Tom Kelly was the architect of the team that won the Central for like 3-4 years in a row. Each year under Gardy they got worse, but the Central got worse, too. Then, finally, they couldn't make it. This year, they made it until the playoffs, when everyone quit. I was at Game 2. Every at-bat was a Twin trying to hit a home run. Where was the game management? It was embarrassing. Regular season means nothing when what happened to us, happened.
The fact is, the roster is being managed properly and it's not exactly Gardy's position. That falls on Ryan's shoulders, and he's the one who traded away an all-star in AJ to get Liriano and Nathan, because we had Mauer. When we make trades like that, our roster gets stacked, and it's easy to "bring people along slowly." If you have no depth, you'll be forced to make a guy like Boof Bonser or Garza come in earlier than he should have... or Liriano, with his arm of putty... we had no pitching so we couldn't exactly "let people develop," as you say. I think Gardy got lucky. The team tried hard at the end of the season. But in baseball, coaching is overrated, and we'll see how the Twinks do next year.
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