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The twin cities of baseball

Small market, low payroll, domed stadium ... Minnesota's winning ways up next for Rays?

By MARC TOPKIN
Published March 13, 2005

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ST. PETERSBURG - Torii Hunter looks across the Progress Energy Park infield to the Tampa Bay dugout and can easily see the past.

The All-Star centerfielder remembers vividly when the Twins were unsure and inexperienced, when they were outmanned on a regular basis, when they lost much more than they won, when they wondered if things were ever going to get better.

"When we were young just like the Devil Rays, we were getting our butts kicked every day. Day in, day out. And we were getting only 9,000, 10,000 people a game," Hunter said. "But three or four years later, look what happened. We're on the right track and we've won three division titles in a row."

For the Devil Rays, the Twins provide a remarkably similar comparison - small market, low payroll, unattractive domed stadium, scouting-based general manager, development-oriented philosophy.

And they offer are a tremendously successful model.

"They're the prototype team for what we're trying to do," Rays manager Lou Piniella said. "It's a good organization for our organization to pattern itself after. A mid $50-(million)-type payroll situation where they use their farm system as the major contributor but they always seem to get two or three good top-line veterans to add to their mix.

"I think of all the organizations in baseball, that is the one our organization should try to emulate."

The Twins may have been where the Rays are. Now, the Rays can only hope to get where the Twins have been.

Their payroll, despite growing into that mid 50s range, still ranks in the bottom third. They have to develop their own stars, either by drafting them or acquiring them as minor-leaguers. They are forced to let key players go almost every year because they can't afford to keep their team intact.

But they win.

A lot.

The Twins have finished first in their division - granted, it's not the AL East - for three straight seasons and gone to the playoffs. They have figured out how to succeed within the game's lopsided financial structure. They make an effort to find creative solutions by working harder and smarter rather than making excuses.

"We don't pretend to be somebody we're not," general manager Terry Ryan said. "We know the market we play in. We know the size. We know the revenue streams. There's a lot of things that we're very aware of. And until things change, especially with the ballpark situation, we need to go about our business in a responsible way and manner, which is through the (farm) system and through the draft, promoting from within, making a couple lucky trades and a couple lucky Rule 5 picks."

The Twins do a lot of things right.

Some seem small, such as spending an extra half-hour on the field each morning during spring training and taking pregame infield practice more than any other team during the season. But that's part of their organizational philosophy of stressing fundamentals.

They draft athletic two-way players because they value defense and its benefit to young pitching. They research character and care about chemistry. They have kept their front office and scouting staffs virtually intact to maintain continuity.

"We don't have a bunch of power and we don't have a lot of velocity," Ryan said. "But we have won a lot of games because we pick it up, we have pretty solid pitching and we've always had a pretty good bullpen."

Some are bigger, such as operating one of the game's most fertile farm systems, producing a steady stream of inexpensive young players to constantly replace higher-paid older ones, lessening the annual frustration of the annual winter migration. This year, for example, they have Michael Cuddyer to take over at third for Corey Koskie and several possibilities to replace shortstop Cristian Guzman. Baseball America has named them organization of the year twice in the last three years.

They produce and stick to a long-term plan, allowing them to forecast change and develop multiple alternatives, knowing success for small-market teams is usually cyclic.

They make smart deals, such as replacing closer Eddie Guardado by obtaining Joe Nathan in a trade for catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who was being replaced by rookie Joe Mauer (who then got hurt and was replaced by low-priced free-agent Henry Blanco).

They make lucky deals, such as acquiring Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana through the 1999 Rule 5 draft (just before the Rays landed Damian Rolls and Chad Ogea), and routinely plucking low-priced players off the market.

And they come up with enough money to keep their core players intact, this past winter re-signing Brad Radke ($18-million for two years), Santana ($40-million for four, though most paid after Radke's deal expires) and Nathan ($10-million for two).

It's a difficult way to do business, but you won't hear Ryan complain.

"I don't do that because ultimately that would trickle down to our other people and they would start saying, "Woe is me,' " Ryan said. "Don't feel sorry for the Twins. We have to find ways to plug holes and to get over injuries.

"There's always reasons not to succeed. We have to find the ways to succeed."

A lot of their success has to do with Ryan, the humble, soft-spoken 51-year-old former minor-league pitcher who is entering his 11th season on the job, the longest tenure in the American League.

"You know what? Terry Ryan is the greatest guy out there," Hunter said. "He just has to do what he has to do with what he has. And he's making do with it. He's hustling. ... And he knows he doesn't have much, so he has to go out there and get the quality guys, the guys that are going to listen, that have good makeup in the clubhouse and are pretty good players. They don't make too many mistakes at all."

And some has to do with their overall mentality of living under the national radar in the Midwest and being the team of Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and parts of Wisconsin.

"It's kind of a hard-working area," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "They fight through the winters, and we like to say our team is kind of the same way. We fight through a lot of things during the winter but we try to come back during the summer and have a good time. The summers in Minnesota are as good as it gets. We just want to be part of it."

Ryan took over in 1995 - four years after their last World Series victory - and there were rough times as the Twins averaged 91 losses for six years.

"We couldn't get it right," Ryan said. "We weren't very good. Nothing worked. We started to wonder whether or not we were doing things correctly, whether or not we had the right approach, whether or not we were on the right path, all that stuff."

Ryan, though, stuck with his convictions. Ownership lent its support by raising the payroll modestly (while entertaining contraction possibilities). And, perhaps most important, the players got better. Using 17 rookies in 1999 and another 17 in 2000 paid off when they surprisingly became contenders in 2001, finishing 85-77, and won the first of three straight division titles the next year.

"Those same guys we were losing 95 games with, all of a sudden in 2001 we won 85 with," Ryan said. "We're doing about the same things now we were doing back in the '90s and all of a sudden obviously the players are responding."

Hunter said the Rays, in time, can do the same thing.

"They've got a lot of super talent over there and they're on the right track," Hunter said. "They'll take their lumps right now, take their bumps and bruises, and the next thing you know they're going to be on top."

[Last modified March 13, 2005, 00:23:15]

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