Has anyone else noticed there’s something going on with the Twins?
Remember when the management tanked the season by trading 40 percent of the active roster at the trade deadline? It was the last week in July. The team bottomed out and on Monday, a day after the team finished the season with 92 losses, the Twins fired manager Rocco Baldelli.
It wasn’t totally crazy, or even unexpected. The Twins missed the playoffs in four of the past five seasons, and it didn’t look great when veteran all-star Pablo Lopez, in the wake of the trade deadline, said that he and the remaining veterans would use the opportunity to “rebuild the culture in the clubhouse.”
“Culture,” he added, “is one thing we’ve been lacking the last couple of years.”
Lopez was talking primarily about teammates, presumably recently departed teammates, but it also didn’t look great for Baldelli, whose job it is to keep everyone working and engaged.
Still, the team that finished the season with a 10-inning, 2-1 loss at postseason-bound Philadelphia was a bad one, gutted by a weeklong series of trade deadline moves that swapped nearly all of the competent veterans for prospects. If anyone expected Baldelli to spin gold out of what was left, they were kidding themselves.
There were so many young players on the team in September — some making their first major league appearances after years in the minors — it could have been spring training. Except there would have been more veterans around.
Outside of Lopez, Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober and Ryan Jeffers, it’s going to look like that next season, as well. If no one else is traded this offseason.
Making this team better quickly will be impossible. Making it better, period, will be heavy lifting. With Baldelli and his staff ousted, the Twins are officially starting over from rock bottom. There is some talent in the system, some recently acquired, but right now the Twins have a weak-hitting lineup and a sketchy bullpen.
If the team that closed the 2025 season had started it, the Twins would have lost well over 100 games.
Cutting bait just two years removed from the team’s first playoff series victory since 2003 was a little bit odd. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that ownership, disabused of the notion that it could sell the team for nearly $2 billion, wants to severely slash payroll.
And it has. That’s the easy part.
The hard part is building a good team and putting fans in the seats. Now team president Derek Falvey and general manager Jeremy Zoll, should they choose to accept the mission, are going to have to do that the way the Twins used to do it: development.
The new core was on the field over the last two months of the season, players such as Luke Keaschall, Austin Martin, Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner, Kody Funderburk, Zebby Matthews, David Festa and Simeon Woods Richardson. They will be joined by starter Mick Abel, the International League Pitcher of the Year this season.
There is talent there, but it’s unseasoned. Baldelli was tasked with getting the group to play more aggressively, to get on base and force the opposition to make plays. They responded to Baldelli, but wins were sparse. Is that still the plan?
More changes are coming.
With four young starters — Abel, Festa, Matthews and Woods Richardson — beginning their major league careers, it doesn’t make sense to hang on to Lopez, Ryan and Bailey Ober. Not when you’re starting over with players just getting a taste of the majors and an entirely new coaching staff.
If it works, it will be exciting and perhaps sustainable. Management thanks you for your patience.
Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey of the Minnesota Twins looks on as new manager Rocco Baldelli speaks as Baldelli is introduced at a press conference at Target Field on Oct. 25, 2018 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
Rocco Baldelli #5 of the Minnesota Twins celebrates after defeating the Toronto Blue Jays in Game Two to win the Wild Card Series at Target Field on Oct. 04, 2023 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
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