Rocco Baldelli Takes Responsibility Minnesota Twins Bosses Won’t

The Minnesota Twins finished 12-27 from August 28, 2024 through the end of last season. The best news to follow was that the Pohlad family may cease to exist, at least in a Twins baseball sense. When they announced the team was up for sale, fans rejoiced and hope for the future was renewed.

Fast forward a year and that same family, weeks after gutting the organization’s major league roster, changed course and announced they’re keeping the MLB franchise they’ve owned since 1982, leaving MN Twins fans disappointed yet again.

Back in 2016, Jim Pohlad — the family’s former face of ownership — called the result of an extremely disappointing season a “total system failure.” Unfortunately, we haven’t heard that type of accountability from anywhere inside the Minnesota Twins organization, from owners on down.

The only non-player I’ve heard shoulder any of the blame, whether it be for their disappointing 2025 season, the deadline roster deconstruction or the cancelled sale… is manager Rocco Baldelli, and it came Monday, in an article posted at The Athletic by Aaron Gleeman.

MN Twins have unwavering support of Rocco Baldelli

“Frankly, we just have to play better. That’s really the only way I can look at it. I look in the mirror every day and always will take full responsibility for our team, even more so when we don’t play well. And we just frankly have not performed the way that we have to perform.”

Rocco Baldelli – The Athletic

Listen, it’s not shocking that Rocco Baldelli would stick out his neck for a general manager that has since extended him, or an ownership group that cuts his checks. The unfortunate part is he shouldn’t be the only one.

Nothing Baldelli said in those four sentences is incorrect. The team needs to play better, and he manages the team. That said, he is not on the field and as much as he’d like to, he can’t turn back time or reincarnate himself back into the top prospect and promising big leaguer he once was.

Related: Top Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Promoted

The goal of a manager is to create a level of synchrony between the front office and those between the lines. For that, he has been exceptional. It’s why he remains around, and why he was tabbed to take over for Paul Molitor, despite his predecessor having recently won a Manager of the Year award.

What Baldelli has little control over is the Minnesota Twins’ long term direction, at either the executive or ownership levels. All he can do is work with the 26-man roster he is afforded.

When does anyone else take responsibility?

Just like Baldelli did from the dugout, Derek Falvey watched the team he constructed collapse last season. How did he respond? He did nothing. That has become a common reality for the president of baseball operations.

Instead of being on the hotseat, however, he was elevated to president of business operations while retaining his former title too, making him quite literally the most powerful front office executive in the sport.

In recent seasons, his power has resulted in missing the playoffs four of the past five seasons, in part because he failed to supplement quality teams at the trade deadline. And the ones he did make mostly failed. In 2024, Falvey swung a trade for Trevor Richards, who had more wild pitches (7) than runs allowed (6) in his 13 innings of work. That’s it.

Still, Falvey remains, along with his consistent utterings of meaningless gobbledegook, which has grown more tiresome than the squad he’s put together. At this point, Falvey is nothing more than a mouthpiece for terrible owners.

Let's talk about the MN Twins' PROPAGANDA President… pic.twitter.com/axDLbbqeJk

— Minnesota Sports Fan (@realmnsportsfan) August 7, 2025

Of course, we can’t expect Falvey to come down harshly on the people writing his paychecks, but he has no problems pointing the finger elsewhere, when needed. We’ve seen his GM Thad Levine get the axe, along with multiple assistant coaches. At what point do we admit that the team president is part of the problem?

“We have some areas where we’ve come up short relative to what we’ve projected. There have been a few position players that, if you ask them, they’d say, ‘I’m not performing quite to my abilities.’”

Derek Falvey – The Athletic

Of course, Falvey enjoyed the 2019 Bomba Squad that blasted a bouncy baseball to smithereens. Since then, he’s struggled to adjust to a game that’s continued to favor better pitching. And the teams he has built on slugging… haven’t been slugging.

The Twins are 18th in slugging percentage this season and their 144 homers rank 14th. They are also slow (24th in stolen bases and 25th in baserunning above average) and minus to bad defenders at a lot of positions. Those are all self-inflicted choices made by the president.

Only the Pohlad’s trump Falvey’s culpability for MN Twins

The Pohlad family will never get it. Falvey would need to build up decades of horrible decision-making before reaching that level.

These are real quotes from the Minnesota Twins’ current chairman, from his first public interview since cancelling the team sale. If you’re looking for accountability, you might want to look elsewhere.

“And I would say to those fans: It’s my job and this new ownership group’s new job to do everything we can to set this organization up for success, hopefully in the short- and long-term both. I look forward to it.”

“I don’t think we could have imagined a better outcome than where we landed.”

“Our fans are passionate. Our fans want to win. We have that in common — we want to win, too.”

Joe Pohlad – Star Tribune

Related: KFAN Host Goes Nuclear on Minnesota Twins Owners

Until those above Rocco Baldelli decide to hold themselves accountable, it doesn’t matter what he does or how he manages. The man responsible for putting this failed team together earned a promotion. Think about that.

At the end of the day it will always be the manager that gets fired. Someone has to take the fall. While he’s being criticized, and even sometimes rightly for moves on a nightly basis, it would be great for someone else at the executive or ownership levels to step up too.