MINNEAPOLIS -- A day after manager Rocco Baldelli was formally dismissed, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey began laying out the vision for Minnesota’s next steps as an uncertain winter approaches.
Acknowledging that a great deal remains unknown, including the team’s 2026 payroll, Falvey and general manager Jeremy Zoll told reporters that there is no specific blueprint for the team’s next manager. The Twins parted ways with Baldelli on Monday after seven seasons, during which they made the postseason three times but faltered in the second half in each of the past two years.
Neither Falvey or Zoll divulged any timeline for the search, and they said that at this point no candidates had been contacted or even extensively discussed. The 2026 coaching staff is to be determined, Falvey said, by a combination of the new manager and the front office. He did not rule out the possibility of retaining some of this year’s coaches, but also made it clear that it’s possible that none would be brought back.
Falvey acknowledged that the Twins had previously exercised Baldelli’s 2026 contract option, saying that that was done before the ’25 season even started. A report surfaced in June that the option had been picked up, but at the time neither Baldelli nor the club would confirm or deny.
Falvey made a specific point not to hang the disappointment of 2024 and 2025 all on Baldelli, whom he personally holds in high regard.
“It’s incumbent upon me as the head of this to talk with ownership about what the right direction is going forward,” Falvey said. “And we had those discussions privately about what that means and where we are and what we’ve learned, not just about one month of baseball but about over the course of a longer period of time. And ultimately, in those discussions, we collectively arrived at this being the right time for a new voice and a new direction. It’s not about Rocco -- I said this yesterday -- this isn’t about a failure of Rocco for this season. This is a collective underperformance from our group.”
The Twins fully expected to contend for the postseason in both 2024 and 2025, and both times fell short. Falvey said that those failures will lead to examination beyond just a change in the manager’s chair.
“I felt like this roster had a lot of talent on it that could go perform,” Falvey said. “And we didn't collectively perform to that talent level. And so that, to me, is when I say that you evaluate it, you say, were we wrong on that assessment? Were we wrong on the players that were in this room? Did we have the wrong mix? Did we miss on something specifically?”
Baldelli was known as something of a players’ manager, and so naturally speculation has already turned to the idea of more of a disciplinarian as the next Twins skipper. However, such managers are often more “old school” in their approach, and not as open to collaborative decision-making with the front office as Baldelli was. Falvey pushed back more broadly against the idea that any specific style or tone of leader would be sought.
“Once you start defining the exact traits you need, then you actually start thinning the pool,” Falvey said. “You start from a place of saying, ‘Well, that person doesn’t fit what I’m looking for.’ I think [instead], we start [with a] more blank sheet of paper because if you look around baseball, and you look at the postseason right now, there are all kinds of different managers marching around the postseason right now.”
Falvey granted that the uncertainty regarding payroll and franchise direction would be something potential candidates would likely ask about.
“They’re definitely going to want to know,” Falvey said. “The type of manager we’re going to hire is going to be able to blend all of the things that will come with any type of team you have. That’s what you want, right? You want a manager that, no matter what the 26 or the 30 or the 40 [players] you use over the course of a season, that their view is we’re going to make this team the best it can be. You’re going to approach it with, you need to develop at this level.”