Let’s say, for just a moment, that the Twins decided to fire Terry Ryan sometime this month. That’s a reasonable suspicion, at the very least. Truthfully, if the team hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that it’s time to fire Ryan and clear out a front office populated by many of the same people who were there 20 years ago, they’re never getting there. Nothing more can be done. They’re 11-31, as I type this, and there is absolutely no sign that things will turn around. Even if there were, it would be too late for this season. Twins fans must wait at least one more season to see the team truly pull out of their rebuild, a project they undertook only after a catastrophic season forced them in that direction, and one the team tried to declare a success much too soon. John Schuerholz probably thinks Ryan’s leash has been surprisingly long. The makers of Grey’s Anatomy think it’s time for the front office to step aside and make room for a new project. Franklin D. Roosevelt thinks there’s value in more leadership turnover than this. So let’s just assume the Twins see that, too.

If that’s true, obviously, you shouldn’t be surprised that the decision hasn’t been translated into action. This is a good time of year for managerial firings, but an untenable one for front-office shuffling. First of all, there’s the draft, coming up in just a few weeks. It’s way, way too late to displace anyone ahead of that. The scouts have largely made their reports, and there wouldn’t be time to go in a different direction. It would be a very bad idea to bring in someone new at the leadership level to make decisions based on their predecessor’s gathered intelligence.

The question is, when does that change? It’s not right after the Draft, that’s for sure. The draftees all have until July 15th to sign, during which time they need to have consistent communication with an entrenched leader. Also, starting after the Draft, there will be a matter of six or seven weeks to do the pro scouting reconnaissance necessary to make the trade deadline a success for the Twins. If Ricky Nolasco keeps pitching well, if Oswaldo Arcia can prove himself a respectable alternative for teams who worry about Josh Reddick’s price tag, if Trevor Plouffe can stay healthy enough to demonstrate trade value, and if Kevin Jepsen can recover from his early struggles, the Twins will have some talent to shop on the July trade market. Getting the best possible return for those players is important, and would be impossible if you picked a scouting staff off the scrap heap, or asked scouts who have been unbelievably loyal to Ryan to provide the same quality of information to an outside replacement. There is no point, by the way, in shoving Ryan aside and installing Rob Antony as an interim GM. Nothing important about the decisions made would change, and there would be some danger of Antony so impressing Twins ownership that they would give him the job on a permanent basis. Antony is a smart baseball operative and a deserving GM candidate, perhaps, but not at all what the Twins need. They need a truly fresh start, so they have to wait even longer than July 15th. They can’t fire Ryan until the trade deadline passes. In fact, since the contracts of Nolasco, Plouffe, Ervin Santana, and Brian Dozier are the kind that could become commodities during the August waiver period, they can’t fire him until early September. That’s when they can do it, and that’s when they absolutely need to do it.

They need to do it quickly, once September comes, because there will be organizational meetings and crucial decisions about the coming offseason happening right after the season ends. The Twins need the month of September to conduct a serious, sweeping search for the right person (or persons) to lead their organization in a new direction. They’ll need some of October, and perhaps even a bit of November, to do so, too, and in the meantime, Antony can captain the ship. But they need to send the clear signal to potential targets that they’re hiring, and are committed to a new philosophy.

I’ve said it, but let me reinforce a key point here: there have to be many more firings than just Ryan’s. That isn’t because there aren’t competent people doing good work on both the scouting and the analytical side in the Twins’ front office. It’s just because change doesn’t come to an organization with this much institutional memory if you swap out one or two faces at a time. There will have to be new scouts and new nerds and new people in player development, all in the name of making a broken franchise truly new again. Every critical function the current machine performs—from selecting amateur players to maximizing their opportunities to realize their potential to using their resources well at the big-league level—is being done at a below-average level.

I think the Pohlads, who own the Twins, have been in Minnesota too long. Terry Ryan has been, too. What happens when you live in Minnesota for too long is that every difficult situation starts to feel like you fell into a lake. Maybe you were out tubing behind your buddy’s boat, or maybe you were canoeing, but somehow, you got stuck out in the middle of the water. That’s where the Twins are: in deep water. Only the Twins misunderstand. Living in Minnesota for so long has convinced them that they’re just treading water in the lake, waiting for the boat to pull around. In the worst-case scenario, they figure, they can just swim to the sand bar.

But that’s not where they really are. The Twins are in the middle of an ocean. The swells come and go, but the sharks will show up sooner or later, and the shore is an impossible swim away. That organization needs to develop a sense of urgency and a real plan to rescue itself, or they’ll spend the next 15 years lost at sea, just the way the Pirates and Royals did starting in the early 1990s. I don’t think they believe the chances of that are significant. I think they’re wrong. Firing Ryan is a delicate proposition, something they’ll have to navigate. Good people within the franchise trust and admire him, both professionally and personally. There are tricky timing elements to the overhaul this team needs, and tricky political elements, too. It all still needs to happen, and the wheels need to start moving soon.

Or maybe the Twins won't change a thing.