Derek Falvey, Rocco Baldelli to return for 2025 season despite Twins missing playoffs

The Twins, following a monumental collapse over the last six weeks that cost them a spot in the American League’s six-team playoff field, will spend the offseason dissecting everything that went wrong.

In the immediate aftermath, Twins owner Joe Pohlad decided not to institute complete wholesale changes to the organization. Manager Rocco Baldelli will return for the 2025 season and Derek Falvey will remain in charge of the baseball operations department.

Falvey declined to comment on the status of General Manager Thad Levine, whose last known contract extension expires this year, or the coaches on Baldelli’s staff.

“I don’t judge employees off of six crummy weeks,” Pohlad said. “[Falvey’s] got eight years of a resume and I talk with Derek daily so I know what he’s doing. He’s got player development resume, he’s got a major league resume and yeah, he’s busting his [butt]. He’s the right guy.”

Speaking before the Twins ended their season with a 6-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, finishing the year with an 82-80 record, Falvey paused for several moments as he fought back tears describing the pain of the club’s freefall.

“I’ve never experienced the frustration, the anger, the disappointment and the embarrassment that I have over the last five to six weeks,” Falvey said.

“We let our fans down. We let ourselves down. If you don’t feel that as a player, as a staff member, then you probably need to be in a different business. I just think that there will be decisions we have to make, challenging conversations we’re going to have, ultimately, to reflect on this. But the combination of emotions are significant. We need to be better than this. There’s no other way to put it.”

The Twins lost 27 of their last 39 games and dropped to fourth place in the AL Central. It was one of the most epic late-season slides in modern baseball history. Their playoff odds went from 90% on Sept. 12 to zero in three weeks.

Falvey and Baldelli are expected to meet Monday to begin their postmortem.

“Rocco is my manager,” Falvey said. “We do a decent job most days, or at least I try, to keep a steadiness in the way we go about our business. But behind the scenes, we’ve been gutted during this process trying to figure out how we fix it. ... I believe in his process, I believe in him, I believe in the partnership I have with him. That is how I feel and, ultimately, that’s the way we’re going to go forward.”

The Twins aren’t planning further payroll reductions, a source told the Minnesota Star Tribune, but the 2024 season amounts to a lost year for the core of the Twins roster. Starting pitchers Pablo López and Bailey Ober completed full, healthy seasons. Byron Buxton played more than 100 games for the first time since 2017. Carlos Correa played at an All-Star level when he was healthy. Royce Lewis appeared in a career-high 82 games.

They still missed the postseason by four games.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to change and truthfully sometimes a big part of what you do as a manager is not letting people get comfortable,” Baldelli said. “That can mean anything. Keeping a team on its toes. Not just running things back and saying, ‘hey, I think this is a good way of doing it, we’re just going to keep doing it this way.’ ”

The Twins lost nine of their last 12 games. On Sunday, Ober surrendered a go-ahead, three-run homer to James McCann, the No. 9 batter in the Orioles lineup, in the fifth inning. The Twins totaled two runs — solo homers from Carlos Santana and DaShawn Keirsey Jr., who hit the first home run of his career.

“I think the culmination of it all was the late portion of the Marlins game [Thursday] and watching so many things happen in one game that were inexplicable,” Falvey said. “No other way to put it. The players in that room, I think they’d own it too, were embarrassing in those moments.”