On Tuesday evening, Derek Shelton became the 15th manager in the history of the Minnesota Twins. The occasion had a standard press conference where reporters asked the typical questions, and he took a photo with Minnesota’s president of baseball and business operations, Derek Falvey, and general manager Jeremy Zoll.
When the festivities were over, the Twins asked Shelton if he wanted to send a message to his fans through the team’s social media account on X. Shelton sent a harmless message, writing, “99 days til spring training. Who is ready????” Almost instantly, the message was “ratioed” with responses such as “Sell the team,” “Boycotting until the Pohlads are gone,” and “Delete this post.”
If Shelton hadn’t realized it by then, there are a lot of things he can’t control as he takes over as Twins manager. But his path to success isn’t going to be paved by a sudden change of ownership or a shakeup in the front office. It’s ultimately on Shelton to fix the team at the field level.
To do that, Shelton must block out the noise and channel his inner Lou Brown.
Brown is a fictional character in the 1989 movie Major League. While the film is known for Bob Uecker’s performance as Harry Doyle in the broadcast booth and Charlie Sheen playing Rick Vaughn on the mound, Brown was an instrumental figure in turning Cleveland around.
At the beginning of the movie, Brown inherited a team that looked a lot like the Twins at the moment. Run by an owner focused on profit margins, Brown inherited a group of players that were not household names and were coming off a season where they were closer to the bottom of the division than the top of it.
Brown could have succumbed to all of the outside noise that was going on. But he showed up to spring training by focusing on what he could control – mainly the fundamentals. While things were rough early, Brown’s message eventually got through to the team, and it became a galvanized group that was playing meaningful baseball by the end of the movie.
Grabbing a life-size cutout of Joe Pohlad to put in the clubhouse – like Brown did for Rachel Phelps in the movie – may be a little extreme for the present-day Twins. But a message of controlling what they can and emphasizing the fundamentals could be what the team needs to make its current rebuild shorter than expected.
“Attention to detail and fundamentals are extremely, extremely important to me,” Shelton said on Tuesday. “There is no detail that is too small.”
That quote alone could have made him an intriguing candidate for the Twins. Too many times in the final years of Rocco Baldelli’s tenure, the Twins made the wrong play at the wrong time. Sometimes it was missing a cutoff man. Others it was not taking the extra base. There were times when just putting the ball in play was difficult, and it was a key reason the Twins finished fourth in the division.
You could poke holes in this thought, knowing that Shelton struggled to get the same message through to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went 306-440 (.410) in his 5.5 seasons in charge. But you could also argue that this Twins team has more talent than the Pirates did.
Byron Buxton is one of the best center fielders in baseball. Royce Lewis is a dynamic young player if he can stay on the field. Walker Jenkins and Kaelen Culpepper should make their major-league debuts sometime next summer, and Joe Ryan and Pablo López form a strong top of the rotation.
Of course, Minnesota could trade López or Ryan this winter. Still, that shouldn’t detract from Shelton’s message. The Twins need to start making the right play and, most importantly, play as a cohesive unit.
The past couple of years, it felt like there was a disconnect in the team’s clubhouse. Lewis questioned Baldelli’s managerial methods throughout the second half of last season and even admitted he was looking out for his own stats in the final month of the season. López and Ryan’s final starts looked kind of like Spring Training by the end of the year, with both pitchers looking to get work in before an offseason of uncertainty.
Perhaps the disconnect resulted from acquiring Carlos Correa, who didn’t feel like a fit throughout his time in Minnesota. But it also falls on players who felt like they were pulling in a million directions and not making the right play by the time the season ended.
It’s not a given that Shelton can be the guy, but he at least needs to restore these two elements. Fans will remain angry at ownership and management as long as they’re in place, but they’re things that Shelton can’t control at the moment.
If he cleans up the small stuff like Brown did in Major League, the result could be pure cinema for what Twins fans remain and maybe turn some of the quotes Shelton was bombarded with earlier this week into more pleasant messages in the near future.