As Time Oozes By

When saying goodbye to Ilsa in Cafe Americain, Rick closed with the memorable line, "But we'll always have Paris."

As the Minnesota Twins lurch toward the end of their ungainly season, their exit line might have been, "But we'll always have Kansas City." KC is where they've found lots of easy meat all century. No more. That possibility was foreclosed by last week's two game sweep by the Royals, leaving the Twinks to look up at Kansas City from the bottom of the AL Central and look forward to 2012 with what should be great trepidation.

Shades of 1992. After winning the 1991 World Series, the Twins lopped Jack Morris and his seven figure salary off the payroll. Morris had come over from Detroit as a free agent. In 1991, he pitched 246 innings in the regular season and won 18 games. He won two more in the LCS and another pair in World Series against the Braves, including the climactic seventh game, a 1-0 shutout in ten innings. In a fine show of gratitude, the Twins failed to retain him, whereupon he signed with Toronto, and pitched the Blue Jays to victory in the 1992 World Series by amassing 240 regular season innings and winning 21 games. The Twins finished second, six games behind Oakland, and missed the playoffs. Jack Morris could have been the difference.
Following the 2010 season in which they made the AL playoffs but were dispatched in round one, the payroll was actually increased. The bulk of it went to four players, three of whom were disabled and contributed little this year. But even if their highest paid players had been healthy, the 2011 edition of the Twinks had no chance because they had no pitching.

Winning baseball teams are built around defense, starting with pitching. That reality will be expounded upon next week by Brad Pitt when the movie "Money Ball." opens. The movie extolls the baseball acumen of Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland Athletics, portrayed by Pitt. Beane's teams prosper despite the strictures of a small market budget. He begins with pitching, following the axiom laid down by Connie Mack, founder of the Athletics when they began in Philadelphia in 1900. Mr. Mack held that pitching accounts for 75% of a team's success. Pitching remains baseball's rarest, most sought commodity.

Pitching requires strong arms plus sure-handed defense. Along with pitching, defense is characterized by strength up the middle, meaning that the catcher, shortstop, second baseman, and center fielder, and the pitcher as well, must catch the ball and throw the ball with high degrees of proficiency. So must the corner players, the first and third basemen, the left and right fielders. Defense wins ball games and pitching keys the defense. The best examples of that have been the great Yankee teams over the decades, but we're talking about the Twins.

As its playoff record attests, the team's success in recent years has been achieved in an inferior division, and despite an inferior pitching staff. It has not had a legitimate stopper since Johan Santana departed. The 2011 staff consisted mainly of soft throwers who rarely lasted beyond five innings. They were followed by a parade of middle-inning mediocrities and a closer who has no fastball.

Bad as the pitching is, the defense up the middle is worse. The shortstop from Japan is totally overmatched, and doesn't belong in the big leagues. The best second baseman is an outfielder, who had to return to his regular position because he's also the best outfielder. There are two center fielders who can't throw nor hit much, either. The catching went from a disabled all-star to a replacement qualified to catch once a week or so. Instead, he has been pressed into playing nearly every day. The players at first and third have been only slightly more adequate.

Local media persons who throw questions no harder than Twins' pitchers throw baseballs have already seized upon the endless list of injuries the team has endured to explain away its dismal performance. But that won't wash. Even if Joe Maurer and Justin Morneau had posted career years, they could not have overcome a dreadful defense anchored by bush-league pitching.

How then, in the wide, wide world of sports, did this year's disaster come about? It began with the decision to let last year's second base combination go, an obvious tactic to save on payroll. How is that workin' for 'em? Shortstop J.J. Hardy, an inomparably better fielder than anybody the Twins have, has hit 27 homeruns for Baltimore so far. That's nearly as many as all the Twins' infielders put together. Second baseman Orlando Hudson is playing in San Diego at the pace he has maintained over his long Major League career.

Cliff Lee, one of baseball's very best pitchers, was available in 2011 but apparently never considered by the Twins. Zack Greinke, who would have instantly become the number one starter, was similarly passed on,
but will play in the post season for Milwaukee after winding up the best year of his career.

These decisions concerning infielders and pitchers precluded the liklihood of a winning season, and totally eliminated any chance of reaching the playoffs.

The Twins field and front office management has proven itself to the extent that, prior to this year, the team's brand of baseball been accorded some of the same level of admiration as have Billy Beane and his staff in Oakland. Manager Gardenhire's style is known locally as the Twins Way. It stresses baseball fundamentals wrapped around pitching and defense. Gardenhire is a pupil of ex-manager Tom Kelly, who won two World Series, and remains attached to the club. So does former General Manager Terry Ryan, who essentially assembled the teams that have won in the AL Central Division. The farm system under Jim Rantz and Don Cassidy has been productive heretofore and has been considered a model by rival teams.

It's impossible to believe these long-time well-respected baseball lifers failed to see the team's need for pitching and the other elements of solid defense. It's barely possible that they may have been overruled by the titular head of team operations, General Manager Bill Smith. Smith's record of being bested in every trade he's conducted would not seem to warrant that much power, but, we're dealing with corporate culture here, so who can tell?

The Twins inglorious fall parallels that of 1992, and the reasons are the same. Banker penury and banker prudence did the team in. Jim Pohlad, a banker and the chief mogul, must have been aghast as he watched the team payroll rise above $100 million. To compete for the playoffs would have added tens of millions more. Pohlad's interest is to protect his family's investment. His father bought the Twins for $35 million, and it will be interesting to see Forbes Magazine's current evaluation. With the gift of a new ballpark, courtesy of Hennepin County deal-makers, a value of $700 million by Forbes is a reasonable guess. That's pretty nice growth, and prudence dictates that it not be risked by greatly increasing expenses.

Again, a comparison to 1992 is useful. Does the Pohlad scheme of things include a baseball team that contends every year? In the early 90's it apparently did not. After the championship year, the Twins progressively declined. The owner's response was to set in motion a campaign of extortion featuring regular threats to move to another market and, the piece de resistance, a voluntary offer to contract the team, that is, to dissolve it and go out of business in return for a princely ransom from Major League Baseball. The object was to get a new ball park built at public expense. It was needed, ostensibly, to produce income sufficient to enable the Twins to compete for talent with the free-spenders, such as the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Texans, White Sox and Tigers in the AL. Plus the Phillies, Mets Dodgers, Cubs, Braves, Cards and Brewers in the NL.
By itself, a new stadium would substantially increase the value of the team, if it ever became available for sale.

So the drumbeats for a new ball park grew louder. At last, the Hennepin County Board caved, abetted by the DFL leadership of the State Legislature, which abrogated its own rules by imposing a sales tax increase on the citizens of Hennepin County to pay for most of the bill. The extortion worked, and the Pohlads got a brand new playground on the cheap, along with a big bump in the team's value.

Target Field opened in 2010 and was sold out for almost every game. But before all the money was counted, the reality of current market salaries set in. The Twins payroll for 2011 zoomed past $100 million before the vault clanged shut. A team approaching one hundred losses was the result.

For 2012, the team needs pitching even more desperately. It needs a second base combination just as desperately, and the backup catching also needs a whole lot of improvement. The farm system is empty, meaning the Twins have to go to the market, which may not have what they need. Or are willing to pay.

The prospects for next year are appalling. Double A ball; okay, Triple A ball, barely, at preposterous ticket prices? I don't think so. Bogart's best line in Casablanca, with a little tinkering, seems to fit: "Here's (not)
looking at you, kid."

Rev Cox