Reception to Minnesota’s announcement of Derek Shelton as new manager has been mixed, at best. While partially owing to the general state of fan morale, it’s been tough to find much enthusiasm surrounding the next chapter in Twins managerial lore.

He’s a retread, some say. He’s being brought in to oversee a low-stakes rebuild, others say. And of course, there is the matter of his extremely underwhelming run with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who never finished even close to .500 or above fourth place during his six seasons at the helm. In fact, his winning percentage was among the worst in MLB history.

 

There’s validity to all of these critiques, but I would caution against putting too much stock into the last one. If you’re expecting a manager to magically turn a bad team into a good one, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. The question isn’t whether Shelton’s teams in Pittsburgh were bad, it’s whether they underperformed. I’m not sure you can really say they did.

Yes, his 306-440 record as manager of the Pirates was ugly. But that needs to be paired with the context of highly talent-deficient teams that never had any realistic hope to begin with. According to SportsOddsHistory, these are the Vegas over-unders for the Pirates heading into each season under Shelton’s tenure, along with the eventual win totals for those teams:

2025: 76.5 (71) – Shelton fired on May 8

2024: 75.5 (76)

2023: 67.5 (76)

2022: 64.5 (62)

2021: 58.5 (61)

2020: 25.5 (19) – 60-game season

If we’re looking at overall record as a manager, Shelton was minus-134 in his six years with Pittsburgh. If we’re looking at his record relative to expectations (at least from Vegas), he’s just a couple games in the red, and his biggest deviation came in 2023 when the Pirates exceeded their projection by eight games. 

Now, to be clear, I’m not necessarily trying to let him off the hook. Ideally it’d be nice to see a manager bring a little more out of his squad and spearhead a trend of sustained improvement (which was kind of happening up through 2024). But you can only work with what you’ve got. I doubt there was a manager in the world that was going to steer this year’s Pirates team, which had absolutely no hitting ability across the roster, anywhere other than last place.

The problem with Rocco Baldelli wasn’t that he didn’t radically elevate Twins players beyond their level of talent and ability. It’s that in 2024 and 2025 his teams fell well short of their potential. Entering both years, Minnesota was at least a co-favorite in the AL Central, per Vegas, and in both years they finished in fourth place. 

The job of Shelton, or any manager, is not to spin straw into gold. It is to take the makings of a quality team and help the players collectively see it through. That’s where Rocco failed and I’m not sure we can fairly say it’s an opportunity Shelton has ever had, managing Pirates teams that were at a constant disadvantage in resources and talent.

 

Whether he will get a viable opportunity in the next few years with the Twins, who very well may be leaning into an all-out rebuild, is another story. But that story pertains a lot more to ownership and the front office than it does to Shelton, whose true prowess as a manager will remain unknown until he actually gets to manage a team that’s equipped to win.