The Twins have officially answered one big offseason question, naming Derek Shelton the 15th manager in club history on Thursday morning, a decision which concludes a month-long search for Rocco Baldelli’s replacement.
In Shelton, president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey said in a statement, the Twins found someone who is “genuinely driven to take on the challenge of bringing winning baseball back to Minnesota.”
“We’ve seen firsthand the trust and respect he earns from players and how he helps them reach their best,” Falvey said in the statement. “His journey, through both the successes and the tough stretches, has given him real perspective as a leader. That balance and his connection to what this place means to people will serve our players and staff well as we work to build something lasting for our fans and for Minnesota.”
The Twins will hold an press conference to introduce Shelton on Tuesday afternoon at Target Field, but for now, here are five things to know about the new Twins manager:
He has a long history with Derek Falvey
It appears the Twins front office was looking for a familiar face, and Shelton certainly fits that mold.
Shelton, 55, got his first major league coaching opportunity in Cleveland, taking over as the hitting coach during the middle of the 2005 season. He remained in that role through the 2009 season. Concurrently, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey was charting his own path in Cleveland beginning as an intern in 2007 and rising all the way up to assistant general manager.
Falvey was hired by the Twins in October 2016 and brought Shelton over as bench coach a year later to work alongside then-manager Paul Molitor.
“It’s an exciting day for us to find somebody who can impact our culture, our coaching staff and, most importantly, our players,” Falvey told reporters in 2017 upon hiring Shelton as bench coach. “We searched throughout baseball and talked to a number of people around the game about this position. Derek’s name came up very early on, and as we got deeper and deeper, it became clear he was the best fit for our organization.”
A year later, after the Twins parted ways with Molitor, Shelton was a finalist for the manager job, which eventually went to his good friend, Baldelli. Shelton agreed to stay on as bench coach under Baldelli, serving as a guidepost for the rookie manager. After a 101-win season, Shelton got his first managing gig in Pittsburgh.
He spent more than five seasons managing the Pirates
At the beginning of the process, Falvey pledged that the Twins would be “open minded,” in their search as they sought a “good partner,” who “is invested in the Twins and wants to be a part of this organization top to bottom.”
The Twins interviewed a mix of people for the job, some, but not all, with prior major-league managerial experience. Shelton is the first Twins hire with previous major league managerial experience since Gene Mauch in the mid-1970s. Shelton went 306-440 (.410) in nearly five and a half seasons in Pittsburgh, where the Pirates consistently fielded a team with a bottom-five payroll. He was dismissed in early May after beginning last season 12-26.
At the time of his dismissal, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington called Shelton “an incredibly smart, curious and driven baseball leader.”
He became a coach in his 20s
Shelton grew up in Illinois with a father, Ron, who himself had a minor league career before going into coaching. He played baseball at Southern Illinois before spending two seasons as a minor league catcher in the New York Yankees organization, where he was teammates with future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.
Shelton’s playing days were cut short by an elbow injury, but by his late 20s he was already a coach in New York’s minor league system. From coaching, he became a minor league manager before eventually working his way to the major league level in 2005.
Shelton was the hitting coach in Cleveland (2005-09) before leaving to take the same job with the Tampa Bay Rays, which he held through the 2016 season. He then spent one season as the Toronto Blue Jays’ quality control coach before landing in Minnesota for the first time.
He helped create Joe Mauer’s memorable final moment
When Joe Mauer finished his career by getting behind the plate to catch one last major league pitch, it was because of a conversation between Shelton and then-bullpen coach Nate Damman.
Mauer hadn’t appeared behind the plate since 2013 because of concussion issues that forced him over to first base. But on that day in 2018, in the final game of his career, the future Hall of Fame player took his familiar position one last time to catch a single pitch, a fitting and memorable send-off for the hometown star.
It was an emotional moment for everyone in the ballpark, but none more so than Mauer, who acknowledged the crowd and then wiped tears from his eyes before catching an outside pitch from Matt Belisle and departing the game.
“I have a lot of emotions going on right now and today I don’t think could have gone any better to script,” Mauer told reporters that day.
He’s good friends with Rocco Baldelli
Shelton took over as the Rays’ hitting coach in 2010, Baldelli’s final year as a player. After his retirement, Baldelli remained in the organization and eventually joined the coaching staff in 2015. The two coached together in Tampa Bay for two seasons before Shelton moved on to Toronto.
They linked up once again after Baldelli was hired by the Twins, spending one more season together in 2019.
“There’s a few people that I think all of us in the game kind of think about when you talk about your growth as a baseball person, and I would say Shelty is on that short list of people for me,” Baldelli said in 2023.
In the years that followed, the two often had fun jabbing each other. Shelton, in particular, liked to poke fun at the fact that Baldelli was often ranked near the top of writer Craig Calcaterra’s “Most Handsome Managers” list. In April 2021 with the Pittsburgh Pirates in town to play the Twins, Shelton showed up wearing a custom shirt with Baldelli’s face on it that read, “Hi, I’m Rocco, the best looking manager in baseball, and I approve this message.”
A couple of years later, Baldelli couldn’t hide his glee when telling reporters that Shelton had fallen off a boat while on a fishing trip.
“Shelty apparently purified himself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka off the side of a boat,” Baldelli said, referencing Prince’s famous line in the movie “Purple Rain.”
In response, Shelton vowed that Baldelli would never, ever see evidence.
“There is video and you know who will never get that video? Rocco Baldelli,” Shelton said. “He will never get the video because if the video was there, it would be on the scoreboard.”
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