Dave St. Peter, Derek Falvey and Jeremy Zoll Take New Jobs in Huge Twins Leadership Change

33 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

As Vanimal points out, you plan and prep for sale when selling.....that's how the world works. If it doesn't happen, did they really lose anything by moving on from DSP? Likely not at this point in his career. They'll know in a year if it is sold. If not, and if they don't like what Falvey did, they move on. It literally has zero impact on the Pohlads at this point. They could lose half their fortune and not have anything bad happen (in reality, but they'd be sad). 

I'm not complaining about moving on from DSP. I've been asking for that for years. It's just weird timing and I'm just not excited about Falvey being the replacement. Even if the replacement is internal I'd prefer someone who's had (theoretically) more time invested in the business side of things. I'm also not worried about the impact on the Pohlads. Don't believe I've mentioned any impact on the Pohlads at all.

I've mentioned the impact on the Twins. I want the Twins to improve. The easiest way to improve in major league baseball is to be able to spend more money. The easiest way to be able to spend more money is to have more money to spend. Having your baseball ops guy running your business ops doesn't feel like the best way to maximize your revenue. That is my complaint. In a year if Falvey has been bad at running the business ops side of things, and the Pohlads haven't sold, my concern isn't the impact on the Pohlads and their fortune it's on the Twins payroll. That's why I don't like this. Because that has an impact on me. And you. And all of us on these boards. If Falvey is worse than St Peter at running the business side of things it means the Pohlads spend even less money on Twins player payroll and the team gets worse. That is my concern. Not anything to do with the Pohlads or their fortune. I've never even mentioned that.

41 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

I don’t think they’d be making these type of personnel decisions if an acquisition wasn’t close… Just in my experience, the Chief Revenue Officer was selected to lead the organization through the acquisition. Department heads were consolidated and everyone started reporting into him. Middle management was next to leave. So in less than 3 months, I went from reporting into a Regional Sales Manager to the CRO and so did everyone else. The sales team shrunk from 50+ to 20 and we operated like a skeleton crew. 

Hey, I hope it's close. But it's not often you get a sale of an American professional sports team without anybody being aware of any rumors about who may be interested or anything. I haven't heard a peep about anything, but maybe I've just missed it. The Orioles sale went quite quickly so it's entirely possible. And I'm not predicting the sale won't happen or anything, just playing devil's advocate, and am generally not a fan of putting Falvey in charge of the business and baseball side of things.

Glad DSP is gone, wish it would've happened years ago. Hope we have a new owner soon and they bring in somebody with a far better feel for modern broadcast situations and that person can get the fan engagement moving in the right direction.

2 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

They aren't making major investments this year. They aren't. They are for sale. None of that last paragraph matters to the team this year at all. 

Never said that either. We were talking about the possibility of the Pohlads not being able to sell the team and then being upset with how Falvey ran things so making a change in a year and you brought up that the Pohlads fortune would be fine so I explained I wasn't at all concerned about that and gave you what my concern was.

We're just talking past each other at this point so it's time to move on.

37 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

We might differ here. My take is that Falvey has always 100% known what budgets he has to work with on every occasion. Walking away from Sonny Gray was a Falvey baseball business decision. The Twins had the means to replace him via trade but chose to roll back their youngins. The Twins are likely to roll it back again in 2025. While I'm not opposed to the Twins running payrolls of $150-200M, that didn't ever seem like much of a reality.

I get that some believe that the Pohlads crunched opportunities for the Twins, I look at the type of players and teams that the Twins put on the field year after year and the transactions they make as a Falvey thing. I would add that Correa was an outlier of unknown origin, perhaps BAM money. 

I don't see how anybody on the baseball side would think extending Buxton, Lopez and signing Correa to long term deals a year before dropping payroll is a good idea.

It seems significantly more likely that the operations side was out of touch and oblivious to the actual future the organization was headed. They shouldn't have been, but that seems to be by far the most likely explanation after cutting payroll despite having the most competitive roster in a quarter century.

43 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

You think they are investing in the roster? Because that's what chpetti thinks will  happen if they increase revenues....that's what I was talking about. It's not happening this year, they are not increasing payroll, and it will drop if they can make it happen. 

31 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

My reading of their post was that they wanted that to happen so the team would get more investment....my point was, and I did NOT make it clearly, they can increase revenue all they want this year, they aren't expanding payroll this year. They might or might not next year, but that's likely up to the new owner. So, ya, my bad there.

I agree on that last part, I think. I THINK a new owner would be ok with CC being gone, so they could direct the POBO and GM on payroll. OTOH, maybe the new owner is like Cohen (not likely) and is good with spending it all. 

I think if they increase revenue and still own the team in the future they will have higher payrolls, yes. Nothing I have said has been about spending more on this year's team. Nothing. Not one thing.

You said: "They'll know in a year if it is sold. If not, and if they don't like what Falvey did, they move on. It literally has zero impact on the Pohlads at this point. They could lose half their fortune and not have anything bad happen (in reality, but they'd be sad)."

I bolded the key "in a year" part. I haven't said a single thing about them investing in this year's roster. Not once. I directly refuted your claim that I was talking about them investing in this year's roster. The paragraph you claimed didn't mean anything was about the future because it was in direct response to your paragraph about the future. It matters if Falvey is terrible at this job. If he tanks their revenue for a year it effects the 2026 Twins if the Pohlad's still own them, and possibly if somebody else does. I care about that team, too. Not just the 2025 Twins. That's why I care about this move.

I don't know why it's controversial to suggest Derek Falvey being bad at driving revenue is bad for the Twins. Unless the Twins sell before he has the chance to take over this job it is bad for the Pohlads trying to sell and it is bad for team building. He may not be bad at it, but if he is it is bad all around. Not sure why that's a controversial thing to say.

15 minutes ago, Teflon said:

Will Falvey as team president have any responsibilities in the process of selling the team or will that be entirely up to the Pohlads / a 3rd-party representative of the Pohlads? 

Also wondering... With it looking like Minneapolis will shut down the HERC, if that parcel adjacent to Target Field would have any development potential - perhaps as a Twins-owned parking garage. That would seem to be a potential money-maker for the team if the city can be urged to clear and sell the land.

I'm not sure about parking specifically, after all Ramp B is right against the CF wall and Ramps A and C are right there and skywalk accessible. Could have a ramp feature, but I'd guess the developers (possibly future Twins-owner included) would drool over more mixed use high rise stuff like they just completed across from fifth street. Available North Loop properties might be the most desirable real estate to develop in the Midwest outside of Chicago.

8 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Do we really think anything Falvey does will dramatically change revenue this year? The TV deal is done. The payroll is going down a bit or a lot. I'm not sure what he could even do to change revenue much this year.

4 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

Almost nothing is my guess… Maybe salvaging a season ticket buyer or two? How far in advance are promotion days set? 

Isn't the vast majority of non-revenue sharing revenue now based on fan engagement? Ticket sales/game day revenue and streaming/TV subscriptions? I'd think that means the Twins, and thus the person in charge of the business department, has a lot of impact on revenue. The TV deal being done doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Now it means the team needs to get to work. The check isn't in the mail like it used to be. They have to go earn their money now.

27 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

 

Isn't the vast majority of non-revenue sharing revenue now based on fan engagement? Ticket sales/game day revenue and streaming/TV subscriptions? I'd think that means the Twins, and thus the person in charge of the business department, has a lot of impact on revenue. The TV deal being done doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Now it means the team needs to get to work. The check isn't in the mail like it used to be. They have to go earn their money now.

I'm not sure about the vast majority, but I'd agree fan engagement isn't helping revenue currently. They've needed someone better at this for about two decades now. They've been marketing to Grandma and Grandpa in Grand Rapids for far too long, even though those two no longer make a yearly trip to Minneapolis and struggle to figure out how to work the Roku.

I kind of assumed better fan engagment meant they needed someone with a marketing background. Or a college dropout with 10M followers on TikTok.

So I'm suspicious about the efficacy of this move and think it's more about being a good soldier, slimming expenses and doing the dirty work ownership wants to make the club more attractive to a future buyer. Because I think lower expenses is more attractive to future buyers than current year-to-year revenue, because billionaires are likely only buying sports teams for their future valuation.

18 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

I'm not sure about the vast majority, but I'd agree fan engagement isn't helping revenue currently. They've needed someone better at this for about two decades now. They've been marketing to Grandma and Grandpa in Grand Rapids for far too long, even though those two no longer make a yearly trip to Minneapolis and struggle to figure out how to work the Roku.

I kind of assumed better fan engagment meant they needed someone with a marketing background. Or a college dropout with 10M followers on TikTok.

So I'm suspicious about the efficacy of this move and think it's more about being a good soldier, slimming expenses and doing the dirty work ownership wants to make the club more attractive to a future buyer. Because I think lower expenses is more attractive to future buyers than current year-to-year revenue, because billionaires are likely only buying sports teams for their future valuation.

My initial gut reaction would be that all of these moves are to save the Pohlads pennies while they get this thing sold. I have to believe anyone buying a billion+ dollar Major League Baseball franchise isn't tricked by any changes made to the payroll of the major league roster or in the front office over the last 24 months. Now maybe I'm giving these guys way too much credit, but I'd think they're doing (well, paying others to do) a little deeper dive into the books than looking at the 2024 revenues vs expenditures. So I tend to agree with this being about being a good soldier and slimming expenses as well.

I don't know what the answer is to fan engagement, but I know it's not what they've been doing. And I know when you're not being handed a check from an RSN it's even more important. Weird time to choose to sell, but hopefully Falvey knows more than DSP when it comes to driving fan engagement. The bar isn't high.

Falvey has to know any new owner is very likely to look at the entire organization and a multitude of business ops options and not just role with him. So I'd think it's more likely he's getting a nice little Christmas bonus while the Pohlads let St Peter "step down to spend more time with the people who really matter" and save themselves some cash. I just hope there's somebody out there looking at the Twins who sees some obvious steps to take that can get this thing to another gear. Like Lore and ARod with the Wolves. Prime example of getting the right people in charge and an entire franchise changing over night.