the majors in relief innings; Pressly tied for fourth in the AL.)

Glen Perkins pitched 16 times on consecutive days, as did Casey Fien; Jared Burton and Brian Duensing 14 each. Pressly and Swarzak? One apiece.