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 Sunday Funnies

Welcome back to the Sunday Funnies, this blog's weekly offseason recounting of funny, or at least slightly amusing, stories and quotes. As always, I make no guarantee of the literal accuracy of these tales. I also now will not guarantee that these are fresh; I've been doing the Funnies since, I believe, the offseason of 2012-13. Some unintended repetition is likely to creep in.

But I know this one is new, because I heard it this season:

Paul Molitor, now the Twins manager, was on the Twins coaching staff in 2014, Ron Gardenhire's last as manager. Joe Vavra, the first base coach that season, had surgery in midyear and Molitor wound up spending about half the season handling the first base coaching chores during games.

So Molitor is standing in the coaches box as Cleveland Indians first baseman Carlos Santana is tossing the warm-up grounders to his infield teammates, and Santana is chatting with Molitor, unaware that the first base coach was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

"Did you play?" Santana inquired.

"A little bit," Molitor deadpanned.

My guess is that the umpire overheard the exchange and leaked like a faucet. For the rest of the season, first basemen jokingly asked one of baseball's all-time greats: Did you play?

The Rangers stadium vote

You probably heard that there was an election this week.

One of the lord-knows-how-many items Americans voted on was a stadium proposal in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers.

The current ballyard, which has gone through a variety of names and is now identified as Globe Life Park,  opened in 1994. I don't think anybody regards it as a bad stadium, but it seldom cracks the top five in stadium rankings either. I've not been there myself, but there is a consensus that it's not as good as Target Field or the stadiums in Seattle, Pittsburgh or San Francisco.

And there's no question that the Tampa Bay Rays or Oakland Athletics would love to transplant it to their respective cities.

Anyway: The city of Arlington and the team worked up a plan for a new $1 billion stadium with a retractable roof. Local taxes were to pay for most of it.

There was organized opposition to the proposal, but it passed easily Tuesday. The Rangers expect to be in the new stadium no later than 2021.

It's their city and their taxes, but I heartily dislike a sports culture that regards a 22-year-old stadium as disposable. This make two markets (the other being Atlanta) that is ditching a ballpark before it hits 30. It all strikes me as a waste of resources.

BA's Top Ten Twins prospects

The dead tree edition of Baseball America that arrived at my house this week features the publication's Top Ten prospects lists for the five teams in the American League Central. The Twins portion is not yet online went online in limited form this morning (you need a subscription to see it all).

A few comments:

* The listing and commentary has a different byline this time around. Mike Bernardino of the Pioneer Press had done the Twins prospect list the past few years; this year BA staffer Michael Lananna gets the credit. As one who likes getting multiple perspectives on the Twins prospects, having BA be different than the PioPress is a positive.

* This list is necessarily much different from last winter's. Five of the 10 "graduated" to the majors (Byron Buxton, Jose Berrios, Max Kepler, Byung Ho Park, Jorge Polanco). Another (Nick Burdi) missed almost the entire season with injury and dropped out of the Top Ten. There are four holdovers.

* Nick Gordon, Number One on the new BA list, struggled against left-handed pitching in the Florida State League and committed 24 errors. Lananna writes of Gordon:

 ....some scouts outside of the organization view him as more of a second baseman. The Twins believe he has the aptitude, instincts and short-area quickness to stick at short, but he'll need to continue to put in the time to learn hitters, properly position himself and refine his footwork.

It's my belief that almost every shortstop prospect, especially those who can hit, has his ability to stick at the position questioned. As I recall, some 30 years ago there was some notion that Greg Gagne was better suited to third base; Gagne turned out to be a pretty good major league shortstop.

* The BA list has six pitchers: Left-handers Stephen Gonsalves (No. 2), Tyler Jay (5) and Adalberto Mejia (6) and righties Fernando Romero (4), Kohl Stewart (7) and Felix Jorge (8). Only Mejia, acquired at the trading deadline from the San Francisco Giants for Eduardo Nunez, is likely to be a factor on the 2017 staff.

* There are red flags with each of the six. Gonsalves' fastball command is suspect. Romero just had his first injury-free season in three years. Jay's description paints him as more likely a high-floor reliever than a successful starter. Stewart's strikeout rates remain subpar. Jorge and Mejia project as back-of-the-rotation starters.

The coaching staff: Bruno and Butch

Tom Burnansky is
out as lead hitting
instructor.

On Monday, the Derek Falvey-Thad Levine duo indicated that they would decide the fate of the major league coaching staff within 72 hours. Turned out to be more like 24.

Two got the ax: hitting coach Tom Brunansky and first base coach-outfield/baserunning instructor Butch Davis.

Everybody else, including pitching coach Neil Allen, remains.

As is typical (and decent) in such moves, the decision makers are bland and non-specific about the reasons for the ousters. Which won't stop me from naming two reasons: Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano. Excuse the doggerel:

If the Twins get
where they want to go, 
the big reasons will be
Buck and Sano

Too many K's,
too many E's
too many pitches
fanning the breeze

Taking the fall
for Buck and Sano
a pair of coaches
Butch and Bruno

Brunansky had his success stories as a hitting coach. Brian Dozier, certainly. Kurt Suzuki hit better overall for the Twins than I would have expected. Robbie Grossman was surprisingly good at the plate,

But Sano regressed last year, and Buxton struggled overall, and they are, absolutely and without question, priorities 1 and 1A. Keith Law of ESPN said repeatedly in chats last summer that Buxton needed either a new organization or a new coaching staff. Buxton had a strong September, but there was a lot of tinkering going on during his repeated demotions and promotions.

If Chad Allen, who has been the hitting coach at Triple A Rochester the past couple years, gets Brunansky's position, his work with Buxton at that level will probably be a factor. No matter who is the hitting coach, better production from both Buxton and Sano is essential. They have to be better players in the future than they were in 2016.

As for Davis: The Twins outfield defense this year was awful, The Sano Experiment was a failure. As good as Grossman was at the plate, he essentially gave up the runs he created in the field. Even the center field-capable contingent -- Buxton, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Danny Santana -- were prone to errors and misplays.

Blaming the instructors for the pupils' failures may be a bit unfair, but it's pretty common. Now Buxton and Sano will hear new voices.

Non-players in charge

One of the lowlights of Monday's Derek Falvey-Thad Levine presser -- as expected -- was Sid Hartman -- specifically his rambling demand that the duo "account for" the rise of front office bosses who didn't play pro ball.

(And one of the highlights was Levine's deadpan assurance that “I’m as offended as you are that this is happening.”)

In point of fact, there have always been people without on-field backgrounds running teams. The other day I discussed the Twins history of what we mean when we say "general manager" (the titles haven't always matched): Calvin Griffith, Howard Fox, Andy MacPhail, Terry Ryan, Bill Smith, Ryan again. One of those five men (Ryan) played minor league ball; none played in the majors.

But this is true: It is becoming increasingly rare for a former player to rise into a key front office job. There are many reasons, but one -- clearly in play in the specific example of the Twins new hires -- is the rise of analytics.

Major league baseball organizations are a bigger business than ever before. More revenue, more spending, more on the line. They are, typically, owned by people who have been highly successful in corporate America. These are people who are not only comfortable with the idea of drilling into the data about their businesses, they expect it from their underlings.

And they are increasingly unwilling to accept the magical romanticism that old-school baseball men frequently espouse. Twenty years ago, they didn't have much choice in the matter, but they have alternatives now.

Compare Torii Hunter's background to Falvey's. One signed a pro contract out of high school and spent his late teens, 20s and 30s playing baseball. The other spent those same years going to college and developing an intellectual skill set while climbing his way up the front office ladder.

Falvey is completely comfortable dissecting the torrent of data available in baseball today. Hunter, in the final few years of his career, was actively threatened by the defensive analytics that suggested that his on-field value was negligible. Hunter has said he is more interested in being a general manager than a field manager, but there is no way any team is going to go there.

There are diversity ramifications in this. The young men increasingly being tapped to run baseball operations are typically from elite universities and able to get started with unpaid internships. They are universially white and well-heeled. The age of analytics is creating a glass ceiling in baseball management. It's also rather similar to some of the economic barriers limiting African American youth from playing baseball -- the expense of travel teams, the lack of full athletic scholarships for college baseball.

Diversity on and off the field is, I believe, is a bigger problem for baseball than not having ex-players running the business. They are tangentially related; the only minority GMs I can think of off-hand were ex-players (Bob Watson, Kenny Williams, Ruben Amaro Jr., Dave Stewart), But it's connected to the specific skill set owners demand of their baseball ops bosses and the barriers that keep minorities from getting those skills.

But as the current crop of players become ever more comfortable with the analytics, that may change. One of the signficant developments in recent years has been the funnelling of distilled data from front offices to dugouts -- usable data that players can take advantage of on the field. It's not a foreign language anymore to these guys.

The new guys

Derek Falvey (left) and Thad Levine during Monday's
introductory press conference.

So what did we learn from Monday's "meet the new boss(es)" presser?

Various forms of "collaborate" are among Derek Falvey's favorite buzzwords -- and he's got an impressive set of buzzwords that he sprinkled into practically every response.

Thad Levine has a knack for well-placed wisecracks, be they ad-libbed or rehearsed.

And, perhaps most significant, they're here to hire, not necessarily to fire,

Falvey intends to beef up not only the Twins relatively paultry in-house analytics department but also their strength-and-conditioning and nutrition programs. He and Levine said that one of the things that made the Twins an attractive opportunity is that the organization has some many long-term employees.

The idea, boiled down: Falvey and Levine plan an organization that collects ideas from everybody and reaches "evidence-based decisions". This will involve a greater use of analytics than under Terry Ryan.

And those who can make the change are, basically, welcome to stay. Falvey and Levine made it explicit about Rob Antony, assistant general manager under Ryan and acting GM after Ryan was bounced in July; they want him to stay as assistant GM. Presumably the same is true for Mike Radcliffe and Deron Johnson, the director of player personnel and scouting director respectively. They're interested in retaining Ryan as an advisor.

Falvey:

“What we’re going to do is introduce a vision and give everyone the opportunity to get on the bus. We’re going to build out and go that way, then see who’s aligned with that vision.”

Meanwhile, a little roster news:

The @Twins have outrighted Alex Wimmers to AAA & reinstated Glen Perkins, Phil Huhges & Danny Santana from the 60-day DL.

Roster now at 36

— Dustin Morse (@Twins_morsecode) November 7, 2016

Falvey, Levine and Antony were to fly out to Arizona Monday for the general managers meeting; during that time, the two newbies will confer with Antony about the roster and the coaching staff, with some decisions about the coaches expected before week's end.