PHILADELPHIA — As the season nears it end, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli has no interest in talking about his future. Baldelli has led the Twins for the past seven seasons, but the team has now missed the playoffs in four of its past five seasons and questions have arisen about his job status.
The Athletic reported in June that the Twins had picked up Baldelli’s contract option for next season, though neither the team nor Baldelli commented on that publicly.
“I haven’t heard anything, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have much to say about it right now because I have a job to do right now and it has nothing to do with me talking about myself,” Baldelli said. “Because me talking about that would be just a distraction and I don’t like distractions.”
But the manager will admit that this season, which was unlike no other, felt like two seasons in one and has challenged him in ways he hadn’t yet experienced in the job.
There were the first four months, during which the Twins had playoff aspirations that they underperformed, leading to a sell-off at the trade deadline. After that, the Twins were an entirely new team and adopted a new style of play to match, becoming more aggressive on the bases in response to Baldelli’s directive.
The deadline, in particular, was “a life experience,” Baldelli said.
The Twins completely turned over their team, sending out nearly 40% of the major league roster and Baldelli had to guide a brand-new clubhouse during the period of change.
“That’s something in your career that you’ll never forget. … You’ll learn from having to go through it,” Baldelli said. “It probably tested me as much as anything I’ve ever experienced in the game, but I’ll always be able to tap back into it and use it going forward in probably a ton of different ways, not just on the baseball side of things (but) in my life, as well, in real life.”
Baldelli said he hasn’t started thinking about his offseason yet and how he might approach it. For now, his focus is just on his players, sitting down with many of them individually as the season wraps up.
“We have a winter of work is what we have,” he said. “That’s literally how I think about all of this. You have to take that as a challenge It’s not a knock. It’s a challenge and we like challenges. It’s good to have an objective and a direction.”
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Vázquez has strong return
Christian Vázquez returned on Tuesday, more than a month after a serious infection in his left shoulder shut him down and announced his return by getting on base four times.
In his next game, he had a pair of hits and on Friday, in the series opener in Philadelphia, the catcher hit a home run to break up what had been a perfect game in the sixth inning and then singled off former teammate Jhoan Duran in the ninth.
“It feels good,” the catcher said. “It’s fun to be back. That’s all. (I’m) having fun and finishing strong.”
Vázquez is at the end of a three-year, $30 million contract with the Twins and will head into free agency this offseason after getting back and proving he is healthy.
“You like seeing it for guys that are super motivated gamers, guys that just will do whatever they can to just get out and play this game and help the team, help their teammates,” Baldelli said. “He was out a long time. He comes back in with that intensity. That’s what makes him who he is and that’s what makes him a really good catcher.”
Briefly
Simeon Woods Richardson, who celebrated his 25th birthday on Saturday, will take the ball on Sunday for the Twins’ final game of the season. The game will start at 2:05 p.m. CDT, the same time as every other game around the league.
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