When the Minnesota Twins hired Derek Falvey and Thad Levine to lead their front office in 2016, most fans craved for them to do more than anything else.
Establish a strong starting pitching development pipeline.
As far back as 1995, the Twins had struggled to draft and develop starting pitchers who could stick in the rotation long-term. There were a few exceptions: Brad Radke, Scott Baker, and Kyle Gibson. Still, most homegrown arms either flamed out quickly or moved to the bullpen after a few lousy seasons in the rotation.
However, the Twins hired Falvey from Cleveland, a team with a never-ending clown car of starting-pitching prospects coming up from the minors. People had high expectations for Falvey in his role with the Twins from the start. As he met with the media for the final time over Zoom last Friday, Falvey reminisced about his first session.
Filled with nerves and going off of prepared remarks, Falvey was around 30 seconds in when a 96-year-old Hartman had to walk up to the stage and flip over the cassette tape in his tape recorder to get all the sound. Shortly after, Falvey got the proper welcome from the longest-serving sports writer in Twin Cities history.
“I’m 33 years old, taking on this job, coming to Minnesota, never been here part of this organization,” said Falvey, “only a couple days after I finished my goal in Cleveland, the World Series. It’s a whirlwind. And he goes, ‘What makes you such a genius?’ and that was the first question.”
Nearly 10 years later, some would describe the outcome of Falvey’s main objective, to develop a strong pitching pipeline from how he inherited it, as a stroke of genius. Minnesota’s front office under Falvey has drafted and developed more impactful starters who were considered scrapheaps in their draft class, such as Bailey Ober, David Festa, and Zebby Matthews.
However, the trades Falvey has made to improve Minnesota’s starting rotation stand out even more. He acquired Jake Odorizzi in 2018, Kenta Maeda in 2020, Joe Ryan in 2021, and Pablo Lopez in 2023. Beyond the change in approach to developing and pursuing starting pitchers on the open market, Favley’s tenure also brought Minnesota’s front office into the analytics age.
“I hope I came in, and I made it better, and I leave it better than I found it. And that’s not any disrespect to what came before,” Falvey said. “The amount of respect I have for Terry Ryan is off the charts. I think we just made changes, we modernized, we made some things a little differently, and Terry and I maintained a friendship all these years later.”
But with the highs came plenty of lows, most of which were towards the end of Falvey’s tenure. Downsizing payroll by $30 million following the end of the 18-game postseason losing streak, collapsing in September of 2024, and missing out on the playoffs. Ultimately, the firesale at the 2025 trade deadline.
All of it can be traced back to the ‘right-sizing’ of the payroll going into 2024. The 2023 team seemed to mark the beginning of a new era in Minnesota’s postseason pursuits, but simply running the same team back with no reinforcements from the 2024 trade deadline led to their 12-27 collapse at the end of the year. Even with a 13-game winning streak in May of 2025, the remaining momentum left from the 2023 club was all but gone by the time of the trade deadline.
“I wish that momentum had kind of continued, and we would have ultimately had that a few more times, because it would have been a heck of a lot of fun to watch,” he said. “And I’ll stay on the challenge side. I’ll always regret not doing more and not finding a way for us to win more with the group that we had. I felt it was talented.
“I felt there were real players on that team that could make an impact, not just in the regular season, but in the postseason, and we didn’t. And that, that will hang with me for too long, because when you don’t achieve what you think the group is capable of, it just beats you up. And ultimately, that’ll be, those will be my regrets.”
Despite the end of Falvey’s tenure with the Twins ending far from what he had hoped for, he’s at peace with how his time is concluding. The front office has improved since its founding. Jeremy Zoll will take over to put together the final pieces of Minnesota’s 2026 Opening Day roster.
More time for reflection will lead to thoughts on how Falvey could have done things differently as he figures out what opportunities lie ahead in baseball. Falvey will not step away from the game entirely. He’s a fan of the game and has more than enjoyed his opportunities in the league.
“I don’t know what it’s like to turn my phone off for five minutes or step away from all that,” said Falvey. “It’ll be interesting for a period of time. It’ll be great for my wife and kids. I can’t wait to lean into that some. That’s important to me as part of this journey. I’m trying to, I’m a glass-half-full guy. If we can find a way for what comes next for me, I hope it’ll be great. I know this was great, and I get the chance to be around my family more. I have no regret about that.”