Both chief baseball officer Derek Falvey and manager Rocco Baldelli will be returning to the Twins next season, as team executive chairman Joe Pohlad and Falvey himself told reporters (including the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Bobby Nightengale and The Athletic’s Dan Hayes). Today’s official announcements confirm yesterday’s report from The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman that both Falvey and Baldelli would be back for their respective ninth and seventh seasons with the organization.
Baldelli’s current contract runs through at least the 2025 season, while Falvey’s contractual status isn’t publicly known. Falvey’s previous deal was known to be up at the end of the 2024 campaign, yet the Twins have tended to be somewhat secretive when it comes to contracts for team personnel. It seems entirely possible that Falvey was inked to an extension at some point over the course of his previous couple of years, or his contract might indeed currently be up, but an extension is expected to be finalized shortly.
Of course, contracts might not have mattered much if ownership felt compelled to make changes following the Twins’ late-season collapse. Minnesota had a 70-53 record on August 17 and looked to be safe bets to make the postseason, either as AL Central champs for the second consecutive season or at least as a wild card. Instead, the Twins have gone 12-26 over their last 38 games, and two division rivals (the Tigers and Royals) zoomed past them en route to the playoffs.
As “embarrassing” as Pohlad felt this collapse was, he still has faith in Falvey to lead the front office. “I don’t judge employees off of six crummy weeks. He’s got eight years of a résumé and I talk with Derek daily so I know what he’s doing, ” Pohlad said. “He’s got player development resume, he’s got a major league resume and yeah, he’s busting his [butt]. He’s the right guy.”
Falvey made a similar defense of Baldelli, saying “we’ve been gutted during this process trying to figure out how we fix it. That’s led to sleepless nights and challenging conversations and one-on-one conversations between he and I that will stay one-on-one, but have been at times really digging deep and trying to figure out how to fix it. I believe in his process, I believe in him, I believe in the partnership I have with him. That is how I feel and ultimately, that’s the way we’re going to go forward.”
The 2024 season is the latest twist in the overall successful, yet inconsistent tenures of both the CBO and the manager. The duo have combined for three AL Central titles and four winning records in Baldelli’s time as manager, plus Minnesota also won 85 games and earned a wild card in 2017, Falvey’s first season with the organization. Still, the Twins followed up that 2017 campaign with a losing season in 2018 that got previous manager Paul Molitor replaced in favor of Baldelli, and the Twins stumbled to sub-.500 records in both 2021 and 2022 on the heels of consecutive division crowns in 2019-20.
A return to the playoffs last year and (most importantly) the Twins’ first postseason series win since 2002 seemed to restore order to the franchise, but that playoff success was then undermined by a controversial offseason. Ownership’s decision to cut payroll by roughly $30MM left Falvey and GM Thad Levine somewhat hamstrung in their roster maneuvering last winter, leaving it easy to second-guess plenty of decisions or non-decisions that could’ve made the difference between a playoff berth or the Twins’ current situation.
On the other hand, playing even .500 ball since August 17 would’ve sent Minnesota cruising into the postseason, and the payroll decisions wouldn’t loom nearly as large. According to The Athletic’s Dan Hayes (X link), the Twins aren’t planning any more payroll reductions this winter, so it would appear as if the front office will be working with at least the roughly $129MM that the club is currently spending on players.
While Falvey and Baldelli appear safe, neither Pohlad or Falvey mentioned Levine’s status heading into 2025. Levine has been serving as Falvey’s chief lieutenant since the pair were hired in November 2016, and like Falvey, his contract is also thought to be up once the 2024 season is over. Again, Levine might well have quietly signed an extension at some point, or the Twins might be looking to bring a new voice into the front office if they feel some kind of change is necessary.
they may be the last mens professional team from Minnesota to win a championship, but they will NEVER win again with this horrible ownership group and even more inept front office. with pupper Master Rocco on the strings. what do you know and about whom, Derek?
Vikings 27
Chiefs 24
Super Bowl LIX (remember this post when it happens)
Lost? In more ways than one? They make GPS for that right?
Rocco suffered from an extremely rare and for years undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder – his cells literally couldn’t produce enough ATP to fuel athletic performance. Calling him weak is like calling dead people lazy.
I get that your trolling but this is weak sauce. Rocco was tough as nails in trying to continue his playing career.
*cries* And no, they’re not tears of joy.
It wasn’t “six crummy weeks”. You don’t take away a sizable percentage of payroll from an arguably overachieving team and then wonder why the rest of the league eventually surged ahead.
Monkey’s Uncle;
Yes – LOL
That’s like an NBA owner or an NFL owner saying:
“I don’t judge employees off of two crummy minutes at the end of games”.
The AL Central has been the worst division in MLB for years now. Especially with the previous years schedule whereby teams used to play almost half their games against the other teams in their division. Since the Tigers, Royals, and White Sox were lousy for years, this allowed the Guardians and Twins to have stronger records than teams in other divisions that were far better than them. However, the schedules were changed this year to cut about half of the inter-division games out. That, along with the emergence of the Royals and Tigers leveled the playing field some in the ALC. The Twins record looks good because they went 12-1 against the legendary 2024 White Sox.
The Royals owner was a minority owner in the Guardians for years. He understands what small market teams have to do to win in MLB, especially with pitchers. The Royals have an excellent PoBO and manager along with a commitment to pitching. The Tigers are even better with a fine PoBO, WS-winning manager, and a young roster that may even be better than the Orioles.
Twins fans have to understand that the ownership group group can’t replace the owner….and it has nothing to do with the budget.
Sounds like cheap ownership to me
MasterCal;
So you’re buying the MLBTR kool-aid? Payroll is the answer to every team that underperforms.
Ownership interference is a problem, which the acting owner can’t admit. That team doesn’t know how to play baseball. They only win if they outhit or outpitch the opposition. Good teams win when they don’t, by executing at critical times in games.
The Twins 2024 payroll was higher than the following teams, of whom all made the playoffs but the Rays:
Royals
Brewers
Tigers
Rays
Orioles
Guardians
Twin City sports fans are not stupid. They’re not buying this.
I dont think ownership wants to pay Baldellis not to manage *and* a new manager salary simultaneously
“Cheap ownership” is the whine we constantly hear from Twins fans, as if they didn’t extend Pablo Lopez and sign Correa. Look at the team in first place in the Central, and tell me with a straight face that your owners are cheaper than theirs.
they are not cheap. they are clueless
That’s not what I hear. All I hear from Twins fans is about how $30M in payroll would fix every problem their roster has. Every post in their cursed subreddit is “sell the team pohlad” and “pohlad strangled my puppy when he cut payroll”, etc
So much for all those Skip to the Twins rumors huh?
mathblaster;
I doubt anything other than a small minority of Twins fans (well under 10%) go on Reddit, MLBTR, or any Internet chatroom.
Minnesota’s penchant for success is a .500 team. Their two ws winners weren’t even that dominant .
I felt a great disturbance in Minneapolis, as if thousands of fans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
I’d like to throw in the Cardinals since they have Mo and Marmol at least for another season. Excellent A New Hope reference!
The Twins are awful on the basepaths and consistently don’t play clean, intelligent, winning baseball.
The Twins are nothing like their NL natural rival from Milwaukee. The Brewers’ didn’t need a payroll the size of Minnesota’s to win their division because they’re superior at developing players.
JimOToole;
When the Brewers veterans mailed-it-in (am being polite here) in 2022 at the end of the season and missed the playoffs; the PoBO was allowed to resign and find another job.
Changes were made to the FO and throughout the organi-
zation that offseason as well as the next. Almost all veteran players involved were moved in one way or another.
2 years later the Brewers have an exciting young team made up of primarily cost-controlled players that hustle, play smart baseball on O, D, and when running the bases. Those players won their lousy division by 10 games, and have tremendous upside…meaning the future for the Brewers is going to be quite good.
Whoever is in charge of the tv deal needs to be fired. The rest of the team is doing okay
I’m no water carrier for the Pohlads but the trope about bad ownership is getting really tiresome to me. There’s so much blame to spread around for this season, and honestly I don’t think payroll constraints topped the list. There are plenty of teams around the league with objectively worse ownership situations than the Twins, and one of them even plays in the same division.
I fear the same gripe is going to come at them no matter what the offseason has in store for them. Realistically, with more uncertainty about TV plans in 2025, combined with the disastrous Bally gap deal which cut TV revenue by at least a third and the Comcast carriage outage which completely killed the gate take even when the team was hot, we aren’t going to see the Twins spend meaningfully this winter. I can only hope that Joe Pohlad doesn’t say the quiet part out loud again and slash more payroll out.
“…combined with the disastrous Bally gap deal which cut TV revenue by at least a third..”
Really?
MLBTR says the problem is that ownership cut the payroll by $3o million.
This is part of the problem, but does not explain everything. Training and conditioning is another department that needs examined, as well as players being forthright about their injury status. Inaction at the trade deadline is another problem, but that doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the Astros massively overpaid to nab the primary target of the front office and they may also be gunshy after trading the entire 2021 draft class for what was basically 2 years of Sonny Gray without the benefit of a QO as part of the 2022-23 win-now strategy. Rocco is a good manager but he does make puzzling moves sometimes (no, I don’t think his moves are dictated by the FO) and he seems to run a loose clubhouse which can backfire in down years like this one. Watkins as a 3rd base coach also should be more aggressive in sending guys, but this may play more into injury worry than general reticence.
All this to say, there is a lot of introspection that needs to happen, from the owner’s box on down to the training staff. Whining about the owners not throwing more dollars at the issue misses the forest for the trees.
So, nothing will change. Over reliance on analytics, stupid pitching decisions, no actual investing in the team, just more of the same AAAA players and a few good players who can’t stay on the field for more than a portion of the season.
Don’t retain the Pohlad family as owners.
Shooting for a solid 3rd place finish.
Bold move. Now let’s see if they can retain the fans.
Settle on an everyday lineup and trust them. Rocco overmanaged this year and blame can be placed squarely in his lap.
It is fun to see how many positions Castro and Martin play every night though
Yes Scintilating.
There are worse owners than Pohlad. You have the Homeless Billionaires like Castellini, Fisher and Nutting who just sit outside Home Depot and wait for the Dodgers, Yankees Luxury Tax fines to walk by and shove the money in their pockets. Then you have the ones who are affirmed frugal types who just have a strategy they follow. AZ, Cle, T. Bay, Milwaukee, who still manage to win while keeping to a budget. The rest fall up and down with some being dumb, Cubs, Mets, Giants, who spend on the wrong people. The rest fall into various categories of crying poor and ineptitude. I think the Twins have generally put a good product on the field and spend when they can. I would by no means call them cheap. Not like some.
You can safely lump Arte Moreno, John Fisher and Jerry Reinsdorf in the terrible owners category.
RIP Schumaker to Twins
Big mistake. Loser culture, content with never making the ALCS but never committing to a true rebuild either. The twin (no pun intended) brothers of the Rays, Jays, Mariners, and Brewers. Mediocrity is okay as long as we get butts in the seats and provide some glimmer of hope. Although the butts-in-seats thing really doesn’t apply to the Rays.
I’m usually not a big fan of “what if” scenarios, but I believe Falvey chose Baldelli over Molitor because Molly wasn’t “his guy”. Where would this team be if Molitor was still in place?