Twins hiring Derek Shelton as manager feels like a lose-lose situation

Overall, Shelton holds a 306-440 career managerial record. That’s heavily weighed down by the first three seasons in which no manager stood a chance of posting good results with such a poor roster. The Bucs stalled before they ever pulled out of the rebuild, however.

Pittsburgh especially struggled to develop young hitters. Highly touted young players like Ke’Bryan Hayes, Henry Davis, Endy Rodríguez, Nick Gonzales and to a lesser extent Oneil Cruz did not click the way the organization needed. That’s not entirely the fault of any one coach or manager, of course, but Shelton came up as a hitting coordinator in Cleveland and spent parts of seven seasons as an MLB hitting coach with the Rays before getting the bench coach position in Minnesota.

Derek Shelton is walking into another rebuild

Shelton’s experience working with a rebuilding roster should come in handy with the Twins. They’re amid at least a retooling effort after trading Carlos Correa and essentially every reliever of note at the trade deadline. The Pohlad family ownership group has pulled back spending since the Twins won 87 games and an AL Central title in 2023. They’re coming off a 70-92 showing that had them above only the White Sox in the American League standings and resulted in them firing Baldelli after seven seasons. Any or all of Joe Ryan, Pablo López and Ryan Jeffers could be traded this offseason.

The Twins landed a couple of upper-level starting pitchers (Taj Bradley and Mick Abel) at the deadline, and they have some interesting young hitters to build around Byron Buxton. Maybe there’s a path back to competitiveness by 2027, but this is likely to be one of the worst teams in the AL next year. They need to overhaul almost the entire bullpen and have too many holes in the bottom half of the lineup to fix in one offseason that is likely to be far more about which players the Twins trade away than the ones they bring in.

Who were the runners-up?

Shelton was reportedly one of four finalists for the Minnesota job. Yankees hitting coach James Rowson (another former Twins staffer), Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty and Padres special assistant Scott Servais were the others. There are now four teams still searching for a new skipper: the Padres, Braves, Rockies and Nationals.

Flaherty and Servais have each been floated as potential candidates for the San Diego position, which is expected to be filled by the end of the week. Rowson has only publicly been linked to the Twins’ position. Atlanta and Washington have played their searches close to the vest. (Baldelli is reportedly of interest in Washington.) Colorado has yet to even get the process underway as they focus on hiring a new GM first. It’s possible that any of the three other finalists gets a look from one of those teams.