Bringing Molitor back, the conclusion

Paul Molitor and Derek Falvey dismissed on Tuesday the theory that the delay between the invitation for Molitor to continue as manager and his acceptance signaled some sort of rift or friction betweem the manager and the front office.

Even dismissing Neil Allen as pitching coach was not close to a deal breaker, as Molitor described it.

Speculation and interpretation aside, the result is obvious: Molitor has a three-year extension and the rest of the coaching staff is expected back, although some roles may shift.

I wish Allen well, not only in terms of landing a new job somewhere but in terms of maintaining his sobriety. I suspect there are organizations that would have dumped Allen after his drunk-driving arrest in May 2016, and I further suspect Allen knows it:

“I had a wonderful conversation with Mollie,” Allen said in a phone interview. “I pointed out I can never thank (former GM) Terry Ryan and Paul Molitor enough for what they did for me. Mollie and I talked every day. We had a routine. We got to know each other very well. I absolutely loved the man. I made a great friend.”

That from Mike Berardino's story in the Pioneer Press.

Meanwhile, the reshaping of the organization continued, with the Twins hiring a new farm director. Jeremy Zoll comes out of the Dodger organization. He's 27 and succeeds Brad Steil, who becomes the pro scouting director.

Molitor stays, Allen departs

Neil Allen will
not return as
pitching coach.

The Twins announced Monday that Paul Molitor had accepted a three-year extension as manager. Also Monday, pitching coach Neil Allen told reporters that he had been fired.

I can imagine that Derek Falvey relented on salary and/or contract length for Molitor but not on replacing Allen. Remember, Falvey's area of proported expertise at Cleveland was developing pitchers, and he now has opened up probably the two most important positions in the organization in that field, major league pitching coach and minor league pitching coordinator.

Obviously, Neil Allen should've done more w/ those 35 hurlers sent thru here. Better coaching ... that Adam Wilk could've been an ace.

— Patrick (PJ) Reusse (@1500ESPN_Reusse) October 10, 2017

Reusse has a point about the raw material Allen had to work with. Coaching goes only so far. Talent matters, and the Twins ran out a number of pitchers who really have no business on a major league roster in this high velocity era. (Of the 36, 14 had worse Fielding Independent Pitching ratings than catcher and blow-out specialist Chris Gimenez.)

My sense, which may be mistaken, the past three years was that Allen was overly determined to make every pitcher work his way. I remember hearing an in-game interview with Allen during spring training in which he made a sarcastic wisecrack about Kyle Gibson reworking his mechanics and routine over the offseason. I don't know what worked for Gibson and what didn't, what he kept and what he jettisoned, but I know that:

• what Gibson had been doing didn't work for him physically or on the field in 2016;
• he had a strong August and September this year; and
• Falvey's former organization seems quite open to individual experimentation with programs, with Trevor Bauer being an obvious example.

The improvement in the Twins in run prevention this year can be attributed not to the pitching or even the emergence of Jose Berrios, but to the improved defense (and even the improved team defensive metrics appear to be almost entirely Byron Buxton in center).

Mike Berardino listed several in-house possibilities for Allen's former post, but I expect Falvey to reach outside the organization. One interesting question is how much input Molitor will have on the selection.

Bringing back Molitor

Two beat writers, two tweets:

From @LaVelleNeal:  Paul Molitor will return to manage Twins https://t.co/Gjsh1XFHx6 pic.twitter.com/33R54lf6NN

— Star Tribune Sports (@StribSports) October 5, 2017

I'm told Paul Molitor has indeed been invited back for 2018, but source w/direct knowledge says "nothing has been decided or agreed to" yet.

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) October 5, 2017

The Strib tweet is more defenitive, but the Neal story -- like Berardino's -- notes that there were unresolved details Thursday night.

Managerial agreements have been known to derail over salary, coaching staff and authority, and  the second may be in play here:

Molitor, plus his coaches were at Target Field today. Sense remains that full status quo with everyone back is unlikely. #mntwins

— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) October 5, 2017

If Falvine is demanding a coaching staff change with Molitor resisting, my guess is that the tug-of-war involves pitching coach Neil Allen. Derek Falvey played a particular role in Cleveland in their pitching development process, and he is soon to be free to raid his old organization (the agreement to let him come to Minnesota included a one-year ban on the Twins hiring Cleveland personnel). I would be astounded if he didn't raid that organization for a pitching guru or two or three.

The Twins have created openings in their minor league system by dismissing minor league pitching coordinator Eric Rasmussen, and one report suggests they will split that role into two positions, one for the high minors (Double and Triple A) and one for low minors/rehab. So even if Allen is kept on, there are ways for Falvey to cross pollinate the Twins system with Cleveland's.

Phil Hughes and the pursuit of a useable change

The Twins had a day off Tuesday. Phil Hughes did not. It was his turn to start, but with no exhibition game, he worked four innings, 59 pitchers, against Twins minor leaguers.

His fastball velocity sat, as it reportedly has in previous outings, around 90 mph. It's still fairly early in camp, and he's coming off surgery, so I don't know what to make of that. He might regain some velo. On the other hand, even in 2014 -- his career year to date -- he averaged a touch above 92 mph (according to the 2015 Bill James Handbook). When Hughes is right, he gets outs with movement and control, not with raw speed.

But the object of Tuesday's outing was the changeup. This has been a chronic thing since Neil Allen became the Twins pitching coach --- Hughes needs a changeup -- and almost half of Hughes' pitches Tuesday were changes.

I've argued before that for Hughes specifically, the pursuit of a changeup is fixing what ain't broke. He threw less than one changeup per game in 2014, and that was the best season a Twins right-hander has had at least since Brad Radke's heyday. It was also the season before Allen got the job. The next year, Hughes threw the change almost 10 percent of the time, and his results got worse. And last year the veteran's season was shortened by injury.

From Mike Bernadino's story on Tuesday's outing:

“He’s got to be a different guy, bring some different stuff to the table,” said Allen, who replaced longtime Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson after Hughes’ record-setting 2014 season. “Him throwing the change-up is going to be nothing but beneficial.”

...

"But we’ve got to make him change.”

 Allen has his blueprint for pitching success. Hughes' success in the past has been with a different style of pitching. The "we've got to make him change" line doesn't sit well with me.

In fairness to Allen, the thoratic outlet surgery may have added some urgency to the mission. It's possible that the missing 2 mph is gone for good, and that at age 30 Hughes does need to change who he is as a pitcher. I have my doubts about that, however.

On keeping Neil Allen

To the extent that the dismissals of coaches Tom Brunansky and Butch Davis has drawn fan reaction, it appears to be: How did Neil Allen keep his job?

Allen, of course, is the Twins pitching coach, and the Twins pitching numbers in 2016 were ... really bad. The team ERA was more than a half-run worse than the next worst team in the American League (Oakland). They allowed more hits, homers, earned runs and unearned runs than anybody in the league.

So it's a fair question: If you're shaking up the coaching staff, how does Allen get a pass?

I think there are two reasons, which intertwine:

* Manager Paul Molitor has one year left on his contract. Even as front offices take a ever-increasing role in decisions that were once left solely to the field manager, they seldom force a manager to have a pitching coach not of his choosing -- and particularly so when the manager is working to keep his job. If Molitor wanted Allen, he was going to get Allen.

* Allen has a plan. As explained in this piece, published a month ago by the Pioneer Press' Mike Bernardino, the new focus at all levels of the system will be on fastball command.

I can see this detailed, specific approach appealing to chief baseball officer Derek Falvey, whose reputation is based in large part on his work on pitching in the Cleveland organization. Allen has identified and quantified a specific, organization-wide problem and devised a specific, organization-wide plan to attack it.

Falvey said a week ago that he wanted to see who in the organization wanted to "get on the bus" of "evidence-based solutions". Allen already had a ticket.

But here's a curious thing. A decade ago, fastball command was the hallmark of the Twins system. It's why the Detroit Tigers hired Rick Knapp, then Minnesota's minor-league pitching coordinator, to be their pitching coach. As I recall, Jim Leyland, the Tigers manager at the time, said that the Twins keep calling up rookie pitchers who threw strikes, and he wanted some of that.

Since Knapp left, the Twins haven't fared so well at developing fastball command.

Which may mean that Eric Rasmussen, who has been the pitching coordinator since Knapp's departure, may be more in jeopardy than Allen was.

The return of Neil Allen

Neil Allen returned to his job Thursday as Twins pitching coach, and a sincere hooray for that.

I've no sound basis for judging the quality of his work as a pitching coach. I'm happy to see him back at his job because it indicates that he's got his life back in order and his disease back under control.

His disease, of course, is alcoholism. He had been sober for more than two decades, then relapsed and got caught driving drunk on May 26.

From the Pioneer Press' Mike Berardino:

“I humiliated myself; I embarrassed this organization,” Allen said. “They could have very easily told me to take a hike. They could have thrown me to the curb, and they didn’t. They probably saved my life with everything they just did. For that, I thank them from the bottom of my heart.”

"They" being Jim Pohlad, Dave St. Peter and Terry Ryan, the Twins owner, president and general manager respectively. Allen spent five weeks in treatment at Hazelden. His legal case is far from finished. And alcoholism is always going to be there for Allen.

He knows that, the Twins know that, we know that. May it all work out well for him.

A death and a DWI

Neil Allen's pitching staff has struggled this year.

Thursday was a rough day for for Minnesota pitching coaches.

Todd Oakes, longtime pitching coach for the University of Minnesota, died after a long battle with leukemia. 

Glen Perkins of the Twins, who pitched for Oakes in college, posted a statement on Twitter praising "T.O." for his influence on Perkins both as a pitcher and as a person. 

Also on Thursday, the Twins suspended Neil Allen after the pitching coach was arrested for driving while intoxicated. Allen ran his playing career aground on alcohol but was reportedly sober for 20 years.

Eric Rasmussen, the organization's pitching coordinator, has been named interim pitching coach.

I have no real personal experience with addiction and addictive behavior, and I have no idea if Allen's arrest was a unique lapse or the exposure of ongoing behavior. It certainly seems possible that the continuing struggles of his charges fed the impulse to return to the shelter of the bottle. Sobriety is a daily struggle for the alcoholic, and lapses are unfortunately common. I can, and do, sympathize with Allen without condoning driving under the influence.

His superiors will eventually have to make a decision: keep him or dismiss him. They don't have to make that decision now, and they shouldn't. Allen too has a decision to make, whether he can maintain his sobriety under the stress of being in charge of a major league pitching staff. I don't know what the correct answer is for the organization or the individual, and I doubt any of us do. 

Neil Allen and the changeup

If we're looking for something specific that new pitching coach Neil Allen brings to the Twins, it might be this: a commitment to the changeup.

Mark Simon of ESPN back in November tweeted a ranking of MLB teams by percentage of changes thrown during the past three seasons (2012-14). Tampa Bay led the way by a wide margin -- 18.1 percent of  their pitches were changeups, and the next highest figure was 14.2 percent. The Twins were 17th, at 9.3 percent, a bit more than half the Rays' rate.

Allen, of course, wasn't the Tampa Bay pitching coach during that period, But he was their Triple A pitching coach and had a hand in the development of almost every every pitcher the Rays developed -- and the Rays developed almost every pitcher on their roster.

It seems odd to think of the Twins as a below-average change-up team. It wasn't that long ago that the Minnesota staff boasted some of the best changeup artists in the game -- Johan Santana and Brad Radke, for certain, and Francisco Liriano's change was often touted even through he seldom tried to actually get outs with it with the Twins.

But this stat fits with the current reality of the Twins. We tend to associate strikeouts with velocity -- the overwhelming fastball overpowering hitters. The reality, at least in the majors, is that the fast ball can get you to two strikes, but strike three most often comes on something else -- a breaking ball or the change. The Twins staffs with the outstanding changeups ranked high in strikeouts; the Twins staff without did not.

If in fact Allen is a stronger advocate of the changeup than Rick Anderson was, let us hope he's not going to force the issue on Phil Hughes. Part of Hughes' turnaround last year came from discarding his changeup almost completely. If Kyle Gibson and Hughes don't have effective changeups -- and I believe they don't -- it's not a good idea to make them throw it.

Anderson does leave behind a couple of starting candidates who rely heavily on their changeups. Tommy Milone ranked 13th in MLB in 2014 in percentage of changeups thrown (100 LP minimum), according to Simon. And the change is regarded as Trevor May's most effective offering.

Of course, right now it's difficult to imagine the Twins rotation with both Milone and May in it.

Happy Thanksgiving

The years pass along, but my turkey photo lives on.

I've been thinking as this Thanksgiving approached of the zero-sum aspects of baseball. Somebody wins, somebody loses. A manager gets fired, another one gets hired. One player gets released, another gets a chance.

Thinking about Neil Allen, the Twins new pitching coach, a recovering alcoholic who had 11 years in the majors and almost 20 years of being a pitching coach in the minors. I saw a quote from him in the days before his selection became known, something along the lines of It's time for me to get off the buses and back on the airplanes.

The comments from others in the game, including other candidates, when Allen got the job almost always included a variation of He's been through a lot. Yes he has, notably the death (from an aneurysm) in September 2012 of his wife Lisa. Besides being a pitching coach, he's a single father to a 15-year-old son, and in terms of the travel involved in Allen's occupation, it may not matter if he''s on a bus or a jet. It can't be easy.

Thinking, too, of Scott Ullger, who has spent almost his entire adult life in the employ of the Minnesota Twins. Signed as a player out of college in 1977, he got 85 big league plate appearances back in 1983 and hit .190. While the Kent Hrbeks and Gary Gaettis and Frank Violas and Tim Laudners were laying the foundation of 1987's World Series team, Ullger was hitting his ceiling as a player.

He went back to the buses, first to continue playing, then as a manager -- seven years managing farm teams in the Twins system, never with a losing record. He worked his way back to the big leagues as a coach. And he stuck for 20 years in a variety of assignments: Hitting coach, first base coach, third base coach, bench coach.

And now he's 59 and looking for another job. I don't quarrel with the decision to replace Ullger; I have been known to question the value he brought the team, although I recognize that I'm too distant to know what he brought to the table. He's been fortunate to have such a long-term job in such a transient occupation. But now that job is gone, and as a fellow 50-something, I can identify with that.

Neil Allen, pitching coach

Neil Allen's 1987 baseball
card. Allen went 58-70,
3.88 with 75 saves
in 11 MLB seasons.

The Twins haven't made a formal announcement, but it was widely reported during the weekend that Neil Allen has been hired as the pitching coach.

Allen pitched in the majors for 11 years for five teams, seeing time both as a starter and as a reliever. He has no previous connection to the Twins and was never a teammate of Paul Molitor's. He's about as much an outside hire as you can get.

What I remember of Allen from his pitching days in the 1980s is that he was the major piece the St. Louis Cardinals got from the New York Mets when Whitey Herzog decided Keith Hernandez was too coked-up and had to go. As I remember it, Allen wanted to be a reliever, Herzog wanted him to be a starter, and the fans wanted him to be Keith Hernandez. It didn't go well.

The Twins hired him out of the Tampa Bay organization, where he's been the pitching coach at Triple A Durham and helped shepherd a string of pitchers to the major leagues.  He's also worked in the Toronto and Yankee organizations, with one season (2005) as the Yankees bullpen coach.

Hiring Allen probably doesn't mean a conscious effort to move away from the throw-strikes-and-let-the-defense-get-the-outs approach. No pitching coach advocates walking hitters. But I expect that the Twins will walk more hitters going forward. The team has been uncommonly low on walks throughout Rick Anderson's tenure as pitching coach, and practically every significant pitcher on his staffs had higher walk rates with other organizations. I have absolutely no doubt that Anderson is part of that. The question is whether Twins pitchers will have higher strikeout rates under a different coach.

For what it's worth, Durham last year was middle of the pack in the International League in walks allowed.

At this point the Twins have filled five of the seven coaching slots:

Pitching coach: Allen
Bench coach: (Vacant)
Third base coach: Gene Glynn
First base coach: (Vacant)
Hitting coach: Tom Brunansky
Asst. hitting coach: Rudy Hernandez
Bullpen coach: Eddie Guardado