THOMA COLUMN: Change and stability in the AL Central
Oct. 24—Change is inevitable, and there's a lot of the inevitable going around in the American League Central.
Two teams in baseball's least-imposing division dumped their baseball operations leader during the season. At least two teams will have new managers for 2023, with some speculation that a third will walk away this winter.
But the this-isn't-good-enough movement has not hit the Twins. Despite their September swoon, the Twins are retaining both the "Falvine" front-office leadership and manager Rocco Baldelli.
They did quickly dump their head athletic trainer, which was no real surprise considering how much injuries derailed the season for the team that spent most of the season at the head of the pack only to finish below .500 and in third place.
How much blame Michael Salazar truly deserves for the lengthy injury list is unclear, but somebody was going to take the fall.
More of a surprise was the announcement that they would retain the entire coaching staff. The Twins had a midseason scramble to reorganize the pitching coaches when Wes Johnson suddenly jumped back to college coaching, and the pitching deteriorated after his departure, so I figured the Twins would be looking outside for one or more people in that department.
And in one of the more visible coaching roles, the Twins' baserunning suffered from a series of questionable and/or indecisive calls by third-base coach Tommy Watkins. It's possible that duties will be reshuffled this winter and somebody else will be making those heat-of-the-moment send or stay decisions.
Going around the division:
Cleveland, on the merits, wouldn't figure to be itching to make changes. But manager Terry Francona has had repeated health issues in recent years. It won't be easy for him to step aside after winning the division with baseball's youngest squad, but it's not inconceivable either.
Chicago has to replace manager Tony La Russa, forced to step down with heart problems. The word over the weekend is that Ozzie Guillen will interview for the job; it would be typical of owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who imposed La Russa on his baseball ops people, to follow up by bringing Guillen back.
La Russa had been out of baseball for 10 years before Reinsdorf brought him back, and he was clearly out of step with the changes. Guillen has been out of the game for 10 years too.
Kansas City dumped Dayton Moore as its head of baseball operations about a month ago and elevated J.J. Picollo to the post. Picollo was Moore's top assistant for more than a decade, so it's not obvious that this marks a significant change in direction, but he did quickly dismiss manager Mike Matheny.
Detroit canned its baseball ops leader, Al Avila, in August. In September they hired Scott Harris away from the San Francisco Giants.
I don't see this as a threat to manager A.J. Hinch. The Giants are, let us say, a good bit more sabermetrically inclined than the Tigers were under Avila, and Hinch certainly thrived as skipper with the analytically-driven Astros before losing that job in the sign-stealing scandal.
The Tigers are in the same place as the Royals for different reasons. The Tigers look reasonably competent on the mound but can't hit. The Royals show promise with their young position players but have been unable to develop pitchers.
Those teams are in building mode; that hasn't changed. The Twins, Cleveland and Chicago want to win now; that hasn't changed either.
Edward Thoma is at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. Twitter: @bboutsider.