Kevin Towers close to joining Yanks

According to a report by Tracy Ringolsby of FOX Sports, former longtime Padres GM (and friend of Brian Cashman) Kevin Towers is closing in on a position with the New York Yankees. Here’s the story:

Former San Diego general manager Kevin Towers is planning to attend the winter meetings in Indianapolis this week. He won’t be on official business, but he could finalize his next job.

Towers has been approached by several teams to be a special assistant to the general manager.

He is leaning toward accepting an offer from Yankees GM Brian Cashman, a close friend of Towers, according to sources close to the situation.

Towers has a well deserved reputation for being an expert in evaluating pitchers. He’s a former pitcher himself, an All-WAC pitcher at BYU and was the San Diego Padres 1st round draft pick in 1982. He pitched for 7 years in the San Diego Padres farm system before a series of arm operations ended his career. He then served as a pitching coach for their minor league Single-A Spokane Indians affiliate from 1989–90 and as a Padres scout from 1989–91. After scouting for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1991–93, Towers rejoined the Padres as scouting director from 1993–95 before becoming their GM.

Some have criticized the current state of the Padres MLB team and farm system, but that needs to be put into some sort of context. First is the issue of promotions. As a rebuilding team, anyone who can play in the upper levels will be on the MLB roster, so that will hurt your system rankings. Next is the messy ownership situation that was just resolved. The Padres former owner John Moore was going through a messy divorce and the team has been slashing expenses for years. That affects how you draft players. If you’re only paying slot, you’re going to have to pass on loads of guys you’d otherwise like to draft. Rather than look at the mess that franchise is now (for reasons that were out of his control) Look at how many times he’s rebuilt that organization from the ground up and built a contender on a shoestring budget. He’s been the GM since 1995 (amazing run nowadays) and produced 4 division titles and a WS team while annually having a middle to bottom-third budget and competing against the big spending Dodgers and Giants. You can be lucky and do that once, but he’s done it over and over again.

Anyone who can help the Yanks evaluate pitchers sounds good to me, its one area that Cashman has had trouble in with some of his free agent selections, both in the bullpen (Farnsworth/Karsay/Hawkins) and starting rotation (Pavano/Wright/Igawa/Johnson). Give Brian Cashman credit as well if this happens. With Kevin Towers around, people will constantly be looking at him as Brian’s replacement anytime Cash gets in trouble with the fans/media. Most GMs wouldn’t want that, but Brian is (as usual) willing to do whatever is best for the organization first and foremost.