Many people have read the Michael Lewis book “Moneyball.” I read it when it was published in 2003. Many people have seen the current movie of the same name. I am not among them and don’t plan to be.
I will not see it for the same reason I do not see Oliver Stone films about historical figures or events. I have no more interest in seeing Stone’s personal, warped version of history than I want to see a movie based on Lewis’s narrow, misguided view of Major League Baseball.
Each of the several times I have criticized the book I have received a flood of e-mail telling me I don’t understand the book, which lauds Billy Beane’s statistically analytical way of finding players over the traditional scouting and evaluation method.
John Schuerholz, the architect of the Atlanta Braves’ unparalleled 14-year run in first place, has been criticized, too, so I feel I am in good company, A few years after “Moneyball” appeared, Schuerholz wrote in his own book, “Built to Win:”
“As portrayed in that book, it is a bogus concept because I know you can’t make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis to build a team.”
I raise the subject of “Moneyball” not for cinematic reasons but because Terry Ryan is back for a second tour of duty as the general manager of the Minnesota Twins.
I have long been a Ryan fan, impressed, among other things, with his scouting-and-evaluation method of building a team, and I have always felt that he got a raw deal from Lewis, whose book glorified Beane, the Oakland Athletics’ general manager (whom I also like), for nothing more than Ryan accomplished with the Twins despite a similar lack of money.
In a seven-year stretch, 2000-2006, Beane’s teams finished first four times and won the wild card once for a total of five playoff appearances. Ryan’s Twins finished first four times in a five-year span, 2002-2006.
The Twins also won division titles twice in the first three years after Ryan decided to give up the job as general manager. The Athletics have struggled the last five years with four losing seasons and a .500 season.
In their five playoff seasons, the Athletics had payrolls of $32.7 million, $37.9 million, $38.7 million, $50.3 million and $62.2 million. In their four similarly timed playoff seasons under Ryan, the Twins paid their players $40.2 million, $55.6 million, $53.6 million and $63.8 million.
In other words, in 2006, a season in which both teams won division titles, their payrolls were separated by only $1.6 million.
Since then, the Athletics have not been a good advertisement for “Moneyball,” but they still had a 2011 movie made about them. Ryan is happy that Brad Pitt or any other actor has not made a movie about him and the Twins. When I used to ask him if the one-sided nature of their relative notoriety bothered him, Ryan would quickly reply with an emphatic “no. “
“We get enough publicity,” he would say and mean it.
Although I like Bill Smith, an early subscriber to this Web site, and am sorry the Twins acted so uncharacteristically in firing him after only four years and one bad season, I am delighted that Ryan is back on the job. There is no classier executive in baseball.
Even Smith said by telephone Wednesday, “If they felt they had to make a change. I’m glad they chose Terry. Terry Ryan is as close a friend as I have in baseball so I’m thrilled it’s him. It happens in this game. If ownership needs to make a change in leadership, Terry is the man for the job.”
Ryan, 58, was the Twins’ general manager from 1994 through 2007. When he resigned, he said he had grown weary of some aspects of the job, including his necessary dealings with player agents and the news media. However, when the Pohlad family, the team’s owners, asked him to return, he said yes.
Jim Pohlad, the chief executive officer, did not return a telephone call seeking a reason for the change, but Ryan said, “They just decided they were going to make a change and asked if I would assume the general manager’s duties. I talked to Bill, and he said if I’m going to be replaced I’d like it to be you.”
Smith said that Dave St. Peter, the club president, called him in Friday night and “gave me a heads up about what they were going to do Monday morning. I didn’t like it at first, but I got through it and went in over the weekend and cleaned out my office.”
Was Smith, who had worked for the Twins for 26 years, paying the price for a 63-99 season, the American League’s worst and the Twins’ worst since 1982?
“I don’t think so,” Ryan said. “I think there was a difference in philosophy between the Pohlad family and Bill. We had numerous injuries. We pushed too many kids too far because so many guys were hurt. We had a lot of guys go down. You always like to have an experienced bench; we just didn’t have enough and we had to play young guys.”
But Ryan added, “There are a lot of us here who think we let Billy down.”
Smith, however, blamed no one for the problems that led to his dismissal.
“It’s not about the last four years; it’s about the next four years,” he said. “I don’t think it’s 100 percent the result of ‘you lost 99 games so you’re out.’ I think the Pohlads are looking ahead; that’s their job. They stepped back and looked where we’re headed, That’s their right to make a change.
“It’s a tough business and I respect the process. It hurts when it happens to you. But I don’t think there’s a more logical move. If they think Terry Ryan is the man to lead this organization, that’s what they have to do.”
Ryan and the Twins could benefit in his first year back from their injured players’ complete recoveries. “We have to improve our pitching and defense,” Ryan said, “but the biggest thing we have to do is get people back on the diamond. If we can do that, it would be going in the right direction without doing anything.”
Ryan explained that he was not retired the last four years.
“I started out in spring training scouting players,” he related, “I was in Fort Myers all spring. That’s a pretty good place to be when you live in Minnesota. Then I evaluated amateur players for the draft, then after the draft I went to the minor leagues and looked at all of our teams and evaluated them, then went to the instructional league and the Arizona Fall League. I was out often. I was working.”
Ryan will find things economically different this time from what he experienced during his first tenure as general manager. The Twins’ new park, two-year-old Target Field, has produced a significant increase in revenue, attracting more than 3 million fans each year and enabling the Twins to raise their payroll to $103 million and $112 million, putting them way out of Oakland’s economic league ($61.5 million and $66 million).
Ryan acknowledged the increase, saying, “I’ve never been a payroll guy, but they have given us plenty of resources to work with.” The old/new general manager, however, knows whence he came. “I looked at Tampa Bay,” he said, sounding a bit envious, “and they had a $40 million payroll and they were in the playoffs.”
Smith, meanwhile, will decide in the next six weeks if he wants to stay with the Twins, who have offered him a front-office job.
“It’s premature to say I’m going to stay,” said Smith, most likely the only college French major in the majors. “They graciously have given me six weeks to decide. They offered a good position to stay with the club.”
Smith, who had been Ryan’s assistant general manager, would be a special assistant to St. Peters and to Ryan, “the guy who fired me,” he said jokingly, “and the guy who replaced me.”