With the Minnesota Twins coaching staff finalized this past week, the next phase of the off-season falls on the front office to construct a roster that gives them a chance to compete in 2026.

But for now, Derek Shelton feels satisfied with how his coaching staff for 2026 has come together and believes the construction of it has gone better than his first go-around with the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2020.

“I think the first staff that we put in Pittsburgh was very developmentally based,” Shelton said over a Zoom call on Monday.

“And that’s not to say it was wrong, but I don’t think we had as much diversity in terms of skill set, experience, looking back at it now. And that was one of the things, coming into this, that we wanted to make sure that we kind of hit all those quadrants of things that we feel go into being a really good major-league coach.”

The coaching staff will be familiar with the new hires. Rounding out those new to the Twins organization are:

Among those returning from last year’s staff are:

Pete Maki as the pitching coach
Ramon Borrego is moving from first to third base coach
Trevor Amicone and Rayden Sierra as assistant hitting coaches
And Luis Ramirez as the assistant pitching coach

These 12 names will round out the coaching staff for next season, and each brings a diverse background to their baseball lives. Hawkins and Sizemore have the longest-running careers as former major leaguers, with 31 seasons combined. Rabelo played three seasons between the Detroit Tigers and Miami Marlins from 2006-08.

Hallberg and Gardenhire reached Triple-A before retiring from pro ball and moving into coaching shortly after. Beauregard never played beyond Indy Ball, but had a successful track record as a hitting coordinator in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ player development system before the Tigers hired him in 2023.

By adding Gardenhire into the mix of coaches that are holdovers from Rocco Baldelli’s staff, and Hawkins, whose previous role was a special assistant to baseball operations, over half the coaching staff have worked with most of the players on the Twins roster at one point or another in their careers.

But the familiarity shouldn’t discount what the new roles for Gardenhire and Hawkins will mean as new voices in the clubhouse.

While some of the coaches are the same and have long-established voices within the Twins organization, this coaching staff will be a new collective voice in their core messages about how they want the team to perform. That’s why Shelton was more thorough with his additions to the staff after seeing the lack of diverse voices from his first managerial job.

“I think it goes back to the old Dick Vermeil theory of you spend more time with your coaches than you do your family during the season,” Shelton said, “and that was something that we were very thoughtful about during this process. Not only do we have really good coaches, we have really good people.”

And constructing the core messaging and diversity of voices in the clubhouse won’t be a task on Shelton alone. Hallberg and Rabelo’s roles will help ensure Minnesota’s entire staff helps each player to the best of their abilities.

“I have a lot of unique skillset and diversity in terms of the mechanisms of a major-league staff,” said Hallberg.

“I’ve seen that from different angles and have experienced that, and I think that’s where I really can support. Whether it’s the clubhouse culture piece, the mechanisms of coaching third or first, or game strategy, I think those unique experiences in the past are going to help me help Shelt do his job the best he can do it.”

Now that Shelton feels he’s come together with the best coaching staff he’s assembled, it’s time to prove what they can do to turn the Twins around from a dismal end to the 2025 season.

“This group could not have come together better than any group I imagined, the way we built it with the things we were looking for,” Shelton said. “I’m really, actually surprised we got access to some of the people we did. It was very encouraging that we highlighted and targeted a group of people, and we were damn near spot on.”