Fire Rocco? It's not going to happen.

[bighat]

With fan frustration at an all-time high here in 2021, I've seen lots of calls for the Twins to fire manager Rocco Baldelli. While I get that some comments are just knee-jerk reactions, this particular idea is so absurd and unrealistic that I think it's time to put it to bed.

 

Rocco Baldelli has two seasons with the Twins. He's won the division both times. In 2019 he was the Manager of the Year in the AL, and he followed up with a first place finish in 2020. He's considered a "players' manager" and by all accounts he's well liked by both the Front Office and everyone in the clubhouse. He's also known as a new-age manager that follows current trends based on stats and probabilities. All of these are seen as positive traits by virtually everyone with a baseball pedigree.

 

The fact that this team is underperforming this April will not get Rocco fired. It's not even in consideration. At best, his seat would start to get warm in July or August of 2022 if the team continues to implode. It's my opinion that the blame so far in 2021 rests mainly on the players and the Front Office. While Baldelli has certainly struggled this year (particularly with bullpen management), he's mainly playing the hand he's been dealt by Falvine.

 

Rocco is about as likely to be fired as Buxton or Cruz are to be outrighted to Wichita. Ain't gonna happen. A more realistic scenario is that the Twins add a bench coach or replace the hitting coaches (Twins have two?). A list of the team's coaches can be seen here, BTW: https://www.mlb.com/twins/roster/coaches

[spanman2]

 

With fan frustration at an all-time high here in 2021, I've seen lots of calls for the Twins to fire manager Rocco Baldelli. While I get that some comments are just knee-jerk reactions, this particular idea is so absurd and unrealistic that I think it's time to put it to bed.

 

Rocco Baldelli has two seasons with the Twins. He's won the division both times. In 2019 he was the Manager of the Year in the AL, and he followed up with a first place finish in 2020. He's considered a "players' manager" and by all accounts he's well liked by both the Front Office and everyone in the clubhouse. He's also known as a new-age manager that follows current trends based on stats and probabilities. All of these are seen as positive traits by virtually everyone with a baseball pedigree.

 

The fact that this team is underperforming this April will not get Rocco fired. It's not even in consideration. At best, his seat would start to get warm in July or August of 2022 if the team continues to implode. It's my opinion that the blame so far in 2021 rests mainly on the players and the Front Office. While Baldelli has certainly struggled this year (particularly with bullpen management), he's mainly playing the hand he's been dealt by Falvine.

 

Rocco is about as likely to be fired as Buxton or Cruz are to be outrighted to Wichita. Ain't gonna happen. A more realistic scenario is that the Twins add a bench coach or replace the hitting coaches (Twins have two?). A list of the team's coaches can be seen here, BTW: https://www.mlb.com/twins/roster/coaches

  

I was going to say he is as likely to get fired now as them calling me up to manage the team after they fire him but your realistic line is excellent as well.

[wsnydes]

Yeah, he's not going anywhere. I do think a bench coach would help things. I think Rocco is trying to wear two hats and he's missing things that otherwise wouldn't get missed. 

 

I have my share of qualms with his managing, and it's been worse so far this year, but I attribute some of that to the lack of a bench coach. Even with how the season has gone so far, it's not realistic to dump a manager with his record after two bad weeks.

[Original_JB]

One could argue that the team has actually underperformed under Baldelli and his winning MotY was more due to the team's output moreso than his input. Let's say there was a different manager that made only 25% of the questionable/bizarre choices attributed to Rocco over the last 2 years; how do you think the team would have fared?

[spsdrock]

Twins need to find him a right hand man IE a bench coach and possibly a Hitting coach.  I hope they can dig around some of the available managers that don't have a current job bring someone in that can help him.  Lloyd McClendon comes to mind that can help.  He has coached a lot as a hitting coach and was a bench and manager.  That is some good experience that can help Rocco.

[wsnydes]

 

One could argue that the team has actually underperformed under Baldelli and his winning MotY was more due to the team's output moreso than his input. Let's say there was a different manager that made only 25% of the questionable/bizarre choices attributed to Rocco over the last 2 years; how do you think the team would have fared?

Considering that the team has won 60%+ of their games and has two first place finishes in the division in Rocco's two seasons, not discernably different. They may have a playoff game win in there, but I don't think we're talking about anything drastically different. They're not winning a playoff series or a World Series.

 

And it's entirely possible that the guy that's there instead does worse.  

[Number3]

Other than his continuing to run Colomo (sp) out there in key situations and not allowing starters to even go the distance in a Little League game, on what basis would he be fired? This roster is proving to be a hodge podge at best. Even though they don't hit very well, neither do they have team speed or play great defense and the pitching is proving to be very vanilla. Baldelli should draw names out of a hat for the lineup and just sit back and watch. Whoever decided that no serious off season moves needed to be made and that this collection could actually compete for another CD title, is the one that should be fired.

[In My La Z boy]

We'll see how the "players manager" "stats and probabilities" guy does here with his 1st dose of major adversity. He had it pretty good in 2019. Not sure in hindsite how much he had to do with it? I'm still waiting for the emotionally empathetic and understanding genus players manager to start utilizing this gift of his to intuitively start making the correct personnel decisions during games. I will agree this problem starts above Rocco's head, but Rocco's head is also greatly contributing to this mess. 

[nicksaviking]

Baldelli's not getting fired. He certainly needs to work on his bench moves and he absolutely has to change his attitude about the bullpen though. For a guy who was supposed to be a new-age manager, he certainly is beholden to the old notion of a fixed bullpen hierarchy. Not only has he given Colome a longer leash than he should have earned this year, but last year Baldelli continued to insist on Rogers and Romo as his two back-end guys despite those two being sub-par and basically every other reliever having a career year. Relievers are fickle and inconsistent, if they weren't, they'd probably be starters. You need to be flexible and roll with the hot hands.

[D. Hocking]

 

One could argue that the team has actually underperformed under Baldelli and his winning MotY was more due to the team's output moreso than his input. 

 

I remember Ruesse said Molitor probably deserved manager of the year more for the year he got fired than the year he got the award due to how the team played and actually improved after they dismantled it in July and the team started playing better rather than completely collapsing after losing some of their bigger players.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

We'll see how the "players manager" "stats and probabilities" guy does here with his 1st dose of major adversity.

It's obviously subjective what how to classify degrees of adversity, but in the summer of 2019 the team lost an 11.5 game lead in the division by August, but recovered to win it by 8 games. In 2020, the Twins again lost an early lead, and were 3 games back with 6 to play, but came back to win the division.

 

This 2021 stretch is the worst by record, but there are also more games remaining in which to come back too.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Baldelli's not getting fired. He certainly needs to work on his bench moves and he absolutely has to change his attitude about the bullpen though. For a guy who was supposed to be a new-age manager, he certainly is beholden to the old notion of a fixed bullpen hierarchy. Not only has he given Colome a longer leash than he should have earned this year, but last year Baldelli continued to insist on Rogers and Romo as his two back-end guys despite those two being sub-par and basically every other reliever having a career year. Relievers are fickle and inconsistent, if they weren't, they'd probably be starters. You need to be flexible and roll with the hot hands.

I agree that it's a bit strange that Colomé hasn't been demoted in the pen hierarchy yet.

 

But Baldelli rolled with hot hands in the 2019 playoffs, and Littell, Duffey, and Stashak struggled.

 

In the 2020 playoffs, yes Rogers and Romo were both charged with runs, but we also brought in "hot hands" May (twice), Duffey, and Stashak ahead of them. (Duffey and Stashak gave up runs again too.)

[Trov]

Rocco will not be fired, but there may be a shakeup a little bit in his staff.  Rocco did make a mistake yesterday with second visit causing Berrios to get pulled.  He has made some interesting decisions this season like some defensive changes late in games that have not paid off.  However, it is not his fault the pen keeps giving up leads, he did not build the pen he only decides who goes out when.  Right now it does not matter who goes out they are all doing bad. 

[nicksaviking]

 

I agree that it's a bit strange that Colomé hasn't been demoted in the pen hierarchy yet.

 

But Baldelli rolled with hot hands in the 2019 playoffs, and Littell, Duffey, and Stashak struggled.

 

In the 2020 playoffs, yes Rogers and Romo were both charged with runs, but we also brought in "hot hands" May (twice), Duffey, and Stashak ahead of them. (Duffey and Stashak gave up runs again too.)

 

I'm not just talking about the playoffs. Both with the eye test and statistically, Romo and Rogers were consistently out performed by Duffey, May, Clippard, Wisler, Alcala, Stashak and Theilbar. Yet the deference was always to the two biggest names in the pen. Bullpens shouldn't work that way.

[Dodecahedron]

I think you really need a game manager who has some idea of the how/when/why of making pitching changes. Molitor didn't know this and Baldelli shows the same tendencies.

 

Molitor has trouble managing pitching in games, solution: hire a numbers guy.

Baldelli is a numbers guy, has trouble managing pitching in games, solution: ...?

See what happened there, the Twins made a change that did not address the original problem.

 

For a hitting coach, being a "numbers guy" helps you find those elusive barrels. 

For a pitching coach, being a "numbers guy" helps you find the holes in the strike zone.

 

For the manager, being a numbers guy helps you ... fill in the lineup card? OK....

 

Math in a vacuum is often just a vacuum, the trick is the application. The application of math is not in the spreadsheet, it's on the field, it's responding to in-game situations effectively. There is a sector of math called "Game Theory" for a reason: responding to situations that are likely to give you the most beneficial outcome. For this to be happening, you have to watch what's going on and react.

[MMMordabito]

I can still loathe him until he's gone.

[D.C Twins]

I agree that he is (highly) unlikely to be fired.

 

Time to just sit back and watch in awe and wonderment of his 'decisions.' 

 

If you can't even keep track of how many visits there have been to the mound in one inning...I don't know what to say.

 

If you think that you just need to keep rolling out Colombe and "support him" and "keep him in his comfortable role that he has always been in" (see post game press conference on this site if your stomach can handle it), then I don't know what to say.

 

I could go on and on.... but it would be a waste of time, because you are right that he is not going anywhere

 

I will say that he will not be the coach of the Twins NLT 2023 and he won't manage another MLB team after that.

 

[wavedog]

Agreed, Baldelli won't be fired anytime soon.   I do find some of his decisions very strange but any reliever he puts in there is giving up runs.  There are dead spots in the line-up.   Their current record is very well-deserved to how they have played.    

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I'm not just talking about the playoffs. Both with the eye test and statistically, Romo and Rogers were consistently out performed by Duffey, May, Clippard, Wisler, Alcala, Stashak and Theilbar. Yet the deference was always to the two biggest names in the pen. Bullpens shouldn't work that way.

Always? I'm not just talking about the playoffs either, but I used them as an example to show this line of criticism seems off-base. Multiple times, in arguably the most important games, he more or less did what you wanted him to do, and had mixed results. I am sure there were other times he didn't do what you wanted, with mixed results too, but this seems more like the universal criticism of all MLB managers than anything that Baldelli can do specifically.

 

But I agree it's past time to move Colomé to a lower-leverage spot, just to preserve everyone's sanity! Although that's made somewhat more difficult by the struggles of Duffey, Stashak, and arguably others...

[Doctor Gast]

I think Baldelli has the ability to be a great manager. In his 1st year 2019 with Sheldon as bench coach, the Bomba Squad clicked and they overcame the BP melt down, the rotation over use (especially Gibson and Perez) that really wore them down and a terrible defense. Thus creating the false pretense of a good bat fixes everything.

We can't depend on a juiced ball or that the majority of our bats will be hot at the same time. Therefore he needs to address our other problems other than throw a bat at it.

I think a good bench coach will help keep him from making boneheaded decisions if he'd listen which I believe he would. He's a young coach and needs to be willing to change his mindset because what you can get away with in one season doesn't mean you can in the others, especially if you want to succeed in the PS.

[Mike Sixel]

He'd be considered a better manager by some if the FO gave him a good bullpen.....a lot of this year is about the players, as is true most years. The manager has little control over wins and losses, imo. Maybe a few games a year it matters who the manager is. Frankly, there should be a lot more talk about the FO right now....

[Dodecahedron]

 

He'd be considered a better manager by some if the FO gave him a good bullpen.....a lot of this year is about the players, as is true most years. The manager has little control over wins and losses, imo. Maybe a few games a year it matters who the manager is. Frankly, there should be a lot more talk about the FO right now....

 

True, but I am reminded of Gardenhire's firing, with the GM stating in the press conference that the poor performance of the team was his fault, not Gardy's, but the owners demanded a change.

 

Meanwhile, the GM was allowed to continue doing the same thing for a few more years with the same poor results. I really think the GM at this time was viewing his role as a part time job.

 

I agree that Baldelli is not going anywhere, nor should he. I see people rightfully questioning his in-game decisions, but I have not seen much in the way of calling for him to be fired.

 

As for the front office being to blame, sure, but I think this was a difficult offseason. If I were running the team, I would not feel comfortable making significant changes in the FO. But it's a long season, I may change my mind if we are looking down the barrel of 100 losses again.

 

And yeah, if I were in charge, I'd not be too happy with Baldelli right now. No one else is having Dobnak close out games, etc. But I would hope this is correctable at this point. If the narrative is true the Baldelli is a numbers guy, he has a hell of a lot of numbers now to show his decisions were off.

[Mike Sixel]

 

True, but I am reminded of Gardenhire's firing, with the GM stating in the press conference that the poor performance of the team was his fault, not Gardy's, but the owners demanded a change.

 

Meanwhile, the GM was allowed to continue doing the same thing for a few more years with the same poor results.

 

I agree that Baldelli is not going anywhere, nor should he. I see people rightfully questioning his in-game decisions, but I have not seen much in the way of calling for him to be fired.

 

As for the front office being to blame, sure, but I think this was a difficult offseason. If I were running the team, I would not feel comfortable making significant changes in the FO. But it's a long season, I may change my mind if we are looking down the barrel of 100 losses again.

 

And yeah, if I were in charge, I'd not be too happy with Baldelli right now. No one else is having Dobnak close out games, etc. But I would hope this is correctable at this point.

 

Two things:

 

It is too early to fire anyone, Baldelli or the FO. The FO deserves 2 more years to see what they can do or not do, imo. Then we can assess their work. So far? I'm not impressed with their work in the minors, but am with their trades and mostly their FA work.

 

I'm not in love with some of what Baldelli does in game. But, really, he hasn't often had better choices (esp. the bullpen this year, which appears to be a dumpster fire right now). And, the lineup? Nagging injuries and just bad options at times aren't his fault. 

[Wercor]

I will reiterate that Rocco has proven nothing since he has been the manager. Yes he has won two division titles but look at the status of the division. The central has been terrible the last 3 years so there is no excuse twins shouldn't be winning that division. Rocco walked into a clubhouse full of talent and hasn't built upon it or developed anybody. Hire a bench coach....not sure what we are gaining without one. How much was dereck shelton running the team?? May also be a players manager but at some point might have to light a fire under some of these players who aren't performing. stop making excuses for guys that make millions of dollars a year to play ball and look like they aren't even trying. Zero effort or emotions in that clubhouse.

[Mike Sixel]

 

I will reiterate that Rocco has proven nothing since he has been the manager. Yes he has won two division titles but look at the status of the division. The central has been terrible the last 3 years so there is no excuse twins shouldn't be winning that division. Rocco walked into a clubhouse full of talent and hasn't built upon it or developed anybody. Hire a bench coach....not sure what we are gaining without one. How much was dereck shelton running the team?? May also be a players manager but at some point might have to light a fire under some of these players who aren't performing. stop making excuses for guys that make millions of dollars a year to play ball and look like they aren't even trying. Zero effort or emotions in that clubhouse.

 

The other teams didn't win the Central those two years.....did they have no excuse also?

 

[nicksaviking]

 

Always? I'm not just talking about the playoffs either, but I used them as an example to show this line of criticism seems off-base. Multiple times, in arguably the most important games, he more or less did what you wanted him to do, and had mixed results. I am sure there were other times he didn't do what you wanted, with mixed results too, but this seems more like the universal criticism of all MLB managers than anything that Baldelli can do specifically.

 

 

He only "mixed" results when Romo and Rogers needed an off day. Those two threw 40 innings last year and only 5 of those innings were before the 8th and only 1 single time did either of them throw a pitch before the 7th.

 

They were the team's worst two regular relievers. 

[LewFordLives]

Baldelli has always frustrated me even when they were winning. He acts like he doesn't care. I'm sure he's just trying to convey an even keel public persona and I'm being unfair, but man it drives me nuts.

 

By the way, I'm not sure why some people think having a bench coach would help. Tom Kelly never had a bench coach. And if you think Derek Shelton had such a large impact on strategy, then maybe they should've kept him and fired Rocco.

[Cap'n Piranha]

 

He only "mixed" results when Romo and Rogers needed an off day. Those two threw 40 innings last year and only 5 of those innings were before the 8th and only 1 single time did either of them throw a pitch before the 7th.

 

They were the team's worst two regular relievers. 

 

Hmm.  By WAR, Rogers was 4th and Romo 10th.  By ERA, 11th and 10th.  By FIP, 5th and 11th.  By xFIP, 3rd and 11th.  By SIERA, 4th and 9th.

 

Romo was clearly cooked last year, I think we can all agree on that.  But Rogers, while not good, was far from our worst/second worst reliever.  Your point that other relievers should have gotten higher leverage situations is not an unreasonable one, but it loses credibility when you ignore data.

[Wercor]

 

The other teams didn't win the Central those two years.....did they have no excuse also?

Not sure what your asking. My point is the division has been weak past few years so played into hands of a good twins roster

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I'm not in love with some of what Baldelli does in game. But, really, he hasn't often had better choices (esp. the bullpen this year, which appears to be a dumpster fire right now). And, the lineup? Nagging injuries and just bad options at times aren't his fault. 

This is generally my take. It doesn't matter who Baldelli is going to pitch during Inning X because unless that person's name is Taylor Rogers, it's likely that pitcher is going to screw something up, often badly.

 

There's not a lot that can be done about that, though I question why we're not seeing a slightly faster reaction to shuffling the bullpen picking order.

 

As to Baldelli in general, this stupid ass "operates by spreadsheet" nonsense needs to end. Baldelli was a very good baseball player, one who played in the Rays org before their radical analytics transition. And if you actually look at some of the more nonsensical (IMO) moves he has made, they are not based in analytics.

 

Pinch running for Donaldson? Or even pinch running in general, while we're on it? What bizarre twisted version of sabremetrics does anyone think promotes that kind of move?

 

(answer, none)

 

A lot, and I mean a lot, of the decisions I've seen Baldelli make haven't been "spreadsheet decisions". Many of them aren't even bad decisions but, like pretty much everything else on this team over the past couple of weeks, if they call heads, there's a 90% chance the coin is going to land tails.

 

Again, I'm quite unimpressed with Baldelli this season but the internet has glommed onto some really dumb ideas about what he's doing wrong and why he's doing it.