Minnesota Twins

Rocco’s Modern Baseball

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The news finally emerged early this morning: Rocco Baldelli will be the 14th manager since the Twins franchise moved to Minnesota. For the first time since Ray Miller in 1985, the Twins have hired a manager from outside the organization.  Baldelli will be just the 4th manager employed by the Twins in the last three decades.

By bringing in Baldelli, the Twins have finally jumped into the modern era. With Derek Falvey (35), Thad Levine (45), & Baldelli (37), management of the club is the youngest it’s been since Andy MacPhail (then 33) & Tom Kelly (then 36) started running the team together in 1986. Twins fans don’t need to be reminded of the accomplishments of that tandem of baseball minds.

At the same time, youth alone is not a guarantee of success. Youth can serve as a proxy for fresh thinking, which the Twins certainly needed when Falvey & Levine were brought in to run the organization’s baseball operations. The early results have been uneven. In some ways, the team is still recovering from Bill Smith’s disastrous tenure as GM, which was compounded by Terry Ryan’s return to the helm and refusal to consider other possibilities.

Falvey & Levine inherited Paul Molitor, an incumbent manager with strong ties to the club going back to his playing days, and by every indication, Molitor embraced a new approach to the game he knows in his marrow. To some, Molitor might seem fated to have been a transitional manager. His coaching career did not include lengthy service in the minor leagues or coaching apprenticeships under managers with a track record of developing future managers. He served under one of the last old-school GMs, and one of the youngest new-school Chief Baseball Officers. Molitor was something of the insider’s outsider, a Hall of Fame player & hometown guy without a long track record for the gig he held. He was open to new ideas, but they weren’t ideas that were organic to his understanding of the game.

Baldelli will be notable for his youth — he is now the youngest manager in the major leagues. What is more important, however, is what Baldelli brings with him. Baldelli was the sixth overall pick in the draft class immediately preceding Joe Mauer’s, the one in which the Twins drafted Adam Johnson second overall. He was a dynamic young outfielder whose career was derailed by injuries, ultimately forced into retirement by mitochondrial channelopathy. Along the way, Baldelli received the Tony Conigliaro Award and played for two organizations — the Rays and Red Sox — known for fresh thinking. His ability to translate his experience into effective support struggling players  will be vital to the futures of Byron Buxton and Miguel Sanó. Baldelli’s coaching work in Tampa Bay, particularly his last two years as field coordinator, will give data-driven baseball decisions an organic voice in the clubhouse. Should Derek Shelton remain on Baldelli’s coaching staff, the Twins will double-down on Rays coaching alumni, while Shelton can help his former colleague get familiar with the terrain of the clubhouse.

After years of ossified thinking, which produced mediocre results that were excruciating to watch, the Twins are completing a turn into the future. Welcome, Rocco’s Modern Baseball.

13 thoughts on “Rocco’s Modern Baseball”

  1. Early in the managerial search there was talk of having a manager who spoke Spanish to help connect with the many Latino players in the organization. The final candidates didn't seem to meet that criteria, unless Spanish is their second language. It will be interesting to see how Baldelli and the Twins approach this issue.

    1. For those who are subscribers, Doug Glanville’s piece for The Athletic building on his 2016 debate with Alex Cora on diversity among MLB managers is fantastic. I haven’t heard anything about the finalists’ language proficiency and don’t want to make assumptions, but I do wonder how (or if) it factored into Falvey, Levine, & Antony’s selection of the finalist pool. I agree with you, free — how the Twins approach this is going to be interesting and important.

      1. Italian is pretty close to Spanish, right?
        (I thought he played for Italy at the WBC, but I guess not?)

        1. I didn’t get as nearly a definitive opinion on changes to the coaching staff as Gleeman did, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Glynn, Guardado, & Hernandez all joined the staff prior to Falvey & Levine’s arrival. Since then, they’ve hired Rowson, Smith (promoted from Ft. Myers), Pickler (same day as Smith), Alston, & Shelton (in that order). Given the two Latino coaches are guys who have longtime ties to the Twins (Hernandez has 18 years of coaching within the organization, Guardado was drafted when Falvey was seven years old), I don’t know how they work this out.

    2. I think that is especially important when trying to explain highly technical subject matter. It sounds like the Twins had trouble explaining things to Presly and he spoke English!

  2. When you make a list of managers with the coolest names in franchise history, Rocco Baldelli’s gotta be up there with Ossie Bluege & Cookie Lavagetto.

  3. Nick Nelson shared this on his site — the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analyics Conference’s baseball analytics panel, featuring: Rocco Baldelli, Scott Boras, Mark Shapiro, Jeff Luhnow, & Bill James, moderated by Rob Neyer.

    1. At least there's now two professional organizations in the state joining the modern world. (the Lynx are the other)

    2. I loved the zinger he threw back at Reusse about (paraphrasing) “keeping an open mind & being curious no matter what industry you work in.”

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