Twins Looking To Hire President Of Baseball Operations

I agree with wsnydes. This is the right move. Now they just need to pick the right person.

All of the above works for me. Perhaps someone from the Rays who helped make them competitive on a limited budget. Someone from the Mets who helped identify all of their awesome SPs. 

I am down on the Rays and Astros.

Rays have seemed rudderless over the past few seasons (especially since Friedman and Maddon left) and have really struggled to develop their own draft picks. Interesting fact - the Rays have only won 9 more games than the Twins since 2013. 

I think the Astros have made a lot of questionable decisions over the past few seasons. They took Appel over Bryant, had the messy situation with Aiken, traded a lot for Carlos Gomez, traded a ton for Ken Giles, gave up arguably too early on several players like JD Martinez, Grossman, Villar, Carter, decided to go with 4 starters with sub-90s fastballs. They are currently an 85 win team with a substantial core (Altuve, Springer, Keuchel) that all pre-date the current regime. 

How many of that Rays FO are left though?  Didn't several leave with Friedman?  Or at least at the same time or since?  If not, that's a great place to look.  Even if some did go with Friedman, that would be a place to look too.

I hope it's not a pure numbers guy that the Twins hire. We saw what Friedman just did to the Dodgers in potentially upsetting the entire team right as they were rolling with the Ellis/Ruiz swap. I'm not saying Friedman is a bad GM (or whatever his title is), but there needs to be a balanced perspective at the top.

Good news, but disappointing it took so long to occur. Just last year, which is within memory, the Phillies hired Andy McPhail, who should also be within memory, much earlier in the summer, for the same position. That should have been the template, yet it took the second team, the Twins, longer than the first team, the Phillies, to figure it out. It's pretty sad that the front office of Ruben Amaro, Jr., and the Ryan Howard contract could be quicker than the Twins.

Also, again just last year, Boston hired Dombrowski for this position within a couple of weeks of his availability. All you have to do is read media guides or, if you're cheap, mlbtraderumors.com, to know the trend.

Assuming the Twins were thinking of removing Terry Ryan at the end of the season for several weeks before his "sudden" departure was announced, this POBO leak just shows how slow the Twins process is, with "slow" possibly meaning "clueless."

Ryan was fired/left less than six weeks ago. This timeline is pretty reasonable. The process should be thorough and it should take a few months. The Twins aren't looking for part time work to fill checkout counter six, they're looking for a new head of the organization.

And your timeline with the Phillies is waaaaaayyyyy off. I suggest you do a bit more research. Macphail replaced Gillick, who held the interim title for nearly a full year.

The Twins knew Ryan was leaving much earlier than it was announced.

Don't understand your comment about the Phillies. Are you saying they didn't figure it out quicker because they already had the structure?

No, they had an interim president for nearly a year.

Yes, that's true, but I still don't understand your comment. Once they decided that Amaro would likely be done at the end of the year, their plan was to hire a POBO to decide what to do with the front office. MacPhail was in public negotiations for the position in the third week of June, which means they were probably talking to him for a while earlier. Assuming the change decision was made on April 1, it took them three months from then to hire the POBO (with cooperation from the long-term, WS-winning GM). The Twins have stated that Terry Ryan was informed that he would be gone at the end of the season a month before his resignation was announced, which means that the decision was made earlier. That means approximately 12 weeks ago. Within the same 12 weeks, the Phillies hired MacPhail.