Former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire wins team’s Herb Carneal Award

Ten seasons after Ron Gardenhire managed his last game with the Twins, he will be recognized at the team’s annual Diamond Awards next month.

Gardenhire will receive the Herb Carneal Lifetime Achievement Award and Michael Beier is the Terry Ryan “Play Ball!” Award recipient, the Twins announced Tuesday. The Diamond Awards will be held Jan. 23 at the Armory, along with Twins individual player honorees.

Gardenhire, 67, owns the second-most managerial wins in team history, compiling a 1,068-1,039 record (.507 winning percentage) over 13 seasons. He guided the Twins to six American League Central division titles and an appearance in the AL Championship Series in 2002, his first season. He was voted the AL Manager of the Year in 2010, and he was runner-up for the award five times.

Before Gardenhire became the Twins’ manager, he was the team’s third base coach for 11 seasons under his mentor Tom Kelly, which included the 1991 World Series championship season.

Gardenhire, inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame in 2022, managed the Detroit Tigers from 2018-2020 before announcing his retirement.

Beier, an amateur baseball coach in Foley, turned the high school program into one of the most consistent in the state. He’s led Foley to eight conference titles and a 43-game regular-season winning streak that spanned from 2019-22. Foley finished runner-up in Class 2A last summer, losing in the state championship game to Rockford.

The previously announced Twins award winners are MVP Willi Castro; top pitcher Griffin Jax; rookie of the year Simeon Woods Richardson; most improved player Cole Sands; defensive player of the year Carlos Santana; leader of the year Carlos Correa; media good guy Ryan Jeffers; community service leader Royce Lewis; Upper Midwest player of the year Matt Strahm, of the Phillies; minor league player of the year Luke Keaschall; and minor league pitcher of the year Zebby Matthews.

The Milwaukee Brewers announced Julio Borbón as their new first base coach Tuesday. Borbón spent the past three seasons as the Twins’ minor league assistant coordinator of instruction.

The Twins will have to replace three of their minor league coordinators this winter. Tucker Frawley, who was the organization’s infield and catching coordinator, took a job with the New York Mets as their minor league director of defense, baserunning and game planning, and assistant hitting coordinator Rayden Sierra was promoted to the Twins’ big-league staff as an assistant hitting coach.

“It’s painful to lose good people that you’ve recruited in, you’ve tried to develop and you bring them along,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins’ president of baseball operations. “But it’s also a really good reflection of their growth, their development and, ultimately, the kind of people that you want to try to get.”

Five young Twins players who were not yet eligible for salary arbitration last season earned six-figure bonuses from Major League Baseball in time for the holidays.

Bailey Ober received a $381,085 bonus on top of his near league-minimum $761,850 salary, according to figures obtained by the Associated Press. Ober’s bonus was the highest on the Twins, but it ranked 42nd out of the 101 pre-arbitration players who qualified for the bonus.

Jax earned an additional $352,852 bonus while Joe Ryan netted $331,054, Matt Wallner received $256,296 and Woods Richardson was paid $243,471.

The bonus program was implemented in 2022 after the last collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players union. All teams contribute to a $50 million pool that is distributed to 101 players who don’t have enough service time — two years, 118 days entering last season — to qualify for arbitration.