After nearly a decade running the Twins’ baseball operations and a year of managing the business side, the Twins and Derek Falvey announced they agreed to a “mutual parting of ways.” The Twins, Falvey, and owner Tom Pohlad all released statements which can be read below.
It’s hard to overstate how major of a change this is just weeks before Spring Training begins. There was a legitimate
argument to move on from Falvey back in November when former manager Rocco Baldelli was fired, a leadership change was underway, and the roster was in a transition period after selling off the entire bullpen at the trade deadline. This agreement also seems like something that has come together very recently, given that Falvey was the lead speaker at Twins Fest less than a week ago.
In the meantime, General Manager Jeremy Zoll will take over the baseball operations side of the Twins while Tom Pohlad himself will run the business side while they search for a new leader for that portion of the organization. It’s unclear if Zoll will run baseball ops permanently or if they will look for a new, outside voice to take over.
I am not a reporter and I have no inside information, but reading between the lines, I think this was truly a mutual arrangement though probably not as nice as the statements would like you to believe. In the last 6 months, Falvey was forced to dump Carlos Correa’s contract for nothing, not given the freedom to reinvest those savings back into the roster, then had a new boss forced on him who appears to be taking a much more active role in the organization Joe Pohlad did. From the ownership end, the Twins have repeatedly underperformed expectations and have seen numerous top prospects fizzle out after holding on to them for too long and ruining their trade value (see the Edouard Julien trade from Wednesday as an example).
Now, two weeks before Spring Training, the Twins are somehow even more directionless than they were before. The move itself isn’t that shocking, but the sequence of events leading here was arguably the oddest possible timing imaginable. Winning fixes everything and the Twins still have a very talented roster (for now). Let’s see what Zoll can do with six weeks to shore up a few major holes.
