The Twins have officially announced that they’ve hired Indians assistant GM Derek Falvey as their executive vice president and chief baseball officer. Falvey will join the Twins once the Indians’ season is over. Rob Antony will continue as interim GM until then. Twins Daily’s Jeremy Nygaard and ESPN’s Keith Law were among the first to tweet that the Twins would hire Falvey, with Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan tweeting that Falvey had emerged as a favorite.
“I believe the addition of Derek Falvey to the Minnesota Twins will markedly enhance our organizational excellence and bring championship baseball back to Minnesota,” says Twins Owner Jim Pohlad.
“It’s a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to lead the Twins baseball operation. This is a proud, resilient franchise, and I’m eager to return championship-caliber baseball to the Twin Cities,” says Falvey. “We will work diligently and collectively to select and develop top-performers, advance our processes, and nurture a progressive culture that will make fans across Twins Territory proud.”
The Twins had been linked to a number of young executives as they look for a replacement for recently dismissed GM Terry Ryan. Among the other names known to have been in the mix were Rays vice president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, Royals assistant GM J.J. Picollo and Cubs senior vice president of player development Jason McLeod.
The 33-year-old Falvey will become one of baseball’s youngest executives and represents a significant departure from the status quo for Minnesota. His rise to the position of president is a surprise, to say the least, as he’s spent less than one full season as an assistant GM. Falvey was promoted to that post last October in conjunction with the promotions of Chris Antonetti to president of baseball operations and Mike Chernoff to general manager. Prior to that, he spent four seasons as Cleveland’s director of baseball operations. The Boston native holds a degree in economics from Trinity College, where he also played baseball, and has contributed to the Cleveland front office in many capacities. In addition to his longstanding role in the team’s player development process, Falvey has overseen the advanced scouting department and worked with Antonetti and Chernoff on “financial, statistical and contractual dealings,” per the Indians’ media guide.
Falvey figures to be the first of multiple new hires for the Twins, who reportedly will allow their new president to hire a general manager to work underneath him as well. Beyond that, changes atop a baseball operations hierarchy often lead to personnel shuffling further down the pecking order, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if further new faces join the Minnesota front office. One name that won’t be changing, however, is manager Paul Molitor, whom owner Jim Pohlad has already stated will remain his manager in 2017.
good luck
Cubs dodge a bullet for now
I wonder if it means Falvey is the better candidate. Or Falvey was more willing to accept Minnesota’s financial commitment level.
BOOM!
Well deserved!!
Congratulations!!!
#MassachusettsStandUp
Falvey’s dad?
#OkayNowSitDown
Don’t know too much about him yet but he must be special if he was the top choice with a lot of quality names in the mix. Then again, who am I to say.
Egregious title inflation, in my opinion. If a President of Baseball Operations title is what it took to attract a talented but still green AGM on the rise, then MIN ownership has even more serious perception issues around the game than previously reported.
Interesting take.
Agree
Pay attention to the Pohlads long enough and it’s plain to see hiring a 33-year-old outsider is so far beyond anything they’ve ever done before. Totally diametrically opposed to how they’ve run the team through the years. The coaching ranks are loaded with former Twins because that’s just how it’s always been done here.
So this is different. Way different.
Absolutely. The Twins have always been rife with loyalty and nepotism. It goes all the way down to hiring Joe Mauers brother to manage the low class a team. Just NOT an organization that hires outsiders, let alone takes risks with them.
The reason for hiring Jake Mauer probably was just because he was a Mauer, but from everything I’ve heard, he’s the best manager the Twins have (MLB or MiLB). Been hearing that for years from outsiders and people who have worked for other managers.
All Twins fans have a right to be critical and skeptical regarding the things Twins have done or not done. The majority of us are. Just not sure Jake is deserving of that towards him.
MacPhail was a 32 year old outsider who was hired for player development and the next year became GM. So they have done something similar before, but under a different Pohlad.
Worked out well in bringing championships here. Hope it happens again.
That’s not really similar as that was right when Pohlad bought the team from Calvin Griffith.
Still similar to me since both were a Pohlad hiring a young outsider. It was our first look at Carl, but he still did it and you can’t erase that from history.
This one isn’t the exact same thing, because it’s been 20 plus years since they’ve done it again, but that’s why I used the word “similar” instead of “same.”
Again, I’m not sure how Carl Pohlad hiring a guy to run his new baseball team in 1984 has even the faintest shred of anything to do with a three decade pattern of promoting from within, but okay
That’s fine if you want to pretend it never happened but it did.
Again, I said it’s not the exact same situation but it is similar. Given the fact that Carl and every other Pohlad leans heavily towards loyalty and doing the same thing over and over again when it’s not working. It doesn’t matter if he was new to the team. We didn’t know how he was going to be as an owner or what he was going to do in the future. He could have hired/promoted an old guy who had some kind of Twins history and stuck with him for 15 plus years. He didn’t. That’s why going with MacPhail is even more shocking now that we can look at Pohlad’s history and use hindsight.
It’s taken 20 plus years for that to happen again. Getting Falvey is a good thing, but hiring a young outsider is not new for the Pohlads. Carl hired a guy who had no connection to the team (that I know of) and who was young. We don’t expect that from a Pohlad normally, given what has happened in between the MacPhail and Falvey era. The only reason why it’s considered such a big deal now is because of everything that has happened for the last twenty years. Otherwise Twins fans wouldn’t be talking about this as much as they have.
Pretend what never happened? Jesus, relax
Pohlad himself was an outsider and hiring a MacPhail kid is hiring from a legendary executive bloodline.
What’s hilarious is that you thought I wasn’t relaxed. It’s called a conversation.
Just pointing out that this has happened before, new ownership or not. Twins were thought of as behind the times back then and the same thought exists now. Hiring of a young outsider was completed to catch them up to the rest of MLB. It’s not new. It just takes decades to happen.
List of Pohlad insiders in 1984:
1. Carl Pohlad
2.
They just fired MacPhail’s scouting director who happened to be a former Twins player. I’m not sure what team out there has been more nepotistic over the last 30 years than the Twins.
All the title does is let the Twins (Falvey) hire another young exec as a GM underneath him and still shape it as a promotion.
So much is being made of the title, which is silly in my eyes. If he’d been hired as a GM (as a younger Stearns was last year in Milwaukee), no one would care, and his responsibilities would be largely similar.
Making Falvey president isn’t about getting him into the org; it’s about getting the second exec they hire — presumably also an AGM — into the org by still offering a superior title.
Why does it seem that the Tribe organization gets raided on a regular basis?
Who else have they lost recently? Haven’t really followed it.
Its being reported that the Twins went with him because he apparently has his hands all over the pitching throughout the Cleveland org (national media report). That’s what the Twins are the worst at. Indians have a very good MLB rotation, one of the best in AL, if not best.
Shapiro got poached by the Jays.