The Twins are hiring Derek Shelton as their new manager, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports. The team will not announce hirings tonight because Major League Baseball discourages clubs from revealing personnel news on postseason game days. According to Dan Hayes of The Athletic, Shelton will officially debut sometime next week.
Shelton returns to the Twins, where he previously served as a bench coach for two seasons. He held the position from 2018-19, spending one season each under Paul Molitor and Rocco Baldelli. His familiarity with the front office certainly facilitated his efforts in finding managers. Shelton was a finalist in the 2018 recruiting process that resulted in Baldelli being hired. Although he didn’t get the job at the time, he only had to wait another year for a management opportunity. Shelton takes the top job with the Buccaneers in 2020.
Pittsburgh was coming off a 69-93 season that saw owner Clint Hurdle and general manager Neal Huntington fired. They hired Ben Cherington to run the front office and Shelton to oversee the team’s rebuild. Pittsburgh went 19-41 in the shortened season before posting a 100-game losing streak in 2021-22.
By 2023, things appear to be improving. The Buccaneers improved to 76-86. Next season, they hovered around .500 for a while and were very soft deadline buyers. Pittsburgh went 21-33 over the final two months, finishing 10 games below .500 for the second straight year.
The poor results continued into the 25th season. The Buccaneers started the year with a 12-26 record and more or less locked up another last-place finish when they fired Shelton in the second week of May. Pittsburgh hit .500 ball the rest of the way under Don Kelly, so they’ll continue with the Cherington/Kelly tandem in 2026.
Overall, Shelton holds a career record of 306-440. This was hammered down by the previous three seasons, in which no coach had a chance to do well with such a poor roster. However, the Buccaneers stalled before exiting their rebuild.
Pittsburgh has especially worked hard to develop young hitters. Highly regarded talents such as CoBryan Hayes, Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez, Nick Gonzalez and to a lesser extent O’Neill Cruz It’s not clicking the way the organization needs it to. Of course, it’s not entirely the fault of any coach or manager, but Shelton served as hitting coordinator in Cleveland and as part of seven seasons as MLB hitting coach with the Rays before taking a bench coaching position in Minnesota.
Shelton’s experience rebuilding rosters should come in handy for the Twins. They’re at least doing some restructuring work after the deal. Carlos Correa As well as their entire bullpen at the deadline. The Pollard family ownership group has cut spending since the Twins won 87 games and the AL Central title in 2023. Their record was 70-92, second only to the White Sox in the American League. This led them to fire Baldelli after seven seasons. any or all Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez and Ryan Jeffers Trades could be made in the offseason.
Twins acquire several upper-level starting pitchers (Taj Bradley and Mick Abell) at the deadline, they have some interesting young hitters to build around Byron Buxton. Maybe there will be a path back to competitiveness by 2027, but this will likely be one of the worst teams in the AL next year. They need to overhaul the bullpen, and there are so many holes in the bottom half of the lineup that need to be fixed in the offseason that it may be more about which players they trade away than who they bring in.
Shelton was reportedly one of four finalists for the Minnesota job. Others include Yankees hitting coach James Rosen (another former Twins staff member), Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty and Padres special assistant Scott Servais. Four teams are still looking for a new captain: the Padres, Braves, Rockies and Nationals.
Flaherty and Servais are both listed as potential candidates for the San Diego job, which is expected to be filled this weekend. Rosen has only been publicly linked to the Twins position. Search efforts in both Atlanta and Washington were conducted with great caution. (Baldelli is reportedly interested in the Nats.) Colorado hasn’t even started the process yet as they focus on hiring a new general manager. Any of the other three finalists could potentially be picked up by one of the teams.
Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images.
