{"id":546888,"date":"2026-01-31T01:35:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T01:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/546888\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T01:35:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T01:35:19","slug":"explaining-exits-of-falvey-adofo-mensah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/546888\/","title":{"rendered":"Explaining exits of Falvey, Adofo-Mensah"},"content":{"rendered":"

A large swath of what\u2019s left of the Twin Cities sports media was on a Zoom call with outgoing Twins president Derek Falvey on Friday when the Vikings announced that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was suddenly their outgoing general manager.<\/p>\n

It was a surprise to most of the teleconference participants, who had their noses buried in Twins news, but no one was more surprised than Falvey, a friend of Adofo-Mensah who was just hearing the news from a newspaper columnist.<\/p>\n

\"John\u201cReally unfortunate news,\u201d Falvey said after gathering his bearings. \u201cI didn\u2019t know that. I love Kwesi.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often that one of Minnesota\u2019s four major pro sports teams parts with its personnel chief, and the Twins and Vikings did it within two hours of one another Friday. It was a surprise. Adofo-Mensah got a contract extension last May; Falvey had recently been named the Twins\u2019 president of baseball and business operations and hired a new manager in November \u2014 not to mention that spring training starts in two weeks.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, the timing was odd. But neither separation was totally unexpected.<\/p>\n

Adofo-Mensah\u2019s exit is the simpler to explain. In the parlance of \u201cGoodFellas,\u201d<\/a> it was for Billy Batts, or more specifically, Sam Darnold<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A lot of people with a lot less personnel experience suspected it was a bad idea to ask J.J. McCarthy, in his first NFL season, to lead a team to the postseason, let alone an NFC title. When the Vikings finished the regular season strong despite poor quarterback play, and Darnold led Seattle to the Super Bowl, it didn\u2019t look good for the guys who made that call.<\/p>\n

Presumably, Kevin O\u2019Connell was a big part of that decision, but he\u2019s a) not the general manager and b) was notably able to keep a deflated team playing together and hard down the stretch.<\/p>\n

Firing both would have been a complete re-start, and Adofo-Mensah was the easy choice. He has added some good free agents in his four seasons, but spent a lot of money to do it and has whiffed on some high draft picks. As a result, the Vikings are up against the salary cap and don\u2019t know who their starting quarterback will be in 2026.<\/p>\n

\"FILEFILE – Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah answers questions during an NFL football press conference Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo\/Abbie Parr, File)<\/p>\n

According to overthecap.com<\/a>, only one team has a larger cap deficit than Minnesota, and it\u2019s the Kansas City Chiefs \u2014 who have played in five of the past six Super Bowls and won three. The Vikings haven\u2019t been there since 1977. It\u2019s not surprising ownership wanted to move on.<\/p>\n

Falvey is a little more of a head-scratcher if you just look at the resume. In nine years as the team\u2019s president of baseball operations, he built three American League Central Division winners and four playoff teams. Many of the draft choices he made with then-GM Thad Levine. And while only the 2023 team won a playoff series, that team snapped what was a major league record 18-game postseason losing skid.<\/p>\n

But Falvey was noticeably uncomfortable with ownership\u2019s decision to slash payroll by $30 million after that season, and had a difficult time explaining why the team traded away 10 of its best players at the deadline last July.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a challenge at times,\u201d he acknowledged Friday. \u201cI\u2019d be lying to say anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last two months of the 2025 season were hard on anyone watching the Twins. Left with a team full of young position players still finding their way in the majors, the Twins couldn\u2019t hit and didn\u2019t have a bullpen because they traded away their best five relievers. The results were predictable.<\/p>\n

The three free agents the Twins have signed this winter are reasonable additions, but none of them are likely to move the needle. Fans see a long road back to competitiveness ahead; after a third straight season of belt-tightening, it\u2019s impossible to imagine Falvey didn\u2019t feel the same way.<\/p>\n

Both Falvey and new executive chair Tom Pohlad described Friday\u2019s move as mutual. That\u2019s often a transparent euphemism for someone getting fired, but in this case, it seems accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we shared is a sense of urgency to be decisive about doing what\u2019s in the best interest of the Twins, and this was what we were decisive about,\u201d Pohlad said.<\/p>\n

Falvey might not have been expecting to leave right before spring training starts, but if the past two seasons weren\u2019t a sign of things to come, he certainly got a good look while discussing the landscape over the past few weeks with his new boss.<\/p>\n

In the end, not so surprising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large swath of what\u2019s left of the Twin Cities sports media was on a Zoom call with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,7045,72183,822,60,3190,4,185,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-546888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-derek-falvey","10":"tag-kwesi-adofo-mensah","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-minnesota-twins","13":"tag-minnesotatwins","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115987148158227697","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}