One of the staples of Minnesota Twins baseball is gone. No, I'm not talking about Kirby Puckett. He passed away last year. Thanks for bringing it up. And no, I'm not talking about the impending departure of current centerfielder Torii Hunter. I'm talking about the retirement of Terry Ryan after 13 seasons as the general manager of my beloved team.
As rare as it is to see a GM step down when his team clearly wants him to stay, Ryan made the right decision - for himself and for the team. The position of general manager has, according to Ryan, become too administrative, which has hindered his ability to fully focus on what he truly loves: scouting and player analysis.
Because of his continuous scouting and unmatched ability to develop young pitchers, Terry Ryan made the Minnesota Twins worth watching again after the abyss following the 1991 championship season.
In 1998, he traded former Rookie of the Year Chuck Knoblauch to the New York Yankees for Christian Guzman and Eric Milton - both future All-Stars. A year later, Ryan sent Rule 5 draftee Jared Camp to the Florida Marlins for Johan Santana - a two-time Cy Young winner and arguably the best pitcher in the game. In 2002, he traded Brian Buchanan, a minor leaguer sent to the Twins in the Knoblauch trade, to the San Diego Padres for Jason Bartlett - the Twins' starting shortstop since 2006.
Ryan is perhaps best known for a move he made in 2003. In what is possibly the most lopsided trade in baseball history, Ryan sent catcher A.J. Pierzynski to the San Francisco Giants for Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser. Nathan is one of the best closers in the game; Liriano showed in 2006 that he has the talent to be among the very best pitchers in the game; and Bonser is already a reliable starter.
While all of these moves have paid off at some point for the Twins, Ryan is certainly not without faults. As good as he is at developing young pitchers - look at Matt Garza, Kevin Slowey, Scott Baker and Glen Perkins - he is that bad at developing young hitters.
With the exceptions of Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Torii Hunter and Michael Cuddyer, the 2007 Twins looked more like their AAA affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings. Ryan never solidified the third base position after Corey Koskie left, and the DH spot has been held by the likes of Jason Tyner, Garrett Jones, Lew Ford and Rondell White for the past two seasons. These guys couldn't hit a beach ball, let alone a slider in the dirt.
He wasted two months of the 2007 season with the "experiments" of Ramon Ortiz and Sidney Ponson. Ponson was absolutely dreadful from his first start and Ortiz wasn't much better. But Ryan stubbornly stuck with them for too long while minor league pitching studs like Garza and Slowey were dominating in AAA.
Even with his faults, Terry Ryan is about as a good a GM as there is in baseball. He has said he's stepping down because the losses endured by the team have gotten tougher, the wins haven't been as fun, and because he has lost much of his patience dealing with the media and in negotiating with agents and other teams.
How refreshingly honest. Terry Ryan was honest enough with himself and his team to admit that he just didn't have all the answers anymore. I wish the guy who runs the Minnesota basketball team felt the same way.
