Twins fire manager Rocco Baldelli after seven seasons

"This game is ultimately measured by results, and over the past two seasons we did not reach the goals we set," president Derek Falvey said in the release.

Despite the Twins picking up Baldelli's club option for the 2026 season this summer, this started to seem like more of a realistic possibility down the final stretch of a miserable 2025 campaign. Someone was going to have to take the fall for missing the playoffs two years in a row, and the manager is the easiest scapegoat in these situations — even if he may not bear the brunt of the blame for the team's failure.

Baldelli, 44, went 527-505 as the Twins' manager during his tenure. He helped Minnesota make three trips to the postseason in seven years (2019, 2020, 2023) and go 3-8 in those games. He was at the helm two years ago when the Twins snapped an 18-game playoff losing streak and won a postseason series for the first time since 2002.

Hired in October 2018 to replace Paul Molitor, Baldelli was named the AL Manager of the Year in his first season after the 2019 "Bomba Squad" Twins went 101-61 and won the AL Central. They were swept in three games by the Yankees in the ALDS.

The Twins continued to have success in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, going 36-24 for a 97-win pace over a full season. They won the division again, but lost twice at home to the Astros in the first round of the expanded playoffs.

Over the last five seasons since then, the Twins have gone 390-420 and made the playoffs only once, when they won the Central with 87 wins in 2023. This past season, they bottomed out at 70-92, marking the franchise's first 90-loss campaign since 2016.

How much blame Baldelli deserves for the Twins' recent misery is hard to pinpoint. The 2024 team that so epically collapsed down the stretch was working with a payroll that ownership slashed by 30 million prior to the season. Falvey's front office also whiffed on almost every move it made in the 2023-24 offseason. Baldelli was hardly the primary reason why that team fell apart.

In 2025, the Twins crumbled much earlier, going 36-65 after a 34-27 start. They traded away 10 players before the deadline, which left Baldelli with a completely depleted bullpen and a roster that was always going to struggle over the final two months. His decision to become more aggressive on the basepaths actually made the Twins slightly more watchable than they otherwise would've been in the post-deadline period.

But it wasn't enough for him to keep his job and the Twins will begin the search for a new manager for the first time in seven years.