On the very last day of the regular season in 2019, a playoff spot well in hand, manager Rocco Baldelli handed off some of the responsibilities of his job to utilityman Ehire Adrianza.
Adrianza took Baldelli’s chair in the Kauffman Stadium visiting manager’s office and fielded questions from the media. He exchanged the lineup card with Baldelli, Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost and the umpires, and later he emerged from the dugout in the sixth inning to make a pitching change.
His playing career was nowhere near complete — he played five more seasons after that — but even back then, it was apparent to those around him that he was destined to stay in the sport one way or another once his playing days were over.
When the Twins reached out to Adrianza early this offseason — he said Baldelli texted him and mentioned there might be an opportunity to rejoin the organization that he played for from 2018-20 — it came at just the right time.
Adrianza, “with no doubt in my mind,” said he was open to learning more, eventually accepting a job this offseason to return to the Twins as a player development assistant. After spending parts of 12 years in the majors and dealing with injuries over the past few years, Adrianza, 35, was already thinking about retirement when the Twins came calling.
“I didn’t think it was going to be like this, so fast,” he said. “That’s why when they offered me this job, I didn’t think too much about it. … There’s a lot of opportunity here for me to grow and to learn. I’m just enjoying it right now and making the most out of it.”
With infield coordinator Tucker Frawley departing for the New York Mets and Tyler Smarslok, the Triple-A St. Paul Saints defensive coach, joining the Miami Marlins’ major league staff, the Twins had a real need for infield experience and expertise on the minor league side.
Adrianza didn’t feel, at that point, he was ready to be the organization’s infield coordinator, but he was eager to get involved in a different way.
“Sometimes players, as they’re finishing up their careers, sometimes they want to spend time with their families,” general manager Jeremy Zoll said. “Sometimes they’re hoping that they can have a very specific type of role, whatever that may be. But AD was super open to a wide variety of roles and really just wanted to work his way up and get exposed to as many things as possible.”
Though he hopes to wind up in more of a front office than a coaching-type role, right now he’s doing a lot of hands-on work with infielders and will spend this season traveling to all of the Twins’ minor league affiliates, from the Dominican Republic to St. Paul, to work with young players.
There’s a learning curve — working with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint are among the new challenges thrown his way — and the days in Fort Myers, Fla., are filled with planning, on-field work, meetings and more planning, making for a busy time. But Adrianza said he’s just trying to take in as much as he can each day.
“We feel fortunate that this is a path that he was open to and now he realizes there’s a whole other world out there when it comes to developing major league talent and learning how the other side of the game functions,” Baldelli said. “He could do virtually anything. Anything he wants to do, he could do. Now, it just comes down to putting in the same type of work that he put in as a player.”
Leave a Reply