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Derek Falvey was officially announced as the Twins Chief Baseball Officer last month. However, due to an agreement between Minnesota, Cleveland and MLB, he remained with Cleveland through the World Series. However, in that time, he was able to hire his choice for Twins General Manager, and he chose long-time assistant GM of the Texas Rangers, Thad Levine.
In addition, interim GM Rob Antony told reporters that his new title would be essentially be his old title, Assistant General Manager.
To summarize, the messages shared from the mouths of both Falvey and Levine included a lot of collaborations and synergy at every level. From scouting, to player development, to the Major League club, the goal will be to share a common system of beliefs and structure. As you will find with many companies, they will focus on People, Process and Culture. Good people who are interested in communication and continuous improvement will work within some established processes to develop a culture. Hopefully that culture involves winning, and a lot of it.
According to Falvey, the goal is “long-term, sustainable, championship-caliber” success for the organization he had earlier described as “one of the most proud, resilient franchises in baseball.”
Getting to that level will require a lot of work. And that work starts right away. Tonight, Falvey, Levine and Antony fly to Scottsdale, Arizona, for the GM Meetings. According to Falvey, they will “dive underneath the hood of this team here.” He added, “We would expect that we’ll go through player personnel decisions and evaluations over the next 72 hours aggressively and work forward from there.”
As we all know, part of the arrangement with a restructured front office was that Paul Molitor was to remain the team’s manager. That came directly from owner Jim Pohlad.
Falvey and Molitor have met a few times and it sounds like the discussions have been good. “He and I share the same vision which is building a winning organization and a winning Major League team.”
On Molitor, Levine added, “My opinion is that the healthiest franchises in the game have strong synergies between ownership, front office, business and the clubhouse. So when we walk in the door having inherited a manager of the caliber of Paul Molitor, we feel like we’ve got a partner in this process, someone we can invest in the future with, so we view it as a prominent positive.”
The team isn’t starting from scratch. As Falvey noted, “There are some building blocks here. There are some good young players. There’s talent in this organization. I think that’s a credit to Terry Ryan and the staff that came before us and built a good foundation, particularly on the position player side. It’s something I’ve always admired from a distance.”
Falvey wasn’t willing to say how good this team is or how good they can be in 2017. “I don’t want to put restraints on teams. I want to go into the year with the hope that we are a competitive team that continues to build and gets better every single day.”
The big question, of course, is how to go about adding pitching, something the Twins are greatly in need of. For Falvey, he said it’s the same philosophy for hitters or pitchers.
“We’re trying to seek and find the best possible talent that exists out there, and then align that talent with a development plan that will maximize those strengths.”
It’s a system that worked with Cleveland. They were able to bring together scouting, development and major league operations to bring the best results. He talked about working with other departments such as medical and strength and conditioning, and potentially some departments that currently do not exist.
The new staff will attempt to bring balance to the organization. They will communicate internally. It is a sound strategy.
Listen, the reality is that Falvey and Levine have their work cut out for them. Aside from some of the specifics as it relates to analytics, the message was the same you would have heard from Ryan and his group, or any new collection being brought in. Falvey and Levine use bigger words and speak very well. They do bring knowledge and experience from outside the current Twins system, but they also know that it isn’t 100 percent about analytics.
I was impressed with Levine noting that the opinions of former players like Michael Young and Darren Oliver, who are senior advisers in the Rangers’ front office, were helpful in the evaluation as well. Corey Koskie, Joe Mauer and Glen Perkins were in attendance.
Falvey talked about being a “data-driven organization.”
Levine thinks that data needs to be “married up with the scouting acumen of your field staff. The talent evaluators are really the difference-makers in the game. I subscribe to the theory that the competitive advantage is that whoever has the best talent evaluators... who then has it married up with an ownership group who will support you to acquire that talent, is probably going to win a lot of games.”
Levine also noted that relationship building, the human side, is just as important. Working with the media. Building relationships with agents. All in an attempt to be able to bring in the best talent. Young talent. Talented veterans. Leaders. It all fits into the equation. So while the theme most Twins fans want to hear are words like “analytics” and “advanced stats,” it’s good to hear that these new leaders will always understand the human element as well.
Things are changing in the front office of the Minnesota Twins. The goals remain the same. Build a winner. Build a team that can win in the short and long terms. It is certainly going to be a challenge.
Press conferences are an opportunity to meet the new guys. We had the opportunity to listen to them speak and see some personality. It’s hard to lose in an introductory press conference. But for the most part, I feel like it was a successful unveiling of the new direction. Falvey and Levine are both very well spoken and articulate. They flash business acumen, but they have also been in great organizations that have won. They are very convincing and appear to be strong leaders. Levine showed a sense of humor and hinted humility with a few of his remarks.
Of course now the work begins. Coming off of a 59-win season, much work needs to be done to make the team more competitive. It feels like the Twins have made some strong choices. Now the fun of the offseason begins.
We know that those reading this on the pages of Twins Daily will be watching closely to see what will happen!
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