Mark it down — Target Field helps make Minnesota Twins baseball’s best organization

The Twins are full of good, even colorful people like manager Ron Gardenhire (image via Wikipedia).

Michael Cuddyer calls spanking-new Target Field in Minneapolis “pristine.”

I’ll term it something better — good as gold. It will separate the Minnesota Twins from the rest of baseball’s pack.

The Twins already know how to develop players just about better than anybody. They have had some of the hustling-est rosters — the famed “pirahnas” as dubbed by Oswaldo Guillen — and one of the cagiest managers in Ron Gardenhire. Now Target Field will enable the Twins to keep most of the home-grown players that had beaten a steady exodus out of town going back to the Calvin Griffith ownership days.

The Twins are used to doing a lot with a little. Now they’ll have a lot more. That’s all they need to do it as well as the Yankees and Red Sox, if not better.

And to think this franchise was targeted for contraction by the Lords of the Game nearly a decade ago.

Signing Joe Mauer, the reigning American League MVP, to a virtual half-a-career contract is the biggest first step. But the Twins will be nuclear-armed by baseball standards if the constant sellouts at Target Field and attendant revenue from suites and sponsorships enable them to keep the talent core around Mauer.

They can build upon their quality player development system that’s the envy of bigger-market teams like the Cubs. What other franchise has grown four 30-homer, 100-RBI types in Mauer, Cuddyer, Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel? Hey, the Cubs haven’t developed their own 30-homer, 100-RBI player that they’ve kept since Billy Williams 50 years ago. Thrown in leadoff man/center fielder Denard Span, and the majority of the lineup is home grown.  This time, the cash flow from the new ballpark will enable the Twins to prevent history from repeating itself as stars ranging from Rod Carew to Bert Blyleven to Torii Hunter have been let go once they qualified for market-level paydays.

Stability and loyalty are the Twins front-office bywords. Former GM Terry Ryan did not bail on the team when contraction was threatened even though the scouting maven would have been a great addition to any franchise. I wondered why Andy MacPhail, fresh from a run as a “boy wonder” Twins GM who won two World Series in 1987 and 1991, did not recruit the Twins player development experts for the Cubs when he took over as Chicago team president in 1994. MacPhail simply responded that none of the scouts and farm-system officials wanted to leave. They liked the family atmosphere. Indeed, the turnover has not been heavy in the front office.

Ryan’s successor, Bill Smith, wondered the other day what he’d do with a Yankees-sized payroll. It probably wouldn’t compute. The Twins are used to working smart in lieu of tapping into a king’s ransom budget. They won’t need a New York or Boston-level payroll if they keep developing their own players but don’t have to automatically let them go after six years.

The most positive aspect of the Twins’ ascendancy is the decency of the people involved. Ryan answered his own phone and gladly held court at his pressbox seat. Smith seems not ego-filled. Gardenhire is a funny guy and  just crusty enough if you misfire on a question. The entire clubhouse is marked by approachable players. They’ve mimicked the Atlanta Braves’ longtime successful strategy of emphasizing character in the people they hire.

It’s about time a center of power in baseball shifts to the Midwest and down-to-earth people. Maybe now the Twins won’t be lost in the “ESPN Flyover Zone” (or “Eastern Seaboard Programming Network) that forgets the middle of the country and makes it appear the Yankees and Red Sox are the only teams that matter.