Last to First to . . . : After Miracle Comebacks of 1991 Season, Status Quo Now Appeals to Twins, Braves : Minnesota Downplays Loss of Morris, Touts Smiley

Last to first was some trip, but the World Series champion Minnesota Twins returned to reality as soon as Jack Morris booked a somewhat shorter trip, to Toronto.

“Summer’s for games and winter’s for business,” center fielder Kirby Puckett said in the Twins’ clubhouse the other day.

He referred to Morris’ December decision to sign with the Blue Jays for $2 million more than the sum offered by his hometown Twins, whom he helped win division, league and Series titles--calling it at the time, with emotion, a dream come true.

Morris had 18 victories and 246 innings during the regular season; and was 4-0 during the American League playoffs and World Series, including 10 innings in the 1-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves in Game 7. He wept as he talked about the satisfaction of his sons seeing him at his best when it meant the most, all in his hometown.

Then he signed with the Blue Jays for two years and an option season at a guaranteed $10.8 million.

The reaction among the Twins--who respected Morris’ competitiveness but privately questioned his value as a clubhouse leader--was and remains dispassionate. Manager Tom Kelly set the tone. “Fans think players should stay forever, but it doesn’t work that way anymore and it’s going to get worse,” he said.

“You rent players for a year or a month now. We rented Jack Morris for a year, and it was probably the greatest free-agent signing ever, but as manager I can’t afford to fall in love with the players the way the fans do.

“I mean, Jack has this thing about free agency. He thought he was (hurt) by collusion. He’s going to use the system whenever he can. I knew he was gone when he didn’t agree to his option in the first week after the Series.

“I also thought it was pretty comical when I heard a Minneapolis radio station announce Jack’s signing in Toronto and predict right then we’d finish last.”

The new reality is that the Twins say they will be better than last year, that they will have better pitching than if Morris, who will turn 37 in April, had re-signed. That optimism was regenerated last week when General Manager Andy MacPhail packaged one of his many young pitching prospects, Denny Neagle, with a young outfielder, Midre Cummings, and traded them to the clearing house known as the Pittsburgh Pirates for left-hander John Smiley.

Smiley was one of only four 20-game winners in the majors last season, and the Twins are the only team with two, Scott Erickson being the second.

They also have 18-game winner Kevin Tapani, 11-game winner Bill Krueger, a free-agent acquisition from the Seattle Mariners, and a top group of prospects to compete for the No. 5 spot, including Mark Guthrie, Willie Banks, Mike Trombley, Pat Mahomes and the more experienced Tom Edens.

“That’s it?” first baseman Kent Hrbek asked when told what the Twins had given up for Smiley. “You mean we don’t have to include a player to be named later? There’s no kicker in this? Amazing. Terrific.”

Designated hitter Chili Davis agreed: “If Smiley can win 20 for Pittsburgh, he can 20 for us because we have a better offense than the Pirates.”

Said MacPhail, of his rotation: “We had a dynamic 1-2-3 last year, but after that we struggled. We figure to be better and deeper now. We wouldn’t have done this if we had re-signed Jack, but I think we’re better off this way.

“Smiley is 10 years younger and literally half as expensive (as Morris). He gives us a left-hander between our two right-handers (Tapani and Erickson). Even if we can’t re-sign him (Smiley can leave as a free agent when the season ends), we’ll get two draft choices from the team that does.

“Everyone in the industry seems to regard our young pitching as the best in baseball, but we had come to the conclusion that we would have to expose one of those promising pitchers in the expansion draft.

“Why summarily lose one that way when we can get a 20-game winner in return? I hate to trade any of the future, but our (farm) system put us in position to contemplate it.

“I feel we have another shot at the World Series, and this may re-emphasize that message among the players.”

In an era of parity, the small-market, budget-conscious Twins have won two of the last five World Series using every avenue--trades, free agency, farm system, December draft.

The Smiley deal was unusual in that it normally works the other way for the Twins.

It is the Twins who normally swap the higher-salaried, imminent free-agent veteran for younger, less expensive players, as when Frank Viola was sent to the New York Mets for Rick Aguilera, David West and Tapani, a major building block for the current team.

Smiley is guaranteed $3.44 million in 1992, but Pittsburgh has agreed to pick up $865,000 of that. In addition, the free-agent departures of Morris and outfielder Dan Gladden, who signed with the Detroit Tigers, created some flexibility in the Twins’ payroll, MacPhail said.

However, it remains a challenging proposition in Minnesota, and MacPhail said that financial moves, such as the rejected offers to Morris, must be tied to the fact that Puckett, a Twin Cities institution, also is eligible for free agency when this season ends.

“If we’re operating on all cylinders, we can probably sustain a payroll of $28 million, so if we tie up $10 or $11 million in two players (Puckett and Morris), you can see what we’re up against,” MacPhail said. “We clearly wanted Jack back, and he clearly wanted to be the highest-paid pitcher. The competitiveness we saw in the World Series translated to (his) taking the highest offer.”

MacPhail said he was more angered by:

--The “timidity and stupidity” of the Chicago Cubs in capitulating to Ryne Sandberg’s deadline and rocketing the average annual value record to $7.1 million from Bobby Bonilla’s $5.8 million.

--The industry’s failure to learn from the last-to-first success of the Twins and Braves, and its refusal to retreat from the ongoing and “destructive salary escalation.”

MacPhail added: “How angry can I be at Jack Morris? He was a large part of a season that may never be duplicated.

“It comes back to the fact that all teams aren’t created equal. We can’t compete in a bidding war with teams like the Mets, Dodgers and Blue Jays. We’ve done well, so there’s no using crying.

“In fact, by forcing us to run a lean operation, with an emphasis on young players, those teams seem to have done us a favor.”

All of that, MacPhail said, played into the acquisition of Smiley in that “we have to take advantage of an opportunity before the expenses reach a point where we simply can’t make the reach. And it’s moving closer to that all the time.”

For the Twins, there’s no more vivid example than Puckett. They made him the first $3-million-a-year player in 1990. He is a bargain in the final year of that contract. More than 50 players are paid more, but Puckett isn’t complaining as agent Ron Shapiro quietly works on an extension.

“I expected to be passed,” Puckett said of the escalation. “I tip my hat to those players. Baseball is a healthy business, and I expect to be paid my market value as well, but I don’t need $7 million (a year) to be happy.

“I’m happy now. I’m already set for life. I’ll go out and give 100%, no matter what I make. As I’ve said before, I’m only an hour’s plane ride away from the projects. I haven’t forgotten where I came from.”

The Twins went from 74-88 to 95-67. Puckett said there is nothing to prove, having done it all in the World Series.

Catcher Brian Harper disagreed. “A year ago, our goal was to prove we weren’t a last-place team,” he said. “Now our goal is to cope with obviously higher expectations and prove we’re a first-place team. The ability is there.

“People can say what they want, but when you play a 162-game season as well as we did, when you handle the pressure of the playoffs and World Series, there is no way it can be a fluke. This isn’t football or basketball, where a wild card or a .500 team sneaks in and gets hot for a couple of weeks. We did it for seven months.”

The Twins were paraded through the Twin Cities, then disappeared under the snow. No threat there of getting too big, too fat, too distracted.

“It’s not like we’re from a major media city where we spend the whole winter doing TV shows and autographing life stories,” Tapani said. “There’s none of those distractions. I mean, everyone came back with their mind on business. You can sense it in the tone here.”

Fifteen Twins reported to camp a week early, surprising Kelly.

“I’m sitting here thinking about the message I wanted to deliver, and they gave me the message by coming in early,” Kelly said. “All I ended up saying was, ‘We finished last in ’90 and that’s over. We finished first in ’91 and that’s over. Let’s get at ’92.’ ”

They will go about it with Shane Mack replacing Gladden as the left fielder and leadoff hitter, and Pedro Munoz, who batted .283 with seven home runs in 138 at-bats last season, getting a full-time opportunity to replace Mack in right field.

Mike Pagliarulo, half of the third-base platoon, might open the season on the disabled list because of a broken eardrum that required surgery, and Hrbek has yet to play this spring because of a tender shoulder that is not thought to be season-threatening.

Smiley, who averaged six-plus innings per start while going 20-8 with the Pirates, will not pick up all of those 246 Morris innings, but the Twins expect improved consistency from their Nos. 4 and 5 starters, and are confident Erickson is stronger after coping with a weakened forearm muscle and general fatigue during the second half of his first full season in the majors.

“Overall, Tapani was our most consistent pitcher last year, and Erickson was right behind him,” Kelly said, in a shot at Morris.

MacPhail said: “I wouldn’t attempt to diminish Jack’s void, but if you’re talking about his leadership, I think it was strictly by example. The only issue is replacing his innings, and I think we’ll do that with Smiley, Krueger and whoever the fifth starter is.”

Perhaps, but there are also these considerations:

--Smiley lasted only 2 2/3 innings in the pressure of two playoff starts. How will these new expectations weigh on him without a Doug Drabek in the No. 1 role?

--Can Erickson and Tapani continue to thrive without a Morris shouldering the workhorse obligations?

The only reality is that time will tell.