Is Winning Losing (Part II)?

Well, the Twins certainly asserted themselves mightily today, beating the Seattle M's 8-4 after a 7-run first inning. The initial frame included a grand slam by one Michael Cuddyer. The game got so out of hand that Dan Gladden and Jack Morris started yakking about anything and everything (though they do this in tight games as well). In the gabfest Gladden mused about young players coming up and going down to Rochester, and stated that Terry Ryan sometimes agonizes over calling up the better prospects because it might hurt the farm clubs during a tight pennant race. Which only makes this scribe say: Huh?

So now we've reached this level of the game. Terry Ryan, so-called genius GM, worrying about the minor league clubs and their fan base. Awesome. Apparently, it is perfectly cool for the owner of the major league club to spend years threatening moving the team or contracting it altogether. But hey, when the club's hurting in the pennant drive, why the fuck bring up a guy who might help, because you know the Rochester Red Wings are on the edge of a pennant themselves.

Fuck that. I don't even know who in the hell these guys were referring to, since I don't know of any Twin in upstate New York who could lift these guys out of the quagmire. Maybe he was looking back at the hesitancy of bringing up Matt Garza, and other arms. I don't know. I do know that Ryan's hands are tied, financially (though not that much, according to Reusse's recent column I mentioned in the last blog). I know he works for a "small market" team that plays in the dome and they have a full time staff that roams the city streets collecting aluminum to make ends meet. I know that they refuse to spend money or trade the excess of arms for a good bat, thus relegating themselves to above-.500 mediocrity that has become the norm of both AL and NL Central Divisions. What I don't need are such shitty excuses. If you live in a minor-league town, you come to terms with players leaving for the big league club. In fact, Mr. Ryan (or Mr. Gladden, if you quoted out of context or were just speculating on a hypothesis), watching a young player develop and leave for the bigs is part of the charm of following the minors.