News
Late run could net Gardenhire MOY
Twins skipper up against stiff competition for award
By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com
11/17/09 1:30 PM EST
It was mid-September, and Ron Gardenhire's Twins had lost seven of 10 games, dropping them two games below .500 with 20 games left in the regular season. In most seasons, such a slide would be a death knell, a sign that a club's hopes of October baseball would go by the wayside.
But the Twins had at least two things working for them at that time -- the first-place Tigers' inability to put together a division-clinching win streak of their own, and Gardenhire's steady leadership. "We've teetered," Gardenhire said at that time. "'Are we in? Are we out?' But we're still in." And Gardenhire wouldn't let his team forget that fact, even when things looked to be bleak. A Twins team already ravaged by injuries was dealt what could have been a crushing blow when star slugger Justin Morneau's season was cut short in mid-September by a back injury. But the Twins nonetheless found a way to win 16 of their final 20 games to force a one-game tiebreaker with the Tigers at the Metrodome. And when the Twins won that thrilling, 12-inning affair, they had captured their fifth AL Central title in eight years. As a result of the leadership he provided at the helm down the stretch in 2009, Gardenhire has a chance to capture another prize -- one that has eluded him thus far in his eight seasons in charge of the Twins. The Baseball Writers' Association of America will announce the winner of its AL Manager of the Year Award on Wednesday, and, because of the Twins' late-season surge, Gardenhire has to be considered a candidate for the honor. The only Twins manager to win the award is Tom Kelly, who took it home in 1991. Of course, Gardenhire's competition is stiff. The Angels' Mike Scioscia, the Yankees' Joe Girardi and the Red Sox's Terry Francona are also prime candidates in the mix. While Gardenhire, 52, has never won the BBWAA trophy, he was, along with the Rangers' Buck Showalter, named co-Manager of the Year by the Sporting News in 2004, and he was named AL Manager of the Year by Baseball America in 2008. Whether Gardenhire's efforts are recognized by the BBWAA, his body of work with the mid-market Twins is admirable. And the job he did in a dramatic '09 regular season might have been his best work to date. "Really, once you sit back and go back over the year, you probably will be kind of amazed," Gardenhire said toward season's end. "It wasn't what we expected, with injuries and everything else that happened to our pitching staff. Players that we had a pretty good feeling about didn't work out. A lot of stuff happened. The tenacity of this team has been pretty good lately." It was good enough to overtake the Tigers, and others in the division took notice. "I think he should be Manager of the Year," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said in September. "He should. That guy was fighting with not too much ammunition. He did a tremendous job with that ballclub, day in and day out, to put the club in that position. That's amazing. It's something where he should feel proud." Little went according to plan for the Twins in '09. Before he began putting up MVP-worthy numbers, Joe Mauer missed the first month of the season with lower back inflammation. Plans to install Alexi Casilla full-time at second base fell through, and Gardenhire was forced to use a rotating crew of bench players. Joe Crede's bum back limited him to 90 games before season-ending surgery in August. And injuries cost Minnesota three starters -- Kevin Slowey, Glen Perkins and Francisco Liriano -- who began the season in the rotation. By the time Morneau's season was cut short with three weeks left to play, it was fashionable to count the Twins out. But Gardenhire, who won his 700th career game in late September, never let his charges get distracted. "The challenge was to keep the players focused on the big picture," he said. "We went so long battling around that .500, and every time you would get the good feeling, then you'd play a couple games in a row where you think, 'Here we are again.' So it was just a constant reminder to keep playing, and maybe we'll get on a run. That's what we were hoping." They got on a run, all right. They ran right to another division title -- before ultimately running into the juggernaut Yankees in the AL Division Series. On Wednesday, Gardenhire will find out if that late-season run earned him one of the game's more prestigious honors.
Anthony Castrovince is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
