Paul Molitor fired

Falvine finally got to do what they probably would have done 2 years ago if they were allowed to, and DEFINITELY what they would have done last year had the Twins not had that August and September dash to the playoffs: fire Paul Molitor.

I'm surprised at the amount of outrage there seems to be about this. I wonder how many of the same fans mad about this used to gripe about how the Twins never wanted to fire anybody, and held onto players for sentimental, not practical reasons. This organization last won a playoff GAME in 2004, yet waited another 10 years to finally dispatch Ron Gardenhire. They gave Joe Mauer and his agent every dime they wanted rather than take a very small risk in losing him to a big market. They refused to deal fan favorites like Joe Nathan and Michael Cuddyer rather than risk fan backlash.

They were wrong...wrong with how they ran this franchise. For years. Then finally 2 years ago they went outside the Twins Way bubble and hired 2 young guys from other, BETTER organizations to run the show. The one restriction they have had is hiring their own manager. Now they get to do that.

And I'm sorry for all the Molitor apologists out there, but if his name was John Smith nobody would be up in arms about this. Molitor was brought in almost more for change for change's sake than anything. We had a promising crop of prospects on the way, and I for one knew Gardy was never going to win a world series with ANY prospects, so let's bring in a new guy.

Molitor was only a step away from the old ways. He wasn't a Twin for life but still had a lot of history here. I basically felt he was sort of a placeholder for the next guy, sort of like what Gardy is now in Detroit.

But 2015 was our 1st competent, competitive Twins club in years, and we were all so happy to have meaningful September baseball again that we all sort of overlooked the fact that that club really only had one really good month of May and was well under .500 the rest of the way. That they went into the final weekend alive for a wild card was more a reflection of a weak AL than anything. But still, there was a lot of optimism for 2016...

...and 2016 became the worst season in Twins history. 103 losses. A total disaster, one that brought us the new front office  Molitor could have been fired then and nobody would have argued, but the owners forbade it.

2017 certainly looked like another largely lost season as the calendar hit August. The front office dealt away a couple players. And then the Twins for 2 months got 2006 level hot. All the prospects blossomed, the established stars were great too, and the wild card was secured(thanks again, in part, to an overall very weak AL). Yeah they gagged against the Yankees, but again there was optimism. And this optimism seemed a lot more justified, since the playoff spot came due to the very prospects we'd heard for years were going to be the guys to make us October regulars again. And Molitor won the manager of the year award he.probably deserved more in 2015. Pretty hard situation to make a change at manager.

2018 gave Falvine every reason they needed to make the change. They made some low risk signings to supplement the roster, a couple trades...they gave this team a chance to build on the final 2 months of 2017.

And we all saw how that went. Now, of course the events of this season are not all Molitor's fault. It's not his fault Logan Morrison couldn't hit .200, or that Lance Lynn signed here, immediately griped about signing here, and had 4 miserable months of unwatchable pitching. It's not his fault Polanco took PEDs, that Santana decided to have late surgery that was supposed to be fairly minor yet kept him out til late July, that Dozier decided to have his worst season as a regular player in a contract year, or that Sano and Buxton got hurt.

But after 4 years of managing, the Twins had maybe 4 or 5 good months of play. Even managers with a ton of built-up equity would be on the hot seat after 4 years with so little success. The Molitor apologists cite his manager of the year award, but the reason he won that was the big turnaround in 2017, which only was such a big turnaround in the first place due to the atrocious preceding season which he also presided over.

What exactly does Molitor do well as a manager? I can easily list some things he was still bad at this year, with bullpen management topping that list, but other than being a calm, nice guy I can't think of a major strength. It's sometimes hard to gauge a manager's effect on a game or a team, but when he was never hired to be a long term guy anyway, and then the results really are not there except in tiny doses, Molitor's best case scenario was entering 2019 already on the hot seat.

I didn't think he would be fired, if only cause I don't really know what the in-house expectations for this team are going to be next year. I don't think we will know til we see how they approach the offseason. I would suppose the firing means Falvine are not expecting this team to be competing as anything but a fringe player for a couple more years, so why keep an older manager around. I would guess the new manager will be on the younger side, likely someone I've never heard of.

It's no lock the next guy will work. Replacing an average coach or manager doesn't always work out(see Tim Brewster, Leslie Frazier, Kurt Rambis), but Falvine were hired to shake things up and they deserve this chance to really see it through.