The Pohlads Set Derek Falvey Up To Fail

[Eric Blonigen]

Image courtesy of John Bonnes

There is still much we don’t know about the specific events that led to the Twins and Derek Falvey parting ways. One thing we do know, though, is that Falvey was set up to fail in three key ways. That makes it easy to see why he wanted out, and perhaps why he chose not to let another losing season be hung around his neck as he seeks his next, greener pasture.

The Correa Signing
The first way in which ownership misled Falvey was Joe Pohlad’s green-lighting of Carlos Correa’s second signing. To be clear, the approval itself was sound, and theoretically, it was a great move. A good owner, when sensing that his team’s window of contention is wide-open and that the team is one big splash away from having a chance at a deep playoff run, should approve signing a superstar.

After the signing, The Athletic’s Dan Hayes reported the following:

“While he didn’t mention a specific number, Pohlad didn’t hesitate to suggest the Twins could increase payroll significantly if everything was properly aligned ... Would something like $180-200 million be out of the question?

“I think that there are a number of factors that you need to consider,” Pohlad said. “Where your team is, where your division is, where your business is at. And I don’t think something like that is ever out of the question. I really don’t.”

Fast-forward eight months, and you know the rest. A good owner should not approve a signing like the Correa if he knows it will reduce the ability to add supplemental pieces, or worse, to slash payroll by nearly 20% the following season—then again, and again for good measure.

One might choose to be charitable, and argue that perhaps Pohlad didn’t know that the family would be “losing” significant money. That's a watery defense, though. An owner's imprimatur on a signing should signal a commitment to the spending required to justify it, which means either knowing for sure that it won't limit the team, or being willing to stretch and accept the pain when it comes. Either way, allowing Falvey to take on a $200-million contract and then slashing payroll eliminated Falvey’s ability to sign quality depth pieces that would insulate the team against injuries, player regression, or the failure of prospects to develop into quality regulars. In short, the Pohlads forced Falvey to immediately thread a needle if he wanted to succeed.

Ownership Communication and Decision-Making
The second way the Pohlads made Falvey’s job harder is through their public-facing ineptitude. Whether it was Joe’s ill-advised “rightsizing the payroll” comment immediately following the first playoff success in 20 years, or his comments following the 2025 trade deadline firesale, ownership hung the front office out to dry.

“I’m confident because we have got all the right pieces, and we have the resources we’re ready to invest when needed," he said in July. "The goal is not to compete. The goal is to win a World Series.”

That’s just so out of touch with the reality of the situation, and unfortunately for Falvey, it makes it appear as if he’s the one choosing not to improve the team.

One can also point to the travails of watching Twins games on TV as the RSN model died its slow and ugly death, and the public promise they allowed Cory Provus to give (on the record) that there would be no more blackouts—after which they chose to re-up with the same bankrupt organization that was preventing fans from watching. That created a feedback loop of frustration among fans that led many to tune out. Of course, with his promotion, Falvey had to try to figure out how to pick up the pieces. This is just one example of ownership hurting their own earning power, which led to the reductions in payroll.

Then, of course, there was the sale that wasn’t, leading to Falvey stating as late as December's Winter Meetings that he still wasn’t sure what he would be allowed to do this offseason, at a time when other teams were deep in their planning processes—and, indeed, executing those plans.

Unrealistic, And Constantly Changing Expectations
The final, perhaps irreconcilable way that the Pohlads made Falvey’s job impossible was to issue mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed dictates. The first: to win, despite needing four good bullpen arms, a backup catcher, and at least two above-average hitters. The second: do this for, say, $20 million in offseason spending, leaving the team with one of baseball's smallest payrolls. They issued this unfunded mandate, by the way, after Falvey had already made the sensible choice to rebuild at the deadline last season, based on the financial constraints placed on him and the underperformance of the core.

That came after the whiplash Falvey had received from ownership pivots over the prior two years. It has looked something like this:

• 2023: Go all in! Sign Correa! Break the curse! There’s more money where this came from!
• 2024: So close…but you gotta cut payroll. By a lot. Hopefully it’ll be fine. You'll figure it out. Also, why are fans mad?
• 2025: Keep cutting. It’s a good core, we can still do this. Actually, the team isn’t quite performing… You know what? Maybe let’s actually burn it down. Seriously, why are fans mad? It’s a nice ballpark.
• 2026: Oh, fans are mad because they want to win. Ok. We aren’t rebuilding. You better win. Also, there’s no money. Trust me, payroll doesn’t matter. Vibes matter.

Falvey acted the politician throughout his Twins tenure, to the point that he consistently took heat for decisions that weren’t, strictly speaking, his. I’m sure signing Ty France to play first base in 2025 was not his first, or even second, choice. I’m sure he would have preferred not to eliminate the 2025 bullpen at the deadline. This is, after all, the guy who was in tears following the 2024 season because of how upset he was that the team failed down the stretch. There was never an indication that he didn’t want to field a great team, but he was handcuffed at every point since the 2023 playoffs ended.

However, the fact that he consistently chose to carry water reflected an accurate understanding of the reality he was living. Ownership found themselves in significant debt, however it was accrued; he had a good relationship with his bosses; and he liked the role he was in. So, he dealt with it and made the best of it.

When the boss with whom he'd had a good relationship was replaced by an intransigent dilettante, he realized that he no longer liked the role as much as he once had. The debt is being reduced or eliminated, but Falvey realized that wouldn't matter if he was to be overseen by a similarly miserly but less engaged and less flexible Pohlad sibling.

I can’t say I blame him.

View full article

[farmerguychris]

Spot on article.   Well said and glad you took the time to communicate this to any Falvey haters out there.

[Blyleven2011]

Yes the owners are bad business baseball people  , when they inherited the team after their father Carl passed , they didn't really want it , didn't really like it or have a passion for it  , but the brothers most likely got together and came to the conclusion that this was going to make them the money they have a passion for ...

They really don't like the fans either , of course I have a passion for baseball and if I was like most owners , I'd want a legacy of a winning a world series for the fans , their legacy is being billionaires taking our money without giving anything back ...

Now did the owners set Derek Falvey up for failure , that's up for a debate , Falvey did alot of things he shouldn't have and nevrr did a thing when he should have ...

Example , 2023 he went out at deadline and yes he got terrible help , but we weren't really a contender that year in my opinion ( yes it was good baseball in 2023 but not good enough at deadline to trade for )   , in 2024 when we are contenders he stands pat at the deadline and twins fail down the stretch  ...

Know when to hold them and know when to fold them , that is where Falvey' failed ...

[rv78]

Sorry, I don't feel sorry for Falvey. He made a multitude of moves to numerous to mention that he had complete control over that he just completely whiffed on. Even his last 2 significant moves in spending $7M each on Josh Bell and Victor Caratini show his inept way of spending the available payroll he has at his disposal. Neither Bell or Caratini move the needle to a higher level. They only solidify a floor that maintains the status quo of mediocrity. Had the total of their 2 salaries, $14M, been given to just one, much better player, who was capable of significant improvement at even just 1 position it makes the team BETTER. The only problem of going with that avenue of spending is that Falvey has also shown with Correa and Gallo that he wasn't capable of spending bigger dollars wisely either. Blame the Pohlads if you wish, but Falvey failed in a lot of ways that weren't the Pohlads fault.

[nicksaviking]

The Pohlads haven't bothered to create a long-range plan for this team since they were threatening relocation trying to get a new stadium. Since then, clearly they've been winging it year to year. Maybe even month to month. Obviously that's not how you operate a business you care too much about.

So, yeah, I agree the rug was pulled out from under Falvey. Pulled out from all of us; front office, fans and players. But I also agree it was time for a change. The Pohlads did briefly open up their wallets and resemble an upper-middle class team, but they wouldn't have had to sign those big contracts if the team could actually develop their own hitters. Fielding a talented homegrown offense is pretty much a requirement for every team that doesn't play in NY or LA.

 

[Fire Dan Gladden]

16 minutes ago, farmerguychris said:

Spot on article.   Well said and glad you took the time to communicate this to any Falvey haters out there.

Falvey haters are gonna hate. They will still blame him for everything that went wrong, ignore everything that went right, and forget that his hands were tied to his ankles while trying to make decisions.

[jmlease1]

I do agree with basic premise of the article: the poor business decisions of the Twins ownership and the rapidly shifting "planning" screwed whatever blueprint Falvey was trying to complete for the Twins. Signing Correa and Pablo to significant contracts and then taking a hacksaw to the payroll in consecutive seasons while botching the revenue side of things with their failures related to media rights and so on was a screw job.

That said, Falvey also didn't give himself any insulation when enough prospects that he drafted or acquired failed to develop or translate into consistent MLB players on the offensive side. He improved the farm system for sure IMHO, especially in terms of the pitching depth and ceiling, but not enough guys made it on the hitting side of the world that it would have been more than fair to move him out in the offseason from a performance metric.

Now, even there was some of that not his "fault" precisely? Sure. You can't really blame him for Jose Miranda falling apart after getting beaned, Alex Kirilloff having to retire due to a back injury, Royce Lewis getting 2 ACL tears, and things like that. But while there's still some potential stars in the prospect bin for the Twins on the offense side (Jenkins, Rodriguez, Culpepper, etc) you're talking about guys that are still either 22 or under or with 2 or fewer years of minor league experience.

They've drafted and/or developed a lot of pitching arms that either have promise or made it to MLB, but they also took some risks on injured guys that haven't panned out (yet) and some of those risks left Falvey with less margin for success.

Ownership screwed him, but he also made enough bad calls that it's fair to think that a change needed to be made. What's utterly stupid is letting him hire a new manager and then almost immediately firing him. As per usual with the bungling Twins ownership, they did it in the wrong order.

[Eris]

Not sure I really agree with this. In part, yes restricting payroll reduces the ability to sign free agents to offset inefficient development or poor drafting or poor trades. Falvey’s high profile free agent signings  mostly did not work out and Falvey owns that. First Correa signing was okay, the second was a disaster and should have foreseeable as 2 teams cancelled contracts after his physical. Donaldson, another high profile FA signing had to be offloaded, then there is Vasquez and Gallo. Plus many deadline trades that did not work out. 
 

Also it seems like for most of Falvey’s tenure their draft strategy was focused on rebuilding/maintaining the Bomba squad with a heavy focus on bat first players with questionable defensive skills.  Resulting in a roster with 5 or more players whose best position is DH and some of the worst defense in the league. How is that working out. 

[Brett]

He’s gone and I don’t care to re-litigate any further. And while I anxiously consume articles like “Just Who Is the 9th-best LF in the System?”, I acknowledge the real need to just fast forward to the day John reposts “Pitchers and Catchers Report”.

Anyone else ready?

[Vanimal46]

The first rug pull after 2023 is absolutely the Pohlads fault. However, Falvey had 2+ years to change the core roster and re-allocate the budget. He instead kept running it back with bare minimum changes. That’s on Falvey. 

The reality is he’s had the highest budget to work with out of any AL Central team since he was hired. After he got taken to the cleaners in the 2022 trade deadline he quit making significant trades to boost the MLB team. 

[HerbieFan]

I agree to a point.  In terms of spending, unrealistic expectations, etc., yes they did.  However, under Falvey the Twins' player development has been anemic at best.  That, not the lack of overspending, has been their biggest issue.

[bunsen82]

54 minutes ago, rv78 said:

SoEven his last 2 significant moves in spending $7M each on Josh Bell and Victor Caratini show his inept way of spending the available payroll he has at his disposal. Neither Bell or Caratini move the needle to a higher level.

No one at that price level is going to move the needle.  Guess who set the amount he could spend?   Tom and the family.  I can admit Falvey has had some missteps.  As a manager and a steward of the Twins hes done a decent job.  For Assets you have Ryan, Lopez and Buxton.    You have Lewis and Keaschall on the big league club that have soe pretty decent upside.   Lee I think will surprise,  but the real value is in the prospects he has accumulated.   

[JADBP]

While I agree that the owners have been tough on Falvey, particularly Joe, he has made far more BAD decisions than good decisions. His trades have been strikingly bad overall with a very few good ones sprinkled about.  
 

His Free Agent signings have been a disaster. On average, every year, it feels like he makes 8-10 FA signings of which one is credible.  
 

But it is his inane stubbornness that is most frustrating.  He will run these bad FA signees onto the field for the whole season, over and over, as they consistently fail, over and over.  He will stick with failed strategies for years.  He will defend his inane moves with misplaced hope and optimism. He grins foolishly while trying to justify yet another failed plan. 
 

Glad to see him gone!!!

[Woof Bronzer]

40 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

Falvey haters are gonna hate. They will still blame him for everything that went wrong, ignore everything that went right, and forget that his hands were tied to his ankles while trying to make decisions.

Or maybe, like many things in life, it isn't black and white.  The Pohlads definitely handcuffed Falvey at times, but look around the league (ahem, Milwaukee) - plenty of GMs are finding success with smaller payrolls.  Heck, just look around the AL Central.   Falvey had 9 years.  That's more runway than most owners would give a GM with so little to show for it (1 ALDS game win).  And Falvey had the tremendous fortune of being in an extremely, at times historically, weak division.  Having the largest payroll in a weak division should lead to more success than 1 playoff appearance in 5 years.  

 Falvey deserves part of the blame.  As do the Pohlads.  

[Jim H]

I think the let Falvey off the blame articles can stop. Everyone who follows the Twins has an opinion on  Falvey that is cemented in stone. That opinion, whatever it is, won't be changed. Move on.

[LastOnePicked]

Perhaps the biggest problem of the Falvey era wasn't payroll, but style of play on the field. Falvey should have addressed that earlier. Ownership is at fault in all kinds of ways, but a parting with Falvey was called for.

[NYCTK]

Quote

Falvey acted the politician throughout his Twins tenure, to the point that he consistently took heat for decisions that weren’t, strictly speaking, his. I’m sure signing Ty France to play first base in 2025 was not his first, or even second, choice. I’m sure he would have preferred not to eliminate the 2025 bullpen at the deadline. This is, after all, the guy who was in tears following the 2024 season because of how upset he was that the team failed down the stretch. There was never an indication that he didn’t want to field a great team, but he was handcuffed at every point since the 2023 playoffs ended.

Why/How are we SURE that these choices weren't his?

Ty France was a $1 mil contract. It was a good contract. The selling of the bullpen was a fine decision, and the first time in 3 trade deadlines that the Twins actually made any significant move, which is extremely damning on its own. Why are we SURE he didn't want to trade away Jax and Duran? 

He was handcuffed? He was the guy in charge of the roster and he was paid to put together a winning roster. His own lack of imagination or creativity isn't anyone's fault but his own. 

Quote

However, the fact that he consistently chose to carry water reflected an accurate understanding of the reality he was living. Ownership found themselves in significant debt, however it was accrued; he had a good relationship with his bosses; and he liked the role he was in. So, he dealt with it and made the best of it.

Correct. He was nothing but an ass-kissing corporate type. I have no patience for these lot. No integrity, constantly only trying to save their own position of power and/or wealth.

No one should feel even slightly bad for Derek Falvey. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

 It is almost rime for spring training articles. Hurry spring. We miss you. 

[bunsen82]

3 hours ago, JADBP said:

 His trades have been strikingly bad overall with a very few good ones sprinkled about.  
 

1. Sonny Gray 8 WAR and Debarge   -   Traded away Petty

2. Lopez 8.1 WAR  -   Traded Arraez  6.8 WAR  -  Lopez is a much more valuable asset currently

3. Joe Ryan 8.3 War -   Traded Cruz  .4 WAR

4. Duran  7.4 WAR,  Tait and Abel  -  Escobar  (Enough said)  

5.  Topa and Gonzalez   for Polanco 1.3 WAR .   (This trade is definitely trending towards the twins)

The only real negative trade I can think of is the Pressly trade.  But most of that value came in additional signed contracts.   The other 2 would be Cano for Lopez,  and then Mahle for Steer and CES.   

I honestly think of all the things Falvey did,  trading was by far his strong suit.  

[Western SD Fan]

Two things can be true at once; that the Pohlads can be scumbag owners with no plan and very reactionary as an ownership group AND that Falvey made enough inexplicable moves/drafts that he deserved to be fired.

The argument for the Pohlads:

From a business standpoint, there was a lot of convergence of circumstances that they should have seen coming that eventually caused them to pull back on payroll.  First, the CARES Act funding from the Covid years ended in 2023 so the government-funded gravy train that likely propped up many of the Pohlad businesses ended and they failed to plan for it.  I don't know their other businesses, but the sense from TD is that much of their non-Twins business is in commercial real estate.  My assessment from national reports is that this real estate market has never really recovered from Covid, but I do not know the Twin Cities market right now.  This absolutely terrible lack of planning likely a factor in the pullback in payroll.  Add to this a nearly $500M debt incurred and it's easy to see that just the interest payments could be crippling to an organization.  Notice: I don't care where the debt came from, just the result of how it crippled payroll. 

Finally, Dave St. Peter failed to prepare the Pohlads for the fallout coming from losing at least a reported $45M with the ending of the Bally/Fanduel/Diamond Sports Group/Main Street Sports Group or whatever name they want to call themselves today.  My guess is they announced that they were going to start Twins TV in 2024 before researching what happened with the Padres and panicked, which led no money to spend on upgrading the team where necessary and the pullback in payroll after 2023.

The argument for Falvey:

We have all stated and repeated ad nauseam about the 'pitching pipeline' that Falvey was supposed to create and really haven't materialized.  I believe another focus should be on Falvey's drafting of position players.  I had always remembered something from Falvey's early drafting that left a mark on my thinking.  Early on, Falvey seemed to want to draft big college bats because he believed they be later traded for pitching.  Early examples were Sabato and Larnach.  I finally found an article relating to this here:  Twins 2018 MLB Draft: Minnesota selects OF Trevor Larnach with the 20th overall pick | Twinkie Town.  Of course, the flaw becomes that these hitters never materialized into the expected mashers that other teams wanted to trade for.  This leads to the issue of having so many corner OFs that all look and hit about the same (Larnach, Wallner, etc.) which leads to a logjam when all the players finally graduated, as we can see now AND did see then when these players were shuffled back and forth on the St. Paul Express.  When you the bad FA decisions of both pitchers and position players (Gallo, Margot, Shoemaker, Happ, etc.) and it creates a bad combination that only a few other GMs can match (namely the Rockies). 

Finally, I prepped a spreadsheet months before when the idea that Falvey needed to go was brought up.  The results of my spreadsheet compared payroll, winning %, and playoff appearances to other teams that we have been comparing the Twins to (Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Tampa Bay).  I can show my work if you want, but my results were that the Twins, on average, had the highest payroll, the lowest winning percentage, AND the fewest postseason appearances during the Falvey Era (2017-2025, except 2020 since that really threw off the averages in payroll for obvious reasons).

Both parties made grave errors causing the Twins to become one of the worst laughingstocks in North American sports.  Frankly, Falvey still needed to go.  Be it because he couldn't do what Tom Pohlad wanted him to do or because Tom finally realized the ineptitude of Falvey and told him that he could be fired or negotiate a way out and leave.  I'll finish with where I started, both premises can be true:  the Pohlads are terrible businesspeople that created the chaos of the payroll that Falvey had to swim in AND Falvey was terrible at his job in terms of drafting and quality free agent signings and needed to go.

[Linus]

25 minutes ago, Western SD Fan said:

Two things can be true at once; that the Pohlads can be scumbag owners with no plan and very reactionary as an ownership group AND that Falvey made enough inexplicable moves/drafts that he deserved to be fired.

The argument for the Pohlads:

From a business standpoint, there was a lot of convergence of circumstances that they should have seen coming that eventually caused them to pull back on payroll.  First, the CARES Act funding from the Covid years ended in 2023 so the government-funded gravy train that likely propped up many of the Pohlad businesses ended and they failed to plan for it.  I don't know their other businesses, but the sense from TD is that much of their non-Twins business is in commercial real estate.  My assessment from national reports is that this real estate market has never really recovered from Covid, but I do not know the Twin Cities market right now.  This absolutely terrible lack of planning likely a factor in the pullback in payroll.  Add to this a nearly $500M debt incurred and it's easy to see that just the interest payments could be crippling to an organization.  Notice: I don't care where the debt came from, just the result of how it crippled payroll. 

Finally, Dave St. Peter failed to prepare the Pohlads for the fallout coming from losing at least a reported $45M with the ending of the Bally/Fanduel/Diamond Sports Group/Main Street Sports Group or whatever name they want to call themselves today.  My guess is they announced that they were going to start Twins TV in 2024 before researching what happened with the Padres and panicked, which led no money to spend on upgrading the team where necessary and the pullback in payroll after 2023.

The argument for Falvey:

We have all stated and repeated ad nauseam about the 'pitching pipeline' that Falvey was supposed to create and really haven't materialized.  I believe another focus should be on Falvey's drafting of position players.  I had always remembered something from Falvey's early drafting that left a mark on my thinking.  Early on, Falvey seemed to want to draft big college bats because he believed they be later traded for pitching.  Early examples were Sabato and Larnach.  I finally found an article relating to this here:  Twins 2018 MLB Draft: Minnesota selects OF Trevor Larnach with the 20th overall pick | Twinkie Town.  Of course, the flaw becomes that these hitters never materialized into the expected mashers that other teams wanted to trade for.  This leads to the issue of having so many corner OFs that all look and hit about the same (Larnach, Wallner, etc.) which leads to a logjam when all the players finally graduated, as we can see now AND did see then when these players were shuffled back and forth on the St. Paul Express.  When you the bad FA decisions of both pitchers and position players (Gallo, Margot, Shoemaker, Happ, etc.) and it creates a bad combination that only a few other GMs can match (namely the Rockies). 

Finally, I prepped a spreadsheet months before when the idea that Falvey needed to go was brought up.  The results of my spreadsheet compared payroll, winning %, and playoff appearances to other teams that we have been comparing the Twins to (Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Tampa Bay).  I can show my work if you want, but my results were that the Twins, on average, had the highest payroll, the lowest winning percentage, AND the fewest postseason appearances during the Falvey Era (2017-2025, except 2020 since that really threw off the averages in payroll for obvious reasons).

Both parties made grave errors causing the Twins to become one of the worst laughingstocks in North American sports.  Frankly, Falvey still needed to go.  Be it because he couldn't do what Tom Pohlad wanted him to do or because Tom finally realized the ineptitude of Falvey and told him that he could be fired or negotiate a way out and leave.  I'll finish with where I started, both premises can be true:  the Pohlads are terrible businesspeople that created the chaos of the payroll that Falvey had to swim in AND Falvey was terrible at his job in terms of drafting and quality free agent signings and needed to go.

This sums it up nicely for me. I would characterize Falvey a little more charitably but still not good enough to warrant hanging on to his job. Realistically it took both parties failing to create this mess. 

[weitz41]

What happen to the Minnesota Nice???

Honestly, I think we were lucky to have had Falvey and Levine. The whole organization is 10x better now than when they came onboard. I don't think anyone can argue that that isn't true. I'm sure a few will try...

Another Terry Ryan 2.0 anyone?

I sure miss Bill Smith and his great moves.

This whole fiasco we're watching this offseason was started with the "right sizing of payroll" and was bound to end this way. A continued sell off at this point was the only realistic way to reset and try again. That doesn't get renewed season ticket holders.

Who's investing 1/2 a billion dollars to see they're shares worth less in 3 months? So yeah, we're trying to win the division...

[Joe A. Preusser]

I was certain there would be naysayers disagreeing with this article.  I was not proven wrong.  I will just say that I arrived at the conclusion (somewhat late) last year that the ownership was the problem, not the front office.  And many of my opinions have been expressed in this article.  

I sincerely hope that either:

The Twins are sold.

The Twins are managed MUCH better by a new Pohlad.  

[Greglw3]

Totally disagree. Was he setup to fail when he took a non-juicy payroll and had his one good offseason of his whole tenure, signing Cron, Schoop, N Cruz, etc.? 

After that, on average, he had a greater payroll than the Guardians, probably the Royals, Rays but had passive offseason year after year and never once had a good trade deadline. Dyson, Shoemaker, Mahle ( better than Luis Castillo, he told us), D. Bundy, D Keuchel, DeSclafani, Chris Archer, Jake Cave, Joey Gallo, Andrelton Simmons, stuck with pull happy ineffective Max Kepler way too long, Colomé, whiffed on Rooker, who can forget J.A. Happ, Chris Paddack.

From 2021-2025, Falvey had payrolls of 121MM, 150MM, 156MM, 129 MM, 130MM. During that time his teams were 30 games below .500 with and average payroll of 137.2 MM.

Compare this to the Guardians 2021: 57MM 2022: 66.5MM 2023: 88.9MM 2024:105.5 MM 2025: estimated 101-102 MM for an average of 84MM for the 5 year period. During that time, they went 80-82, 92-70, 76-86, 92-69, 88-74 respectively for a cumulative record 47 games above .500.

So, on 50 MM less per year in payroll, the Guardians front office went 47 games above .500 while Falvey steered the Twins to 30 games below .500.

Falvey had a few moments but was generally a poor trader, shrugged off lousy performers like Jake Cave and Max Kepler way too long and presided over a strikeout plagued era of one dimensional baseball and very poor use of analytics (Rocco also to blame there). I just thought Falvey was quite incompetent and Rocco was a decisive cut below the good managers I’ve seen in my day like Terry Francona, Tony LaRussa, Jim Leyland, Gene Mauch, Earl Weaver, Chuck Tanner, Joe Maddon.....the list his long.

I’m happy the Twins have finally cleaned house and can now rely on the one bright spot, Sean Johnson’s scouting and drafting and rely on one General Manager...now we know who the general manager is! I’ve heard enough good about Jeremy Zoll to be optimistic.

We shall see. In the end, nobody knows exactly how to apportion the blame among the Pohlads, Rocco and Falvey but the buck stops here. Ready for a new chapter and excited about Jenkins, Rodriguez, G Gonzalez (very high on him), Culpepper, Mendez, Rosario and maybe even Fedko. Plus I love Austin Martin, I think he will personify Derek Shelton’s son to watch Twins.

 

 

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, weitz41 said:

Honestly, I think we were lucky to have had Falvey and Levine. The whole organization is 10x better now than when they came onboard. 

10x better?

In what ways?

 

[Vanimal46]

1 hour ago, weitz41 said:

I sure miss Bill Smith and his great moves.

 

Not sure why he’s catching strays but he was by far the most successful executive we’ve had signing international talent. Terry left him in a terrible spot knowing Johan Santana had to be traded. 

[Linus]

Terry Ryan hasn’t been around for ten years. I’m not sure why we are even worried about what he did or didn’t do. Falvey had plenty of time. 

[rv78]

4 hours ago, bunsen82 said:

1. Sonny Gray 8 WAR and Debarge   -   Traded away Petty

2. Lopez 8.1 WAR  -   Traded Arraez  6.8 WAR  -  Lopez is a much more valuable asset currently

3. Joe Ryan 8.3 War -   Traded Cruz  .4 WAR

4. Duran  7.4 WAR,  Tait and Abel  -  Escobar  (Enough said)  

5.  Topa and Gonzalez   for Polanco 1.3 WAR .   (This trade is definitely trending towards the twins)

The only real negative trade I can think of is the Pressly trade.  But most of that value came in additional signed contracts.   The other 2 would be Cano for Lopez,  and then Mahle for Steer and CES.   

I honestly think of all the things Falvey did,  trading was by far his strong suit.  

And yet the Twins have gotten worse. Your rose colored glasses have some manure on them.

[KirbyDome89]

The Twins' payroll in 2023, relative to the league, sat essentially where it was for basically Falvey's entire tenure. If there was some sort of promise in place to massively bump payroll to offset Correa's outsized portion of the budget, it hasn't been reported. Falvey was consistently praised for "spending to his max budget," by Twins media, and that's what he did. He maxed out the budget by signing a player that he viewed as a star and he attempted to supplement the rest of the positional group with young/cheap players. It was a massive failure.  

I think the recklessly stupid public statements by ownership have provided more cover for Falvey than anything, Also, wasn't he in charge of the business side when the tv disaster took place? We're giving him a pass there too? 

The Pohlads are terrible owners, but this roster didn't get to the point it's at simply because they scaled back payroll. Poor development, poor resource allocation, and poor strategy are huge factors as to why this club couldn't make it out of the lowly ALC 4 of the last 5 seasons. 

[bean5302]

This is the ultimate TD writer's Derek Falvey = Alex Kirilloff piece. Any fan of Twins Daily knows Alex Kirilloff was destined to win the MVP award twice each season if it just wasn't for being injured. The writers conveniently ignore Kirilloff never had plus power, wouldn't take a walk to save his life and had no defensive value. He was basically later career Delmon Young. Derek Falvey has the same kind of cult following here. His trades often didn't pan out, his draft picks virtually never produced significant sustainable value for the team, and Falvey consistently squandered precious budget on low ceiling barely MLB caliber players in the interest of having mega-depth, a luxury on mid market teams. He was a bad GM who inherited an incredibly talented core and squandered it. Sure, he didn't have the luxury of a large market payroll, but ownership consistently ran payrolls by 30-50% higher than when Falvey started.

Falvey inherited arguably the most talented, young core team in all of MLB in 2017 with just a $100M opening day payroll. Kyle Gibson, Jose Berrios, Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, and Miguel Sano were all solid every day players and contributors for several years. Their talent was largely wasted and traded away to prop up Falvey's failed pipelines.

Falvey's team missed the playoffs in 2018, 2021, and 2022 before the REAL scapegoat for poor performance (the one year 2024 payroll dip). Not sure how the 2024 payroll dip caused a ripple in time to impact the missed playoff teams in previous seasons? Anyway, The Twins rebounded payroll to $140MM in 2025, and even at it's lowest opening day rate, it was still tied for the top payroll in the AL Central in 2024. Despite that, the Twins missed the playoffs again in 2024 and 2025.

Falvey was absolutely setup for success. Even with sub-par ownership, he had all the tools to get it done.