Which front office is the best in sports?
That was the question recently asked by The Athletic, the New York Times’ owned sports reporting outlet, which polled 40 executives and coaches across the four major sports leagues — baseball, football, basketball and hockey — and asked them to rank the top five front offices in their respective sports, assigning points for their first pick through the fifth.
The result was a list of 70 teams that managed to attract a lot, some or just a few points. Several teams tied for 70th place and several more were not mentioned at all.
Coming out at No. 1 was the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, which, if you’re a Northwest basketball fan, plays like a sick joke if you can remember Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp and the rest of the Seattle Supersonics.
But I’m not here for the Sonics. I’m here for the Minnesota Twins, and the Twins showed up tied for 34th and ahead of four storied franchises: the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Steelers, Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens. All four have produced 69 championships combined. The Senators/Twins have played in four World Series and won three of them. But again, the poll was not about winning, but about the best front office as viewed by their peers.
“The word ‘culture’ comes up often in discussions about the Minnesota Twins, who have been helmed by president of baseball operations Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine since the fall of 2016,” The Athletic piece reads.
“Everybody who goes there loves it,” one MLB executive said.
“You hear it from every player who played for them. Derek Falvey has done a lot of hard work from a culture standpoint, and it’s made a difference.”
Extra innings…
-The list of Twins moving on from the club continues to grow. Kyle Farmer, Carlos Santana and Max Kepler have signed elsewhere as free agents and now you can add lefty reliever and Minnesota native Caleb Thielbar, who has agreed to a one-year deal with the Chicago Cubs.
Thielbar had a great run with the Twins. It was a run that was spread over eight seasons but was divided by a multiyear gap in which he pitched well in the minors for the Detroit Tigers, but wouldn’t get called up to the bigs again until he rejoined the Twins in 2020.
Over those eight seasons, Thielbar was 23-12 with a 3.38 ERA and had 347 strikeouts across 320 innings, or a strikeout ratio per nine innings of 9.8.
One highlight that comes to mind: Thielbar was one of eight relievers who locked down a 12-inning, 4-2 win for the Twins over the Boston Red Sox on Sept. 20 last season. Starter David Festa gave the Twins five innings with six strikeouts and then the bullpen took over with 14 whiffs the rest of the way.
“That was incredibly impressive and gutsy. There were so many guys that we pushed in this game,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli told the Star Tribune after his pitchers combined to strike out 20 Red Sox hitters, the most in Twins history.
“A lot of the relievers came in and just willed themselves through it, very determined. I love what I saw out of the guys today.”
Sources: Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com