How Jeremy Zoll worked to become the seventh general manager in Twins history

After working two internships in baseball during college, Jeremy Zoll took the GMAT exam to prepare for a different path if he couldn’t land a full-time job with a team.

He never needed his backup plan.

Zoll, 34, was named the seventh general manager in Twins history Tuesday, a rapid rise that spanned multiple organizations. Zoll spent four seasons as an assistant GM before replacing Thad Levine, who wasn’t retained after the season ended.

“My GMAT score is expired now,” said Zoll, smiling. The Haverford (Pa.) College grad, who was a catcher and team captain on the baseball team, landed a job with the Los Angeles Angels out of school, working as an advance scouting coordinator. He spent two seasons on the Dodgers’ player development staff before joining the Twins in 2018 as their farm director.

Zoll was hired by the Twins in part because of the way he interviewed to become Cleveland’s farm director during the previous year. Falvey left Cleveland before Zoll interviewed, but he kept hearing about him from friends when Zoll finished runner-up for the job to James Harris, now the Guardians’ assistant general manager.

“When we went through the interview process and we started doing the references, we thought, ‘This is a guy to bet on,’” Falvey said.

Zoll modernized the Twins’ player development system. He hired more minor league coordinators. He doubled the number of hitting and pitching coaches at each minor league affiliate. He helped create velocity-based training camps for pitchers during the offseason — one reason why the Twins have success turning pitchers drafted in the late rounds into big leaguers.

Falvey lauded Zoll for his ability to connect with people who have worked in the sport for 30 years and people who took a nontraditional route and haven’t spent much time around the game.

“You could tell right from the jump how motivated he was,” Falvey said. “He often uses ‘teammate’ a lot in emails. The way he talks about other people, he views everyone as a teammate. … I’m really proud of the work he’s done and I’m excited to watch him grow and push us forward because I think he can push us forward. I think he can do some things that even as I was sitting there, I wouldn’t do as well as he does.”

There likely won’t be much initial change in the way the Twins front office operates during Zoll’s first season as the GM. Several staffers split duties for trade talks and free-agent negotiations, and Falvey will still be involved in many decisions.

Gradually, however, Falvey plans to scale back in some areas on a day-to-day basis as he increases his role on the business side.

“When people have asked me what I love about working for the Twins, I’ve often said the autonomy, the freedom that Derek and the group have allowed for myself and the people around me,” said Zoll, a Ridgewood, N.J., native.

Zoll’s first challenge in his new role will be improving a Twins roster that collapsed in the final six weeks of the regular season and missed the playoffs by four games with little payroll flexibility.

“While there are definitely challenges that will come with the offseason process, it leads to the opportunity for creative ideas and everyone trying to bring their best,” Zoll said. “It’s always fun to enter this portion of the offseason and really dig in on baseball conversations.”

Zoll started thinking about the possibility of working in baseball after he read “Moneyball.” His school, Haverford, has several alums who held prominent positions in front offices — including Levine — and that made the idea feel more realistic.

“I didn’t have the faintest idea of what being a general manager actually meant back then. Even in the earliest days of my career, I was still trying to understand what that all looked and felt like,” Zoll said. “I never knew exactly how it would proceed from there. I worked hard to find a way to get an internship and just hoped one thing led to another.”