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When the Minnesota Twins front office sought to replace Paul Molitor as manager, they weren't looking for a robot that could simply spit out analytical advantages. That isn’t how managing works, and that isn’t how the game has progressed. Derek Falvey and Thad Levine wanted a leader of the clubhouse that could relate to his players and generate buy-in behind certain beliefs and principles.
You could call Rocco Baldelli a player’s manager, but that would be selling his abilities short. Baldelli himself was once a highly-touted prospect, and his career was largely taken away from him, but he gets this game from multiple different vantage points. It’s why he can shoulder the load of pulling pitchers in scenarios where they may not like it. It’s why he can be ok with controversial lineup decisions. It’s why he can communicate numbers beyond just a sheet of paper and make them make sense. It’s also why he can demand a level of accountability that we saw permeate the clubhouse after an ugly series in Atlanta. It's also why he has a reputation that players want to be managed by him. In Darren Wolfson's recent interview with Dallas Keuchel , it was in part the manager that made Minnesota make sense.
There are plenty of times over the course of a baseball season that you may hear a manager question results or process. What Baldelli questioned after an ugly sweep at the hands of a great Atlanta team was the effort put forth by Minnesota’s players. He pulled no punches and was coming straight for his team’s throat.
Looking at a recent article from The Athletic’s Dan Hayes, Baldelli’s quotes were jarring. “No adjustments really in the game almost whatsoever. There’s no way we can walk out of this with any positives. If I’m rolling that up and trying to portray it any other way, I’m lying. We have to make some really, really legitimate adjustments to what we’re doing right now if we’re going to go out there and compete and win games against that team or really any other team. I’m not really pleased right now with the effort this series.”
Just a day earlier the Twins appeared to this writer as the definition of insanity. Baldelli apparently agreed, “because that’s madness going out there and doing the same stuff over and over and over again.”
As much as his comments were reflective of the poor play he consistently saw on the field, Baldelli ultimately brought things back to himself. Leading by example, he was willing to carry the load saying, “This is all me right here. This is my job to make sure we get our acts together and look in the mirror, answer the hard questions and ultimately win out there. That’s what we have to do, and I’ll take that on.”
At the core of this all is a bad division that Minnesota should be winning by a handful of games, and instead they find themselves treading water. Baldelli knows this team is better. So do players like Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton; superstars failing to live up to their own abilities. The call was now public and the path forward was direct. Get better or suffer, the manager had seen enough.
That level of leadership clearly permeated through the dugout and a group of veterans took it upon themselves to be better. The ax could have fallen on hitting coach David Popkins, but the process is not generated by just a single individual. Rather than making a change or holding only a coach accountable, a new path forward was established.
There is still a lot of baseball left to be played, and with both Cleveland and Chicago breathing down Minnesota’s necks, it’s on the best team in a bad division to separate themselves. The slate has been wiped clean and the manager is ready to see a response. How well that is executed upon will come from within.
You can dislike the way Baldelli goes about his business for any amount of reasons, but this wasn’t just some players-only meeting with no accountability moving forward. This was a leader demanding his talent show up, and figure out a way to individually come prepared each day. The results aren’t going to be seen immediately, or over a small sample, but the hope is that things would resonate over the long haul and a mid-season reset bears fruit in October.
The Minnesota Twins have been incredibly mediocre thus far during 2023, but Baldelli isn’t pleased with that reality, and no one in the clubhouse should be either. If everyone demands more of themselves, how the final chapter of this story is written could be substantially more impressive than we’ve seen thus far.
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