Chip Hale

The Twins‘ miserable start to the season is the result of a “total system failure” rather than any individual’s performance, club owner Jim Pohlad tells Chip Scoggins of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Pohlad says that GM Terry Ryan “is the right guy” to run the baseball operations department, while skipper Paul Molitor “has our total support.” The owner rejected the idea that more money would have done much good, saying: “I don’t believe that the money thing has been a constraint on the team’s success.” And he doesn’t seem to believe that the choices made with the funding were ill-considered. “We’ve been at this for a little while … the owner can’t do a whole lot,” he explained. “But what could Terry do? Or what could Paul do? I just don’t know at this point. It’s just a total system failure, so to speak.”

Here are a few more stray notes from around the game:

• Things haven’t been quite as ugly for the Diamondbacks, but Arizona probably had higher expectations after its major winter moves. The fault doesn’t lie at the feet of manager Chip Hale, the organization’s chief baseball officer, Tony La Russa, tells Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. La Russa rejected the notion that Hale’s job is at risk if Arizona can’t pull itself back together. He joined GM Dave Stewart in noting that righty Shelby Miller has been “pushing and pressing too much,” with the rest of the staff otherwise doing well enough. “There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic,” said La Russa. “We’ve got some good depth and a lot of versatility on the roster. Some of our young guys have really showed up well.”
• We’ve heard a lot of chatter about Tim Lincecum, but another veteran right-hander — Kyle Lohse — is also preparing to sign. He put on a showcase of his own today, Jon Heyman of MLB Network reports on Twitter. While Lohse doesn’t have Lincecum’s relative youth or Cy Young pedigree, he has been a rather solid and durable pitcher for quite some time and remains an interesting possibility for teams in need of rotation depth, even at 37 years of age.
• Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters today that he hopes to reach a new CBA before the end of the playing season this year, as Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com was among those to tweet. He certainly seemed to present an optimistic view of the negotiating path that has begun between the league and union.