Article: Is It Only a GM Search?

[wsnydes]

I'm actually starting to feel that they over-market things.  There are so many promotions that they've simply become watered down.  The "buy special tickets for a promotion" idea is as dumb as it gets, but I understand why they do it.  I just don't agree with it.  The food and drinks in the ballpark just keep getting pricier every year.  It's clear who they've started to market towards as well, adding more bars and more beer options.  I was at the game Sunday and in a 7 inning span, I counted no more than two vendors in our section selling anything other than beer.  There were vendors constantly in the aisle, usually 3 or 4 at a time.  All of them selling beer.  After the 7th inning, vendors virtually disappeared entirely.  I didn't see a hot dog vendor at all.  Some were selling other things too, but the common denominator was that they were selling beer.  While I enjoy the local flare of the beers and foods, it comes at the sacrifice of more traditional ballpark fare that falls on the cheaper end of the offerings.  I don't go to the ballpark to get drunk, I go for baseball.  

[jimmer]

Maybe they figure with the product they put on the field, one has to be drunk to enjoy it? :-)

[wsnydes]

 

Maybe they figure with the product they put on the field, one has to be drunk to enjoy it? :-)

Drinking does make it a bit more palatable at times, but I prefer those times to be at the comfort of my own home where it doesn't cost me $13 for a whiskey/coke and I don't have to worry about driving home.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

No problem. 

 

But seriously, if you look at other baseball departments, they have executives in charge of business operations. Like other organizations, some are flatter than others. But you're going to have executives in charge of these functions. The Chicago Cubs has a president of business operations, for instance. He is not as big a figure as Theo Epstein. But he is still important.

 

You could hire someone who would be on the same level as Dave St. Peter and it would be fine. I'm guessing that the search firm will help influence what kind of structure the top candidates will demand. But either way, there is no reason to get rid of him. Baseball operations are very different from business operations.

Yes, exactly. DSP has a role in this organization and he seems capable of performing that role. Someone has to run Target Field, television rights, licensing, etc. That's an important job that, when done capably, greatly impacts revenue beyond ticket sales.

 

Hiring a president of baseball operations does not invalidate the role DSP provides the organization.

 

This argument feels a lot like previous Bill Smith / Gardenhire arguments. The desire to see someone's role focus on skills better suited to that individual is not synonymous with the desire to see that person leave the organization entirely.

 

Let DSP go be good at the things DSP seems to be good at. Leave the baseball stuff to someone else.

[troyhobbs]

 

Maybe they figure with the product they put on the field, one has to be drunk to enjoy it? :-)

[mazeville]

 

Sure, I thought it was fairly obvious I was being facetious when I suggested having no Marketing or Ops Manager.  

 

My issue with St. Peter is people acting like he is doing a good job because new food gets introduced and they have interesting promotions.  He is the President, the Owner just said whoever comes in will work under him, and that he will have a large part in picking the new GM.  Totally unqualified for that by everything I can tell, and he is O for 2 with 2 big strikeouts picking GM's thus far... 

 

Well, sometimes it's difficult to tell on comment sections when people are being facetious -- the number of ridiculous comments tends to be high.

 

My perception of St. Peter is that he is doing a good job on the business side. I don't believe he is the one who hired Bill Smith or Terry Ryan. (And keep in mind that hiring TR for a second go-around wasn't entirely out of line, though at the time I preferred they hire someone else).

 

The problem to me all falls back on Jim Pohlad, not Dave St. Peter. 

 

It is entirely possible I might be wrong. While we can judge the GM based on how the team fares agast other baseball teams, we don't have access to the financials that could help us judge St. Peter. And using the team's record on the field to judge St. Peter and what happens off the field is not fair.

 

 

[dxpavelka]

Guys like Billy Beane & Theo Epstein are a pipe dream.  Probably the same could be said for Cherington although unemployment sometimes does funny things to a man.   Same for guys like Jed Hoyer.  Sure he's Epstein's puppet but if he moves on its not going to be to here.  That gets you down to guys at the lower levels of front office management.  Assistant GMs and such.  At that point one name pops.  A guy currently working on Addison Street with local connections of some repute.  A guy who satisfies the urge to keep it in the family AND bring in someone from the outside.  A week hence might be a little premature to wrap up this business but I can hear the introductions now at the 1991 reunion game against the Braves next Wednesday:  Ladies & Gentleman a 2 time World Series winner for your Minnesota Twins and your new General Manager--Randy Bush.

 

[Guest]

 

Yes, exactly. DSP has a role in this organization and he seems capable of performing that role. Someone has to run Target Field, television rights, licensing, etc. That's an important job that, when done capably, greatly impacts revenue beyond ticket sales.

 

Hiring a president of baseball operations does not invalidate the role DSP provides the organization.

 

This argument feels a lot like previous Bill Smith / Gardenhire arguments. The desire to see someone's role focus on skills better suited to that individual is not synonymous with the desire to see that person leave the organization entirely.

 

Let DSP go be good at the things DSP seems to be good at. Leave the baseball stuff to someone else.

Granted, the immediate task is to hire a baseball person to run that side of the house, but I can’t let the, “let DSP go be good at what DSP is good at,” thing go unchallenged.

 

What, exactly, has he been good at, besides being an active cheerleader on Twitter and otherwise being a PR guy speaking to fan groups? I get that doing those things makes him popular to some fans, so maybe if Terry Ryan had been more personable on social media, people would have liked him more and he would have been seen in a more positive light.

 

Last I knew, the Twins ranked poorly among peers in “television rights, licensing, etc” And, if I’m not mistaken, their TV contract was last renewed during a period of strong performance by the team on the field.

 

St. Peter is, essentially, a venue manager, similar to, though on a greater scale, what minor league GMs are – no say over the roster or field management, but responsible for getting casual fans (those for whom the product on the field is secondary to the social aspects of the game) to the ballpark and making that experience so positive that they will want to come back and bring family/friends with them.

 

In 2012, the Twins announced a new Class A affiliation in Cedar Rapids, just 4(ish) hour drive away from TF. Since then, other than giving some tickets to the Kernels to give away once a week, it’s been pretty hard to notice any serious attempt by the Twins BUSINESS side to grow an Eastern Iowa fan base.

 

I do sense that St. Peter has been essentially waiting for the Twins to become competitive on the field to do his job for him (or at least make it a lot less work to do).

 

Do people really think he was not in the room when the decisions regarding Bill Smith and Terry Ryan’s return were being made?

 

IMO he is being significantly overrated by many commenters in this thread, strictly on his performance as a business executive, and I certainly would not let him get within a mile of wherever the decision on a new baseball operations executive is being made.

 

Least of all would I allow him to become the new GM's "boss"

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Granted, the immediate task is to hire a baseball person to run that side of the house, but I can’t let the, “let DSP go be good at what DSP is good at,” thing go unchallenged.

 

What, exactly, has he been good at, besides being an active cheerleader on Twitter and otherwise being a PR guy speaking to fan groups? I get that doing those things makes him popular to some fans, so maybe if Terry Ryan had been more personable on social media, people would have liked him more and he would have been seen in a more positive light.

 

Last I knew, the Twins ranked poorly among peers in “television rights, licensing, etc” And, if I’m not mistaken, their TV contract was last renewed during a period of strong performance by the team on the field.

 

St. Peter is, essentially, a venue manager, similar to, though on a greater scale, what minor league GMs are – no say over the roster or field management, but responsible for getting casual fans (those for whom the product on the field is secondary to the social aspects of the game) to the ballpark and making that experience so positive that they will want to come back and bring family/friends with them.

 

In 2012, the Twins announced a new Class A affiliation in Cedar Rapids, just 4(ish) hour drive away from TF. Since then, other than giving some tickets to the Kernels to give away once a week, it’s been pretty hard to notice any serious attempt by the Twins BUSINESS side to grow an Eastern Iowa fan base.

 

I do sense that St. Peter has been essentially waiting for the Twins to become competitive on the field to do his job for him (or at least make it a lot less work to do).

 

Do people really think he was not in the room when the decisions regarding Bill Smith and Terry Ryan’s return were being made?

 

IMO he is being significantly overrated by many commenters in this thread, strictly on his performance as a business executive, and I certainly would not let him get within a mile of wherever the decision on a new baseball operations executive is being made.

 

Least of all would I allow him to become the new GM's "boss"

You misread my post. I said:

"Let DSP go be good at the things DSP seems to be good at."

 

Target Field is nice. It improves every year. Beyond that, I can't really evaluate the business side of the Twins because there isn't a lot of information to evaluate from an outside perspective. The TV deal is questionable but the Twins have a lot going against them on the television side of things: the MSP market has a crap cable subscription rate. Without numbers in hand, I can't criticize their management of the Fox Sports contract because it's pure speculation.

 

The Twins seem to think DSP is good at the business side of his job. Absent any evidence the Twins are a badly-run operation from a non-baseball perspective, I'll defer to them on the subject.

[Guest]

 

You misread my post. I said:

"Let DSP go be good at the things DSP seems to be good at."

 

Target Field is nice. It improves every year. Beyond that, I can't really evaluate the business side of the Twins because there isn't a lot of information to evaluate from an outside perspective. The TV deal is questionable but the Twins have a lot going against them on the television side of things: the MSP market has a crap cable subscription rate. Without numbers in hand, I can't criticize their management of the Fox Sports contract because it's pure speculation.

 

The Twins seem to think DSP is good at the business side of his job. Absent any evidence the Twins are a badly-run operation from a non-baseball perspective, I'll defer to them on the subject.

Fair enough.

 

I would just observe that, using that rationale, most of us would/should have been taking a similar stance on TR.

 

The Twins have kept things like exactly what the payroll budget is pretty close to the vest. We don’t know what kind of deals TR could have made, but chose not to or was told he couldn’t do. In the end, all we really knew were the results and that amounted to more losses on the field than other teams in the league.

 

We don’t know what limitations they have with regard to TV market, etc., nor what has been tried to expand that fan market beyond that “crap” MSP cable subscription market. What we do know is that they don’t measure up to other teams in the league in terms of revenues.

 

I guess what I’m suggesting is that we have about the same evidence that the business side is badly run as we do the baseball side – i.e. results in numbers – and at this point, I’m no more inclined to defer to them on one aspect than I am the other. But I admit that may just be me.

Edited July 21, 2016 by SD Buhr

[Brock Beauchamp]

Fair enough.

 

I would just observe that, using that rationale, most of us would/should have been taking a similar stance on TR.

 

The Twins have kept things like exactly what the payroll budget is pretty close to the vest. We don’t know what kind of deals TR could have made, but chose not to or was told he couldn’t do. In the end, all we really knew were the results and that amounted to more losses on the field than other teams in the league.

 

We don’t know what limitations they have with regard to TV market, etc., nor what has been tried to expand that fan market beyond that “crap” MSP cable subscription market. What we do know is that they don’t measure up to other teams in the league in terms of revenues.

 

I guess what I’m suggesting is that we have about the same evidence that the business side is badly run as we do the baseball side – i.e. results in numbers – and at this point, I’m no more inclined to defer to them on one aspect than I am the other. But I admit that may just be me.

I think we know A LOT more about the baseball side than we do the business side. We see the draft. We see how other teams build rosters and use their prospects. We see the free agents signed by the Twins and other teams for comparable money. We have hundreds of thousands of data points to quantify players. We have hundreds of writers who examine the Twins either casually or daily, each approaching the situation from a different perspective.

 

There's nothing close to that on the business side of things.

 

To put it in different terms, I work in the tech industry. I can tell you where Apple is going right with the iPhone and wrong with the iPad. I use their products and the competitions' products. I have a solid understanding of they devices and how they work.

 

But I have no idea if Apple's expenditures on R&D is adequate. I have no idea if their recent buy-in to the Chinese Uber competitor was a good idea. I don't know which divisions are well run and which are poorly run, sucking up resources. All that stuff is under the hood.

 

Their products aren't under the hood.