Pic of the Week

Tom Kelly with his Target Field statute on Friday.

The Twins installed yet another larger-than-life bronze statue at Target Field on Friday, this time honoring Tom Kelly, manager of the 1987 and 1991 World Series champs.

Kelly remains a "special assistant" in the new regime, but he's clearly pared back his activities after his stroke of a couple winters ago, and I doubt that he's as influential with "Falvine" as he was with Terry Ryan.

His influence remains in the organization, however. Paul Molitor, the current occupant of Kelly's former job, played and coached for Kelly. The two best managerial prospects in the Twins organization, Jake Mauer and Doug Mientkiewicz, are also offshoots of Kelly's managerial branch.

The game has changed since Kelly's heyday. It always evolves. The constant challenge for managers is to identify those changes, adjust to them and find how the eternal verities of the sport fit in those changes.

This task, if I may get philosophical, applies to other aspects of life than baseball. Those of us who resist that evolution become grumpy old men. I can identify with that. I suspect that is part of why Kelly retired at an age at which Molitor hadn't started managing.

The key to the Twins in 2016

Spring training went pretty well for the Twins. No significant injuries -- even the forearm tightness reported last week for prospect Nick Burdi is apparently sufficiently dissipated that he's throwing again -- no late PED suspensions a la Ervin Santana, plenty of exhibition game wins. The Red Sox are a popular pick to win the AL East, and the Twins beat them like a drum all month.

Of course, that was spring training. That was March. Today the aforementioned Santana takes the mound against another AL East team the Twins racked up wins against in Florida, but this time it's in Baltimore and it counts. Spring training will be relegated to the scrapheap of memory.

This week's Monday print column implies a fairly optimistic view of the 2016 Twins season, Byron Buxton and Byung Ho Park 1-2 in the Rookie of the Year voting? If they perform that well, the Twins ought to at least make the playoffs, right?

Well, maybe. The fourth of the four predictions is a warning sign. All those strikeouts.

I'm been writing at a distance about the Twins since 1989, and one of the long-time themes of my analysis has been what I call "the Kelly Virtues." What Tom Kelly demanded of his position players: Good defense, swing at fastball strikes, put the ball in play. Kelly's first team, the famous '87 Twins, had three 30-homer seasons and a fourth with 28; the Twins never had a 30-homer man again in Kelly's reign. TK's approach sacrificed power for batting average. In the peak of the steroid era, that was a bad trade.

We are not in the steroid era any more. Today's defending World Series champs are the epitome of the Kelly Virtues. Today's Twins, at least at the plate, are not. There comes a point when strikeouts are not merely the exhaust of a power-hitting lineup, but indicative of a deeper problem. That point is certainly at a higher level that Kelly believed it to be two decades ago, but this lineup may be past that point.

The Twins in 2014 had a productive offense. That production sagged last year; Minnesota scored 696 runs, 14 under the AL average and eighth in the 15-team league. Minnesota's on-base percentage (.305) was dead last in the AL. You need baserunners to score runs, and of the eight players listed by Baseball Reference as "regulars" for the 2015 Twins, only Miguel Sano, Joe Mauer and Aaron Hicks bettered the AL average in OBP. The 2016 Twins figure to get more at-bats from Sano, but Hicks is gone.

And that is the crucial question for this team. There's power in this lineup. There's some speed. But will there be enough baserunners to make that power be more than a one-run offense?

TK, back and gone

Tom Kelly, some five months after a stroke, showed up at training camp this morning ready to go.

That's the good news. The bad news is that he's giving up the part-time Fox Sports North gig.

TK said his decision to "retire" from TV is because he wasn't good at getting his points across in "18 seconds or less."
— Phil Mackey (@PhilMackey) February 26, 2015

Maybe so. But at least he has a point, not vague, out-of-date cliches.

It's his life and his health, and I'm in no position to tell him what to do with either. But I'll miss his occasional turn as analyst next to "Richard."

Twins Fest weekend

Justin Morneau is at Twins Fest this year. Last winter
it was decided to have him skip the event while he tried
to recover from his concussion.

The rhythm of the offseason ticks on. The Twins Caravan wrapped up this week (the Mankato stop this year featured Bert Blyleven, Danny Valencia and Drew Butera), and this weekend the Metrodome will be packed with fans, vendors, exhibits and about 60 past, current and future Twins signing autographs.

About three weeks to spring training, folks.

With so much of the team around, and with the season fast approaching, there are plenty of stories popping up. 

Alexi Casilla had a good winter ball season in the Dominican -- hit better than .330 in their regular season and almost .400 in 17 playoff games -- and told the Strib's Joe Christensen: "Oh my god. I was on base too much." I hope he has that problem all season.

Justin Morneau has spent the winter rehabbing from various surgeries -- neck, knee, foot, wrist -- and letting his concussion heal itself. Joe C.'s story took an optimistic tone, but reading between the lines, one wonders. Morneau hasn't had concussion symptoms since December -- which means he was having them into last month -- and he hasn't yet been cleared to hit (that related to his wrist surgery). He still lacks feeling in his left forefinger; that's from the pinched nerve in his neck. It all adds up to: This was one hurting puppy last season, and this season is no certainty.

To whatever extent Morneau was inclined to feel sorry for himself, that notion was doubtless dissipated when he and a handful of other players visited Jack Jablonski, the high school hockey player paralyzed by a check in the back. Also visiting Jabs: Matt Capps, Glen Perkins, Butera and newcomer Jason Marquis.

In probably better health news: Nick Blackburn reports he'e feeling fine and ready to go after his latest surgery. Denard Span says this is the best he's felt in two years, and Ron Gardenhire says Span (not Ben Revere) is his center fielder. Joe Mauer is raring to go.

A Kent Hrbek statue is coming to Target Field. At this rate the plaza will be so filled with bronze there'll soon be no room for the kettle corn stand.

And the Twins moved the stoic Tom Kelly to tears with the announcement that his No. 10 will be retired this year. Deservedly so.

Back to the Basics (Blame Nishi)

Tom Kelly recently cited players from outside
the Twins system as a reason for the misplays of 2011.
Tsuyoshi Nishioka was the most prominent of them.

We're less than a month away from the opening drills of the Twins spring training. Let the fundamentals hype begin.

The organization's "play-the-game-the-right-way" mantra tends to stick in the craw of the blogosphere, but I have no doubt that Ron Gardenhire and Co. are sincere in prioritizing that approach. And after the debacle that was 2011, there is no dispute that the Twins have fallen off in that department (as in many others).

The question becomes: What are they going to do about it?

Here's Gardy, as quoted earlier in the week by LaVelle Neal (Star Tribune), raising more questions than he answers:

I've talked to (Tom Kelly) at long time on the phone. Conversations I thought I could never get into with T.K. We spent an hour on the phone one day, talking about different things we should do in spring training, which way to go and how I should have done different things. It's actually been good. Tom has helped me out a bunch.

A fascinating paragraph there, with potential followup questions springing from every sentence. As curious as I am about what spring training changes loom, as interesting as Kelly's critique of Gardenhire may be, I find myself stuck on the second sentence. Gardy was Kelly's right-hand man for more than a decade, T.K.'s designated successor. Kelly's been a prominent presence at spring training throughout the Gardenhire years. They are mentor and protege. And there were baseball conversations Gardy didn't think they could ever have? Really?

Kelly may be an even more prominent figure in Fort Myers this spring. This Tom Powers (Pioneer Press) column certainly implies so. 

It also contains a phony scrapegoat for 201l's sloppy fundamentals -- too many players from outside the organization:

In the past, the Twins were fortunate to have fairly stable batches of minor leaguers who played together, learned together and advanced together. Last year, there was a huge influx of players from other organizations. All those new guys, with all their different ways of doing things, struggled to mesh. They reverted to their old ways too many times.

"All this mixing and matching was too much," Kelly said. "You take Nishi (Tsuyoshi Nishioka). He was learning everything from scratch. It was all really different for him. We don't know what he's going to do. Is he going to revert back like he did things in Japan?"

That sounds logical. It isn't factual, at least not for the major league team. That "huge influx" of players from outside the Twins system simply didn't happen. The Twins used 22 position players in 2011 (counting Jim Thome, who was strictly a hitter). Only Nishioka and two catchers, Rene Rivera and Steve Holm, were new to the Twins organization. Of the rest, only Drew Butera, Alexi Casilla, Jason Repko, Thome and Delmon Young have ever played for any other organization, majors or minors, and Butera, Casilla and Young had been in the Twins system for at least three years apiece entering 2011.

Kelly cites Nishioka as an example, but when you really look at it, you discover that Nishioka is really the only available example. The vast majority of playing time went to players theoretically well-steeped in The Twins Way. 

The fundamental failures of 2011 -- the sloppy rundowns, the dumb baserunning, the given-away at-bats -- are better laid to a rot in the organization, or to a lack of talent, than to too many outsiders. It is to be hoped that Kelly and the others recognize that but are merely unwilling to publicly criticize the minor league staff. 

TK as a broadcaster

Judging from what I hear, a lot of fans are enjoying Tom Kelly's brief sojourn into the Twins broadcasting booth.

TK in 1987, when the manager
was younger than some
of his players.

I'm among them, although I suspect that a lot of it is Blyleven fatigue. A full season (or more) of Kelly's mumbling would probably grow just as tiresome as Bert's repeated pitch count rants and assertions that "you have to do the little things" "at the major league level" even if you're "the best athlete on the field."

In that sense, just about anybody would do in the booth. ABB -- Anybody But Bert -- would make the broadcasts fresh and different. Whether that's what Fox Sports North, the Twins (who have the final say over the broadcast crew) or the audience want is another matter.

For myself, I want to learn something more about the game, and at risk of bragging, at this stage that's a high bar to set. I can't remember the last truly novel insight to the game I gleaned from Blyleven.

Kelly and his stopwatch (for timing the pitcher's delivery, a means of determining if the base runner can steal) is a dose of real-time scouting in the booth. His thoughts Friday on Gavin Floyd's inconsistent use of the slide step — that Floyd would be better off if he made it his standard stretch delivery — was both common-sensical and delivered with an acknowledgement of the potential trade-off. Kelly's enthusiasm for both Rene Tosoni and Ben Revere belied his reputation as a hard man for young players to please.

There are times when Kelly doesn't go far enough, when he softens or blurs his point, I assume to avoid criticizing somebody. Example: On Thursday, Ron Gardenhire had Jason Repko pinch-hit for Tosoni, and Dick "Richard" Bremer asked Kelly if it might not be wiser to keep Repko available, since the Twins had the lead. Kelly's response focused on the immediate opportunity to add runs against a left-handed pitcher, and didn't mention that the change would also strengthen the outfield defense. (To be fair, Repko went out on the first pitch to end the inning, so Kelly may not have had time to get to the defensive gain from the switch.)

Bremer is clearly amused by Kelly's sarcastic digs at one of  Blyleven's favorite chestnuts, that "best athlete on the field" line. I don't know that he's so amused by Kelly calling him "Richard" all the time. (I had theorized that TK simply doesn't want to say "Dick" on the air, especially when he initially identified 1970s White Sox slugger Dick Allen as "Richard Allen," but then a bit later Kelly called the old player "Dick.")

TK in the booth is clearly not going to be a long-term thing. I'm pretty sure he prefers his scouting/teaching/evaluating role. But I do wonder if the positive reaction to his stint in the booth might lead the organization to ponder the possibility of replacing Blyleven.