OT- Tigers Name Ron Gardenhire New Manager

Submitted by uferfan on

Per WXYZ Channel 7

 

Gardenhire was the Minnesota Twins manager until 2013 and was a bench coach for the Diamondbacks last season.

J. Lichty

October 19th, 2017 at 11:59 PM ^

As a Twins fan, I have some reflections on some of the above comments.

1) He is, as some have observed "old school" when it comes to management of the team on a day to day basis. While roster contrsctuction is out of his control, and he worked with the least sabermetrically advanced baseball department in the league under Terry Ryan (and Bill Smith), he was certainly a reflection of that ethos.  He is famous among a pretty sabr saavy Twins fanbase for saying "stats dont mean nothing" and does not use any sort of advanced metrics, much less standard metrics in constructing a lineup or managing in-game.  A few examples are that he does not at all give credence to hitters splits versus different handed pitchers and really likes to have "everyday" guys.  Jaque Jones was the most glaring example.  Terrible versus lefties but always in lineup; platoons were exceedingly rare and disliked by Gardenhire; will put "speedy" guys with hustle who "battle their tails off" at lead off instead of higher OBP guys and always seemed to want to middle infielders in the No 2 slot regardless of OB skills; will always save his closer for the "save";  loves veterans and hates young players with few exceptions;  While I put the horrible JJ Hardy trade ultimately on Terry Ryan (booted him after one season where he went on to have some great seasons with the O's), TR was left with little choice the way Gardy went after Hardy in the media for not being fast and SS are supposed to be fast according to Gardy.  Gardy is very much a slave to conventional wisdom from 1972 and aint no one going to talk him out of it. 

2) Contrary to national conventional wisdom, Gardy's teams were not terribly sound fundamentally and his teams did not play "the Twins way" established under Tom Kelly.  My recollection is that the Twins were often in the lower tier in most fielding metrics under Gardy, and certainly in terms of errors were not regularly near the top of the league.

3) Gardy is all about "toughness" which led to a lot of guys hiding injuries to stay out of the dog house, all the time ending up on the DL eventually anyhow while performance suffered.  Gardy would plant in the local media notions that certain players werent playing through injuries and werent tough.  Toughness is laudable until it starts hurting the team having a pitcher with a shoulder injury trying to tough out innings with significant drops in velocity.  There were other examples of Gardy going after players through the media as well.  He had a reputation of having "his guys" and the others were not treated very well.

4) In short, my opinion is that Gardy is not the ideal manager for a rebuilding team.  After a great run with generally veteran Twins teams (winning six division titles) though during times of weak AL central, when it came to the rebuilding project, Gardy was out of his element when having to bring up younger talent.  While much of the "blame" goes to the Terry Ryan front office, Gardy just does not bring out the best in young players.  Makes me wonder why Gardy took this job.

5) All that said, Gardy did have some success.  He is a colorful character and defintely understands the game itself.  With the right roster he can get some wins with his hunches and gut feelings, but overall I do not think it is a good fit for where the Tigers are at now.

For some pretty sound critisim of Gardy as skipper of the Twins I recommend searching archives at aarongleeman.com -  Aaron Gleeman is the editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus and a twins fan who's takes are often humorous and almost always spot on.