{"id":558630,"date":"2026-02-06T23:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T23:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/558630\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T23:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T23:21:17","slug":"derek-falveys-greatest-regret-is-not-building-on-momentum-from-the-2023-playoff-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/558630\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Falvey’s Greatest Regret Is Not Building On Momentum From the 2023 Playoff Run"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Minnesota Twins hired<\/a> Derek Falvey and Thad Levine to lead their front office in 2016, most fans craved for them to do more than anything else.<\/p>\n

Establish a strong starting pitching development pipeline.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Scott Baker<\/a>, and Kyle Gibson<\/a>. Still, most homegrown arms either flamed out quickly or moved to the bullpen after a few lousy seasons in the rotation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 33 years old, taking on this job, coming to Minnesota, never been here part of this organization,\u201d said Falvey, \u201conly a couple days after I finished my goal in Cleveland, the World Series. It\u2019s a whirlwind. And he goes, \u2018What makes you such a genius?\u2019 and that was the first question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 10 years later, some would describe the outcome of Falvey\u2019s main objective, to develop a strong pitching pipeline from how he inherited it, as a stroke of genius. Minnesota\u2019s front office under Falvey has drafted and developed more impactful starters who were considered scrapheaps in their draft class, such as Bailey Ober<\/a>, David Festa<\/a>, and Zebby Matthews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, the trades Falvey has made to improve Minnesota\u2019s starting rotation stand out even more. He acquired Jake Odorizzi<\/a> in 2018, Kenta Maeda<\/a> in 2020, Joe Ryan<\/a> in 2021, and Pablo Lopez<\/a> in 2023. Beyond the change in approach to developing and pursuing starting pitchers on the open market, Favley\u2019s tenure also brought Minnesota\u2019s front office into the analytics age.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope I came in, and I made it better, and I leave it better than I found it. And that\u2019s not any disrespect to what came before,\u201d Falvey said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with the highs came plenty of lows, most of which were towards the end of Falvey\u2019s tenure. Downsizing payroll<\/a> by $30 million following the end of the 18-game postseason losing streak, collapsing<\/a> in September of 2024, and missing out on the playoffs. Ultimately, the firesale<\/a> at the 2025 trade deadline.<\/p>\n

All of it can be traced back to the \u2018right-sizing\u2019 of the payroll going into 2024. The 2023 team seemed to mark the beginning of a new era<\/a> in Minnesota\u2019s 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<\/a> in May of 2025, the remaining momentum left from the 2023 club was all but gone by the time of the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll stay on the challenge side. I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019t. And that, that will hang with me for too long, because when you don\u2019t achieve what you think the group is capable of, it just beats you up. And ultimately, that\u2019ll be, those will be my regrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the end of Falvey\u2019s tenure with the Twins ending far from what he had hoped for, he\u2019s 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\u2019s 2026 Opening Day roster.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a fan of the game and has more than enjoyed his opportunities in the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to turn my phone off for five minutes or step away from all that,\u201d said Falvey. \u201cIt\u2019ll be interesting for a period of time. It\u2019ll be great for my wife and kids. I can\u2019t wait to lean into that some. That\u2019s important to me as part of this journey. I\u2019m trying to, I\u2019m a glass-half-full guy. If we can find a way for what comes next for me, I hope it\u2019ll be great. I know this was great, and I get the chance to be around my family more. I have no regret about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Minnesota Twins hired Derek Falvey and Thad Levine to lead their front office in 2016, most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,7045,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":["post-558630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-twins","tag-baseball","tag-derek-falvey","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-minnesotatwins","tag-mlb","tag-twins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116026257797381454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558630","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=558630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}