The Twins, following a monumental collapse over the past six weeks that cost them a spot in the American League’s six-team playoff field, will spend the offseason dissecting everything that went awry.
Derek Falvey, Rocco Baldelli to return for 2025 season despite Twins missing playoffs
Owner Joe Pohlad said the Twins’ late-season collapse — which included a 6-2 loss to the Orioles on Sunday to end the season — will not result in a change of leadership next season.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 30, 2024 at 4:36AM
In the immediate aftermath, Twins owner Joe Pohlad decided not to institute complete wholesale changes to the organization. Manager Rocco Baldelli will return for the 2025 season and Derek Falvey will remain in charge of the baseball operations department.
Falvey declined to comment on the status of General Manager Thad Levine, whose last known contract extension expires this year, or the coaches on Baldelli’s staff.
“I don’t judge employees off of six crummy weeks,” Pohlad said. “[Falvey’s] got eight years of a résumé and I talk with Derek daily, so I know what he’s doing. He’s got a player development resume, he’s got a major league resume and he’s busting his [butt]. He’s the right guy.”
Speaking before the Twins ended their season with a 6-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, finishing the year with an 82-80 record, Falvey paused for several moments as he fought back tears describing the pain of the club’s freefall.
“I’ve never experienced the frustration, the anger, the disappointment and the embarrassment that I have over the last five to six weeks,” Falvey said.
“We let our fans down. We let ourselves down. If you don’t feel that as a player, as a staff member, then you probably need to be in a different business. There will be decisions we have to make, challenging conversations we’re going to have, ultimately, to reflect on this. But the combination of emotions are significant. We need to be better than this. There’s no other way to put it.”
The Twins lost 27 of their last 39 games and plummeted to fourth place in the AL Central. It was one of the most epic late-season slides in modern baseball history. Their playoff odds went from 90% on Sept. 12 to zero in three weeks.
Falvey and Baldelli are expected to meet Monday to begin their postmortem.
“Rocco is my manager,” Falvey said. “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 Twins aren’t planning further payroll reductions, sources told the Minnesota Star Tribune, but the 2024 season amounts to a lost year for the core of the Twins roster. Starting pitchers Pablo López and Bailey Ober completed full, healthy seasons. Byron Buxton played more than 100 games for the first time since 2017. Carlos Correa played at an All-Star level when he was healthy. Royce Lewis appeared in a career-high 82 games.
They still missed the postseason by four games.
“It kind of falls on, obviously, the players,” Lewis said. “But I didn’t realize it was just on us. Now I know that we’re going to carry a lot of the load, especially the young guys — the cheap guys is the best way to put it.”
There were seven MLB teams that won more than 90 games this season. The Twins finished with a combined 8-31 record against them. They lost all six of their games against the Orioles, outscored 44-15. The Twins never scored more than four runs in a game against them, and the Orioles never scored fewer than four.
On Sunday, Ober surrendered a go-ahead, three-run homer to James McCann, the No. 9 batter in the Orioles lineup, in the fifth inning. The Twins scored their two runs on solo homers from Carlos Santana and DaShawn Keirsey Jr., who bashed the first home run of his career.
“There are a lot of things I’d like to change and, truthfully, sometimes a big part of what you do as a manager is not letting people get comfortable,” Baldelli said. “We have a lot of things I’d like to flip the script on, actually.”
After a disastrous six weeks, the offseason presents a five-month reckoning.
“It was our offensive production in aggregate and our overall defensive play that I think held us back more than the pitching, even though obviously the pitching could better — everything could be better when you go through a stretch like this,” Falvey said. “But I think our offensive contributions are where we came up shorter than I would have been able to predict over the last six weeks.”
Kepler was the longest-tenured Twins player after signing at 16 in 2009.
