{"id":443596,"date":"2026-02-01T22:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/443596\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T22:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:31:07","slug":"latest-on-derek-falveys-departure-from-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/443596\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest On Derek Falvey’s Departure From Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Twins shocked the baseball world this past week when they announced<\/a> that the team was parting ways with team president Derek Falvey in what was framed as a mutual decision between Falvey and executive chair Tom Pohlad. More details have come out in the aftermath of that announcement on the circumstances surrounding Falvey\u2019s departure that offer additional insight into the motivations behind that decision.<\/p>\n

The move was surprising to fans, media, and rival clubs around the game for a number of reasons. Falvey had been promoted from his seat as president of baseball operations to also handle business operations in a dual president role in November of 2024, just over a year prior to his departure from the organization. That Falvey went from so thoroughly entrenched in the Twins\u2019 present and future plans to out the door in a matter of months was shocking to outside observers, and Dan Hayes of The Athletic<\/a> suggests it was met with equal shock internally, with staffers describing the news as a \u201chaymaker.\u201d\u00a0Even more shocking is the timing of the move, which comes just a matter of weeks before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training with the large majority of offseason maneuvering already done.<\/p>\n

In comments following Falvey\u2019s departure, both Falvey himself and Pohlad have indicated that there was a difference in personalities between the two that led to the change. Pohlad described himself and Falvey (as relayed by Hayes) as \u201ctwo people that were suddenly thrust into working together.\u201d\u00a0Falvey\u2019s comments offered some additional insight into those differences.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Former Twins executive chair] Joe [Pohlad] and I had a different plan and working dynamic,\u201d Falvey said of his departure, as relayed by Hayes. \u201cTom wants to run it a little differently. \u2026 Sometimes it\u2019s just a feel that you get where both sides kind of sit there and say, \u2018OK, is this the right match for what we need going forward?\u2019 And if you get to a place where you don\u2019t think it (fits) perfectly, you have to have really honest conversations and dialogue about it and we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given those comments about conflicting personalities and changing plans, it\u2019s worth zooming out to consider the larger context of the Twins organization in recent years. After breaking the club\u2019s lengthy drought of playoff victories in 2023, ownership slashed payroll during the 2023-24 offseason. Things have gone downhill since then on the field, and after a collapse in 2024 led to an 82-80 season and missing the playoffs, the team took an even bigger step back and lost 90 games in 2025.<\/p>\n

Entering this offseason, all signs appeared to be pointing towards a rebuild coming to Minnesota. Players like Joe Ryan<\/a>, Pablo Lopez<\/a>, and even Byron Buxton<\/a> were widely viewed as trade chips who would be available to rival teams this winter, and a tear-down of the roster had already gotten underway at the trade deadline back in July. In addition to the move to shed Carlos Correa<\/a>\u2019s contract in a salary dump with the Astros, the Twins traded away a number of pieces, including controllable impact bullpen pieces like Louis Varland<\/a>, Jhoan Duran<\/a>, and Griffin Jax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the background of those struggles on the field, the Pohlad family looked to move on from their ownership of the Twins franchise. The team announced their exploration of a sale in October of 2024, just one month before Falvey was promoted to his dual president role. Efforts to sell the family\u2019s majority share in the club eventually fell through, however, and they instead ended up bringing on additional minority stakeholders to help address the team\u2019s debt, which had complicated efforts to sell. After the details of that partial sale of the club were ironed out, Tom Pohlad (who had not been involved with the Twins\u2019 operations until the effort to sell the club began) took over the executive chair position from younger brother Joe Pohlad and became the team\u2019s control person back in December.<\/p>\n

Given that Falvey had launched the start of what clearly seemed to be a rebuild under Joe Pohlad, much of Tom Pohlad\u2019s rhetoric surrounding the team and it\u2019s near-term competitive future makes a disconnect seem somewhat clear. Hayes reports that Tom Pohlad plans to be more proactive in steering the team as compared to the more laid-back approaches of former executive chairs Joe and Jim Pohlad, who Falvey had worked under in the past. Tom Pohlad\u2019s planned direction for the team seems to be a quick return to contention, which goes against the plan Falvey had been in the midst of putting into place when Pohlad took over as Minnesota\u2019s control person.<\/p>\n

That planned return to contention might come with additional financial flexibility, but it\u2019s unclear exactly how much. Pohlad has told reporters (including Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic<\/a>) that he believes there is \u201croom for investment\u201d in the roster between now and Opening Day, which suggests there could be at least some additional spending to come to help round out a roster with a number of noticeable holes. With that said, however, Pohlad also downplayed the importance of the team\u2019s payroll in those same comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, our payroll is down from last year,\u201d Tom Pohlad said, as relayed by Gleeman. \u201cI think there are still some investments to be made between now and Opening Day. I\u2019d also say, at some point, I\u2019d love to get off this payroll thing for a second. Let\u2019s judge the success of this year on wins and losses, and on whether we\u2019re playing meaningful baseball in September.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that the team\u2019s new control person has indicated a desire to be more hands-on than his predecessors and push the franchise in a more aggressive direction than it was previously on while also hesitating about the importance of raising payroll, it\u2019s not hard to see where a conflict between Pohlad and Falvey could have arisen. Had Falvey been operating under a directive to return to contention in 2026, it\u2019s easy to imagine him handling last year\u2019s trade deadline differently, particularly when it comes to controllable, low-cost relief arms like Varland.<\/p>\n

A departure at this point in the calendar still registers as a surprise, but Hays reports<\/a> that one source described Falvey\u2019s decision to leave now as a way to create an opportunity for the rest of his personnel to \u201ccreate [their] own history\u201d with the new control person. It\u2019s not hard to imagine the possibility of tension down the road between Falvey and Pohlad creating a difficult situation for lower-level personnel in the front office, and Falvey removing himself from that equation immediately could help to avoid any potential issues between ownership and the front office going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Twins shocked the baseball world this past week when they announced that the team was parting ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[177703,177702,363,99,208721],"class_list":["post-443596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-derek-falvey","tag-jeremy-zoll","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-tom-pohlad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}