The Minnesota Twins have exercised manager Rocco Baldelli’s club option for the 2026 season, according to The Athletic. Although the Twins themselves haven’t announced the decision, it comes at a moment when other, less-forgiving clubs would be mulling a different kind of managerial move.
With a loss on Monday, Minnesota’s 10th in their last 11 games, the Twins are now 6-15 in June and 37-41 overall, leaving them 3 ½ games back in the race for the American League’s third wild-card spot. (If only their path was that clear: they’re also stuck behind five other teams who are closer in the standings to the Seattle Mariners.)
So, just why are the Twins opting to keep their skipper despite the recent free fall? It seems to boil down to the organization realizing and understanding what the manager can and can’t control. To wit, a manager can control how they manage the clubhouse; how they prepare their players; and how they grapple with and move on from failure — aspects that Baldelli seems to be doing just fine, in the assessment of the Twins’ front office.
“I’m around them a lot, I see them every day and we spend time talking on the phone when we’re not together,” club president of baseball operations Derek Falvey told reporters Monday, per The Athletic. “It’s what are you doing every day to show up to try to put this team in the best position to be successful win or lose the night before. You can’t do anything about yesterday or the week before. You have to try to figure out ways.”
What a manager can’t control, meanwhile, happens to be the aspects that are doing the Twins in: namely, injuries and underperformance.
The Twins are without starting pitchers Pablo López and Zebby Matthews, causing them to resort to less-desirable and -effective options, including deploying an opener on Sunday. Predictably, perhaps, Minnesota’s rotation ranks dead last in ERA for the month of June (6.07). Meanwhile, the Twins have received less-than-expected production from several players who were supposed to be cornerstones of the lineup, like Carlos Correa (whose 93 OPS+ would tie a career worst) and Royce Lewis (sidelined with a strained hamstring after compiling a 63 OPS+ in 30 games). And so on. Realistically, it would be difficult for any manager to tame those seas.
The Twins, then, are taking a sober view of things. While firing Baldelli would qualify as catharsis for some, it’s not necessarily going to make Minnesota’s roster perform better — and that, above all else, should be the focus for the Twins if they want to correct course.
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