Minnesota Twins make a splash by hiring Baseball America writer

The Minnesota Twins added to their scouting department by adding one of the most-tenured Baseball America writers, John Manuel.

One thing the current Minnesota Twins front office has shown is that they will find people from any number of different ways to fill roles. Hitting coach James Rowson was far off the radar from the typical hitting coach candidate, but he’s turned out to be an excellent choice. Tuesday morning, an announcement was made of another elite hire:

Manuel’s writing

Manuel has been writing for years with Baseball America, and there are few that are more connected within the scouting and amateur evaluation industry than Manuel. Frankly, if he never does a bit of scouting on his own, his connections within the industry would be a huge asset to the Minnesota Twins front office, but he brings much, much more.

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Manuel is currently the editor at Baseball America, and he has one of the most collected, grounded demeanors in the business. He recently wrote an article on the Minnesota Twins 2017 draft, for those interested in his views on the Twins.

Manuel had this to say on his Facebook page about the move (Lavelle has the entire Facebook post transcribed on his Star Tribune article):

"I started working at BA in September, 1996, with Vladimir Guerrero on the cover as the top prospect in the Double-A Eastern League.The BA crew then was pretty modest, considering the magazine was 15 years old. Founder Allan Simpson was the editor, Jim Callis the managing editor, with Will Lingo, John Royster and Alan Schwarz rounding out an all-star staff. I was definitely the rookie, started off in a converted closet sitting next to an intern, working at a desk that had been made in a high school shop class, filed photos endlessly and was sent on Bojangles runs to keep the staff fed on deadline days.It was awesome.Twenty-one years later, I’ve spent nary half of my life growing up at the magazine. I went from drinking the Kool-aid to making it, and I believe in it as if it were an ideology, not a job.When I was promoted to editor-in-chief, alongside Lingo, in 2005, we had a meeting about the staff with Allan Simpson, and it was understandably contentious. He’d started the magazine in his freaking garage, and here I was now in charge of the editorial product, not him. Allan was lamenting that the staff had too many “journalism guys,” and not enough “baseball guys.”I asked him, “Which do you think I am?” And he replied, “You’re a journalism guy.”Not anymore. Oct. 31 will be my last day at Baseball America. I’m becoming a ‘baseball guy,’ taking a job in the pro scouting department of the Minnesota Twins."

Next: Twins top 100 prospects complete list

On a purely personal note, I’m a huge fan of this move, as John, along with John Sickels were two of the guys who really inspired me to be more interested in prospects and begin watching baseball in a different way. Having him as part of the front office will be an awesome thing to follow, and I’m certainly feeling lucky to be able to cover the Twins while they have such excellent talent doing the work of bringing in players!