Tag: Rick Stelmaszek

Long time Twins coach Rick Stelmaszek passes away

 

FT. MYERS, FL – MARCH 01: Bullpen Coach Rick Stelmaszek #43 of the Minnesota Twins poses during photo day at Hammond Stadium on March 1, 2010 in Ft. Myers, Florida. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Rick Stelmaszek, a fixture on the Minnesota Twins coaching staff from 1981-2012 passed away at the age of 69 after a courageous battle with cancer. His 32 seasons as a coach with one team (Twins) are the third longest such stint in major league history, and he had the longest tenure of any uniformed employee in Twins history.

Richard Francis Stelmaszek known to all his baseball friends as “Stelly”, was born in Chicago, IL on October 8, 1948 and passed away in the city where he was born on November 6, 2017.

According to baseball-reference.com Rick’s father, Raymond Stelmack was a pitcher and outfielder that played in the Yankees, Cardinals, White Sox, and Cubs farm systems from 1939 to 1946 but he never reached the big leagues.

Rick Stelmaszek was drafted after graduating from high school by the Washington Senators as a catcher in round 11 of the 1967 amateur draft and started his professional career in 1968 with the “A” ball Salisbury Senators in the West Carolinas League. Although not a great hitter by any means, Stelmaszek reached the big leagues in 1971 at the age of just 22 and made his big league debut on June 25 at Yankee Stadium when he entered the game in the seventh inning as a pinch-hitter for catcher Paul Casanova and finished the game going 0 for 2. The visiting Senators lost that game 12-2 and it was one of the six big league games he played in 1971.

Note that long-time Twins pitching coach Dick Such is also on the card.

The Washington Senators left Washington after the 1971 season and moved to Arlington, Texas where they became the Texas Rangers.  Stelmaszek spent all of 1972 in the minors perfecting his trade. In 1973 in his seventh game in a Ranger uniform and 0 for 17 in his big league career, Stelly finally got off the snide with a single off of future fall of famer Nolan Ryan of the California Angels for his first big league hit.

That hit must have impressed the Angels because the next day they acquired him in a five player trade with the Rangers. Stelmaszek spent the rest of 1973 with California but found himself in AAA when the 1974 season started. In July of 1974 Stelmaszek was packing his suitcase again, this time he was off to his home town of Chicago where he appeared in 25 games for the Cubs. Stelly hit his first and only major league home run wearing a big league uniform when hit the “tater” off future hall of famer Don Sutton in an 18-8 Cubbies loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field. Stelmaszek went 2 for 4 with a double when he played in his final big league game at the age of 25, a 3-2 loss at Wrigley to the Montreal Expos.

Stelmaszek spent all of 1975 with the Cubs AAA team and in January of 1976 he was on the move again, this time he was headed for the bright lights of New York City to play with the Yankees. However; Stelly never got to wear the Yankee pinstripes and he spent 1976 with the Yankees AAA team and in 1977 he was playing in AAA for the Rangers.

1978 found him with the Minnesota Twins organization as a player manager for the “A” ball Wisconsin Rapids Twins in the Midwest League. His record that season was only 62-76 but the only player that ever reached the big leagues that played on that team was Mark Funderburk and he only played in 31 major league games for the Twins. Stelmaszek retired as a player after the 1978 season but he continued managing at Wisconsin Rapids through the 1980 season.

After winning the Midwest League Manager of the Year award in 1980, Stelly joined the Twins big league coaching staff in 1981 as the bullpen coach under manager Johnny Goryl and continued in that roll for 32 years and coached under five managers, Goryl, Billy Gardner, Ray Miller, Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire. 

When the Twins finished 2012 with the worst record in baseball, Rick Stelmaszek was one of the coaching casualties and lost his long time coaching job with the Twins. Stelmaszek was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2016. The Twins talked him into returning to Target Field to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in 2017. He also made it back to Target Field for the 30-year anniversary celebration of the 1987 World Series team in July. The team recently announced that Stelmaszek would receive the Herb Carneal Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented in January.

Here is the Twins’ statement after learning that their long time coach had passed away.

“The Minnesota Twins are deeply saddened by the loss of Rick Stelmaszek.  A true Twins legend, “Stelly” was widely respected throughout baseball. He was a professional who dedicated his life to Twins baseball and instilled a winning culture into generations of Twins players. The club, like many of his friends throughout the game, is thinking of his wife and son, Kathy and Michael, and the entire Stelmaszek family during this difficult time.”

 

Longtime Twins bullpen coach Rick ‘Stelly’ Stelmaszek dies at 69

Former Twins coach Rick Stelmaszek dies at 69

Stelmaszek was wondrous practitioner in noble art of baseball humor

Rest in peace, Rick Stelmaszek

Thank you for the memories Rick Stelmaszek and we here at Twinstrivia.com would also like to pass on our condolences to the Stelmaszek family and friends.

 

Twins fill coaching vacancies

Twins General Manager Terry Ryan announced today that he had filled the three open coaching staff positions by naming Tom Brunansky as the hitting coach, Bobby Cueller as the bullpen coach and Terry Steinbach as the bench coach and catching instructor.

Brunansky who had a 14 year big league career played for the Twins from 1982 – 1988 and has been a hitting coach for AA New Britain in 2011 and AAA Rochester this past season. The 52 year-old Brunansky also played for the Angels, Cardinals, Red Sox and Brewers replaces Joe Vavra who will serve as the 3B coach and infield instructor in 2013. Vavra has served as the Twins hitting coach since 2006.

Cueller, 60 has only pitched in 4 big league games (Texas Rangers in 1977) but he pitched in the minors for 11 seasons from 1974 to 1985. Cueller just wrapped up his ninth season in the Twins’ organization and fourth consecutive as the Red Wings pitching coach after serving as Double-A New Britain’s manager in 2008. Cueller has also served as a major league coach for the Seattle Mariners in 1995-1996, the Montreal Expos in 1997-2000, the Texas Rangers in 2001 and for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2006-2007. Over the years Cueller has coached Cy Young award winners Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and is credited with teaching Johan Santana is change-up. Cueller also has a history with Carl Pavano. Cueller replaces Rick Stelmaszek who served as bullpen coach for five different Twins managers since 1981. The fact that Cueller is fluent in Spanish will also help the staff to better communicate with their Spanish-speaking players.

Terry Steinbach will take over the bench coach position from Scott Ullger. The 50 year-old former big league catcher spent part of 14 seasons with the Oakland Athletics (1986-96) and Minnesota Twins (1997-99), after playing college baseball at the University of Minnesota. Steinbach has been a guest instructor in spring training for the Twins for the last 13 years.I find it interesting that the Twins would give Steinbach who has not coached or managed in the big leagues the bench coach role that is normally given to experienced coaches and managers. Scotty Ullger will coach 1B and instruct the outfielders. Ullger has no big league outfield experience but he did play some outfield back in the minors back in the 80’s. Ullger has also served as the Twins manager in the past when the umpires have decided that Gardy needs a time-out, I wonder who fills that role now. I guess I just don’t see Ullger managing from 1B.

Rick Anderson will retain his pitching coach role and will be the only coach that will be doing the same job as he has done in the past. Over the past month or so Hall of Famer and former Twins DH Paul Molitor has mentioned that he would be open to a coaching role but GM Ryan quickly put a kibosh on that stating that “Molitor was not a fit at the present time” but no other reasons have been provided. My guess is that the Minnesota Twins who always like to project a squeaky clean image don’t feel that Molitor who has had substance abuse issues and other personal problems in the past fits in their plans at the current time. I personally have no issue with that and when I have observed Molitor during his spring training stints he seems to prefer to do his job and interact as little as possible with Twins fans who would like to spend some time chatting with him or getting his autograph. Heck, Tom Kelly spends way more time interacting with the fans then Molitor does. I asked Molitor to stop for a quick picture after spring training practice one day this spring and he acted like I asked him for 2 hours out of his busy schedule.

Tough times in Twinsville

The Minnesota Twins season ended on Wednesday in Toronto with another loss, the 96th of the season and went into the record books as the second consecutive season that the team had the worst record in the American league. On Thursday the payment came due for a number of manager Ron Gardenhire’s coaching staff.

It is never a good thing when someone loses their job, we all need to work in order to earn money to put food on the table and to support our  families. It is easy to say that so and so should be fired because the results are not what we want to see but I still find myself feeling sorry for the individuals involved. The coaches let go by the Twins yesterday didn’t make a single error, they didn’t throw any gopherballs and they certainly didn’t strikeout when the bases were loaded but yet today they still find themselves unemployed. When the team that you are coaching loses 90+ games for the second year in a row someone has to pay the price if for no other reason than to send a message to its paying customer fan base that the team is doing what it can to turn things around. But in reality the firing of bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek, or 3B coach Steve Liddle, or 1B coach Jerry White or even head trainer Rick McWane won’t add a single win to the Twins win column in 2013.

What it does do is send a message to everyone in the Twins organization that the Pohlad family views baseball as a business like any of their other businesses and if the Minnesota Twins are to be successful and profitable then everyone needs to work harder to be the best that they can be. When the Twins let these three coaches go, they lost 58 years of Twins coaching experience and head trainer Rick McWane has been in the organization for 24 years. Don’t think for a moment that this was a hasty decision, the team gave this matter a lot of thought, you don’t arbitrarily fire people with that much experience on a whim. Having said that, you also need to understand that it is natural for people to do things that have worked for them in the past and it is difficult for someone who has been with the organization for that many years to think outside of the box and come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. In business it is a fine line between rewarding loyalty and making changes that bring new blood and new and fresh thinking into the organization. I am retired now but I worked for a single organization my entire 38 working years and I can tell you for a fact that there were many times over the years that either a new manager or a new employee would bring up a different way of doing something and we “old timers” in the company would say “stop right there, that is not the way we do it here at this company, we have been successful for many years doing it this way” so butt out and learn our ways of doing things or you will find yourself on the outside looking in. It is just the way that most of us think, change is difficult to accept and we don’t like to leave our comfort zones.

I feel the reason that the Twins have fallen on hard times is that they have neglected to accept change, the organization has gotten stale and they have gotten stuck in a rut with what has proven to work for them in the past and doing things the “Twins way”. There is always risk associated with any change but if you stand still and keep doing business as usual you will find out that your competitors not only have caught up to you but left you in their dust. It is easy to look at your team and say that we have some very good players and if we give them some time and experience they will continue to improve. That is true to a degree but you constantly need to look for better ways and better players. Over the year the Twins have been a model of stability but that only takes you so far, if you don’t take big risks at times you will not reap huge rewards. The Twins organization has been too conservative over the years and unwilling to take a risk, their “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” approach has now bit them in the butt. Sometimes change will pay off and other times it will come back to haunt you as we all have witnessed in the recent Tsuyoshi Nishioka situation. But if you let the fear of failure keep you from taking a risk to get better, your are done, it is time to move on. Failure to take solid calculated risks will certainly lead to mediocrity and we are all paying for that now.

A lot has been made of the Twins letting Rick Stelmaszek and his 32 years with the team go but let’s be realistic here, what has Stelmaszek contributed recently to help the team? Stelmaszek has had health issues over the several years that have name it difficult for him to fulfill all his coaching duties. It is time for Stelmaszek to retire and give someone else a chance. As for Steve Liddle, the rumors have been out there for some time that he was thinking of retiring, if you are not 100% committed it is time to move on. I have not heard much about Jerry White either from a positive or a negative stand point so maybe it is just time for a change there too. Bench coach Scott Ullger and hitting coach Joe Vavra have been reassigned and their future roles are not yet clear if they will have a job on a major league or minor league level.

I have no issue with Gardy keeping the managers title but I am not as convinced that Rick Anderson should have been retained as the pitching coach. Both of these guys have a year left on their contracts and it seems very clear to me that both of their jobs are at risk going forward. GM Terry Ryan holds the key here and if he doesn’t get some players this off-season both Gardenhire and Anderson will be history. Fair or not, that is life in professional baseball. You can make a case that Gardy should resign at this point and just walk away but I don’t think that is the way that Gardy is wired, the man wants to win but right now he does not have the horses in the barn that will allow him to do so. I like GM Terry Ryan a lot and respect what he has accomplished over the years but he too is at the crossroads coming into 2013, he has to come up with a way to get some players that will help the Twins win or he will be riding off into the sunset after next season. Twins president Dave St. Peter is not in the clear here either, when you are in charge of the entire organization you need to accepts responsibility for the negatives as well as the positives. Yes, the times are changing in Twinsville and the fans will speak their minds over the next few weeks as they chose to either renew or not renew their season tickets and I think their voices will be loud and clear and the Twins organization will probably not like what they hear.

Checking on the Twins progress

It is a warm and sunny day here in Fort Myers with the temperatures in the mid 80’s and as I check out the Minnesota weather forecast I find it says that the area could get a foot or more of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. A foot of snow? It is darn near time for baseball, oh well, better there than here.

I made another trip out to the ballpark this morning and I arrived about 10:15 AM and everyone was hard at work. The first field I stopped to check out had a group working on situational plays in the infield. A couple of runners were on the base paths and the fielders were given situations to either get a runner out on via a run down play or maybe to get the batter at first and hold the runner at 3B or any number of similar plays. We all watch the game of baseball but very few of us really understand all the inner workings of what really takes place on the field. I think we can blame TV for a lot of that because the TV cameras focus on the pitcher, the hitter and the fielder that is going to get the ball. But there is so much else going on that you don’t see on TV, like what the other runners are doing and most importantly what each of the other fielders are doing depending on the situation. It is only at the ball game itself that you get to see all the action that is taking place like the catcher backing up first base, or the pitcher backing up 3B or home plate, or the cut-off infielders manning their positions. It is like a choreographed ballet what so many different things going on around the field that it is hard to grasp all of what is taking place. Some people will tell you that baseball is really a simple game, pitch the ball, hit the ball and field the ball but the devil is really in the details in what we all call America’s pastime. As we watched the Twins do run down after run down, you could hear the fans commenting among themselves saying things like “Mauer (playing 1B) needs to throw the ball to the middle infielders quicker versus chasing him all the way to 2B”. Another fan “hoped all this practice would allow them to better execute run downs then they did last season”, I for one could not agree more, they seemed to have no clue last year. On one play, closer Capps tried to field a bunt halfway between the mound and home and slipped and landed pretty hard on his butt as a man of Capps size is prone to do and you heard a groan go through the crowd. Another injury? Nope, not this time as Capps got up laughing and a few of the Twins laughed as their gloves covered their faces. Coaches Gardenhire, Kelly and others looked on the action and periodically wandered over to one of the players and explained what they might do to improve their play and their chances of making the team. The Twins are spending a lot of time on fundamentals down here this spring and hopefully it will payoff once the season begins.

One thing that struck me today as I was out at the ballpark today was how few fans there were watching the Twins go through their paces. There could not have been more than a couple of hundred people here today. If you counted the players, photographers, and the journalists, they probably out-numbered the fans. Normally at this time of the year I find the area between the fields being clogged with fans going to and fro from field to field and if you wanted to get next to the fences, you would have to fight through the fans 6 or 8 deep but that was not the case today or any day this year that I have been out to the ballpark. Last years 63-99 record appears to have caused many Twins fans to pursue other interests and if this attitude continues into the regular season, you are going to see lots of empty seats at Target Field. If the news out of Fort Myers continues to be negative due to injuries or a bad Grapefruit league record, it could be a long summer for the Minnesota Twins. The Twins need some good news or a hot start to get Minnesotan’s and other Midwesterners talking Twins baseball and heading out for Target field.

I saw Like Hughes take a few rounds in BP this morning after getting a cortisone shot last week. He looked a little tentative but he did get ahold of a couple of nice drives. GM Terry Ryan was sitting on the bench of one of the back fields watching his troops being put through their paces. Later coaches Rick Stelmaszek, Tom Kelly, and Ron Gardenhire joined him and they chatted about the days activities. TK brought up the fact the Chris Parmelee was not having a great day in the field and that he would have a chat with him. A little while later Parmelee rotated to the field that TK was on and TK casually mentioned to Parmelee that he wanted to “see him in his office when Chris had a minute”. A minute later Chris joined TK on the bench and TK explained to Parmelee what he saw on the field this morning was not what he expected of him and that he wanted to know why Chris did what he did. Chris explained his side of the story and then TK explained to him what he thought should have happened. No yelling, no screaming, just a man to man conversation that hopefully provided a “now I understand” moment for the young Parmelee. As Chris walked away deep in thought, TK mumbled, “he knows better, I know he does”.

Joel Zumaya

I need to touch on the Joel Zumaya situation, I met Joel for the first time a couple of days ago and I was surprised at how friendly he was as we chatted as he walked back towards the main clubhouse from one of the back fields. He talked about how anxious he was to pitch for the Minnesota Twins and how he was really looking forward to this spring. Now, less than a week later after tearing his ulnar collateral ligament on Saturday and facing Tommy John surgery, the season is over for Joel Zumaya before he even had a chance to put on a Minnesota Twins uniform in a regular season game and more than that, his career may also be over. How often can a man get back up after getting knocked down? The TJ surgery would make what, his sixth surgery and the man is just 27 years of age. You have to feel terrible for Zumaya and his family. We as baseball fans see how a player performs and we either like him as a player or we think the guy stinks and we hope he gets benched, cut, sent to the minors, or traded for a bucket ball and a couple of bats. What we forget sometimes is that these ball players are real people with real feelings and real families that love them no matter what happens at the local ballpark. I know the players make a lot of money but it is not just the money, these guys want to play baseball. They grew up with the goal of being a professional baseball player and have worked hard to get where they are and when injuries keep  them from achieving what they think they are possible of, it is a hard pill to swallow. What do you do with the rest of your life when you know you are good enough to compete in the big leagues but your health won’t allow it and you have to walk away from the game at 27 years of age? Baseball can be a cruel game, some would give up their right arm to have the ability to play, some have the ability but choose not to pursue it, some have the ability but choose to let it slip through their fingers because of drugs or alcohol, some have the ability but health issues prevent them from achieving their goal and a few are blessed with the ability and health to have long and fruitful baseball careers. In this case you have that very rare pitcher with the unique ability to throw a baseball over a 100 MPH and yet his career may be over before it really left the starting gate. They say there is no crying in baseball but it is things like this that make you wonder why things happen the way they do. We at Twins Trivia send our best wishes to Joel Zumaya no matter what he chooses to do.

As always, I managed to get a few pictures at the ballpark today and you can check them out on the right hand side of the page under 2012 Spring training pictures.

UPDATE MARCH 4 – The agent for Joel Zumaya notified the Twins yesterday this his client has decided to have Tommy John elbow ligament surgery and will attempt yet another comeback. Zumaya tore the ligament while throwing batting practice on February 25th. The TJ surgery will be the sixth surgery for Zumaya, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since June of 2010. The surgery will take place at the end of the month and be preformed by noted specialist Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Alabama. It is still not determined if the rehab will be under the Twins auspices or if Zumaya will do it on his own. Either way, the Twins will pick up the cost and pay Zumaya $400K during 2012.

UPDATE MARCH 28th – The Twins released RHP Joel Zumaya on March 28, a day before the reliever was scheduled to have season-ending Tommy John surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament. Zumaya, 27, tore the ligament during his first session throwing to batters on March 4