A Changing of the Guard

Well, well, well… first of all, my apologies for the lack of blogging over the past week – I was out west and I did not have as reliable of Internet access as I had expected to. And, while I was gone, the Twins’ season took a dizzying mixture of ups, downs, turns and bends. I’m not quite sure how turns are different from bends, but you probably get the idea.

The big news is that manager Adeo Calcagni was fired – turns out his position was paid, according to sources, so he wasn’t simply ‘released’ or ‘let go’ – after Wednesday’s loss in Brantford. He was replaced by erstwhile bench coach and now interim manager Ian Held, and General Manager Doug Kelcher becomes the second assistant coach for the remainder of the year.

I – and a lot of other people – expected the axe to fall on Calcagni a lot sooner than it did. In my mind, he became a lame duck-type after the two consecutive home drubbings to Barrie, and it was in those games that he first started to admit that he really had no answers. I pinpoint those games in particular because the Sunday before, after the Twins lost 9-0 at Christie Pitts, he told the media he still had a very positive outlook on the season (and I more or less agreed, too). After the Barrie beatings, they lost 22-2 to Toronto and then I really thought he was done.

But nothing happened for a long time – a long time in baseball terms, anyways – and I figured the Twins’ brass had settled on stringing out the season and going back to the drawing board in the off season. A week ago tonight, I asked Kelcher if the current coaching staff would finish the year, and even though his answer was far from an unequivocal vote of confidence, he did seem to take any changes off the table.

I suppose the reason I thought that they would just string it out is because I didn’t expect the new manager to come from within the organization – as Held obviously is – so I thought any change that might have been made would have been wholesale and a whole new staff would have been brought in to learn the team before the playoffs.

And when I first learned that Held was going to be the new guy, I had my doubts – based on my limited exposure to him, which consisted of two media scrums Calcagni hadn’t been available for , I thought it would have been better to go outside the organization – but tonight’s game against Oshawa put those mostly to rest. It’s true, the Twins lost by one, but they played head over heels better than they have at any point recently; they were as into the game as I’ve ever seen them; and Held clearly has a great relationship with his player – which Calcagni certainly did not.

Indeed, the Twins were vocal, enthusiastic, persistent, and – most importantly – played error-free baseball in their post game under Held, and had Shane Cole turned in a slightly better start, or had Jon Amendola been slightly better in relief, they would have won.

Held also impressed me in his post-game media meeting – I suppose that the two previous times I had spoken to him, he was talking as Calcagni’s assistant coach, but tonight, speaking as his own boss, his was fluent in discussing the team, his plans for individual players, and his vision of how he sees things potentially coming together for the Twins over the home stretch.

And really, it was time for Calcagni to go – I was muted in my criticism of him, as was the other beat writer, Gary McCarthy, until he wrote what I thought was a fairly scathing article (relative to anything else he’s written previously, anyways) right after Calcagni was fired, but really, it was all there:

-- Debatable personnel use
-- By all accounts, zero respect and often overt dislike from his players (this being gleaned from my conversations with players, their family/friends and, well, nearly everybody else)
-- The Gordon Scandal: pitching non-pitcher Derek Gordon for a hundred and forty-friggin-four pitches against Barrie, and then never pitching him again after he held them to three runs!
n And the results – a 7-20 record, which is where they were at at the time of his firing, has to weigh in in some way

Anyways, that page is turned, but the Twins aren’t out of the woods yet. The logjam that once existed at the top of the IBL standings now exists at the bottom: Hamilton is a game behind Mississauga, who is a game behind Kitchener. Those teams, of course, are seeded 7-8-9.

So, it’s conceivable that the Twins could miss the playoffs – and equally conceivable that they could leap frog into that seventh spot, and a potentially winnable first round series against Brantford. They have a pivotal make-up game against Hamilton on Monday, and then end the season against Kitchener on the road on the following weekend.

Their chances of missing the playoffs have decreased significantly since the coaching change. I think it hugely increases their chances of winning that pivotal Hamilton game; I also think they’ll be able to pick up another win or two along the way – they have seven games left, according to Held – with the improved play and attitude that they showed tonight.

It starts with a doubleheader against London tomorrow – first game’s first pitch at 5.30 at home – and then primetime will come on Monday when Hamilton arrives in town.

I’m behind on my articles – what else is new! – and the Twins’ website guy is apparently away for a little bit, so look for some new material on the website for Monday or Tuesday, including my long-anticipated feature on the new players. In the mean time, to see the quick piece I hammered out at the Calgary airport this morning, check out ‘Mississauga Twins’ on Facebook; the article is posted as a note there.

I just realized I totally skimmed over the details of tonight’s game – but obviously, there was a far bigger story, and you’ll all get to read about the game in my story later this week anyways!