{"id":605447,"date":"2026-03-04T09:48:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/605447\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T09:48:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:48:37","slug":"derek-sheltons-minnesota-twins-look-familiar-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/605447\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Shelton\u2019s Minnesota Twins Look Familiar\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Twins gave many fans what they wanted this offseason when Joe Pohlad stepped down from the top of the franchise food chain, manager Rocco Baldelli got canned<\/a> and team president Derek Falvey \u201cmutually parted ways\u201d with the organization.<\/p>\n

Now, the power structure is completely different\u2026 but still kind of the same. The new Pohlad in-charge is older brother Tom and the Twins\u2019 \u201cnew\u201d baseball personnel guy in-charge is GM Jeremy Zoll \u2014 who held the same title under Falvey.<\/p>\n

\"Rocco<\/p>\n

Credit: Matt Blewett-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s new manager Derek Shelton, who was hired by Falvey, before he walked away. Shelton is very good friends with Rocco and even served as MN Twins bench coach under Baldelli, during the 2018 and 2019 seasons.<\/p>\n

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From all accounts, Shelton has made a really good first impression<\/a> on Minnesota Twins players. That\u2019s not surprising, considering he and the guys in that clubhose have yet to hit regular season adversity or lose any games that count for their 2026 record.<\/p>\n

New Minnesota Twins era\u2026\u2026\u2026.. or not?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also said a lot of the right things, starting with a Tom Kelly style focus<\/a> on details (baserunning, defense, etc) that hasn\u2019t been seen down in Fort Myers since Paul Molitor was fired nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there\u2019s still a major problem with that goal, among many others the Twins supposedly have in 2026. When it comes to improved defense\u2026 it turns out talking about it is easier than doing it, especially when you have a dearth of defensive talent on the big league roster.<\/p>\n

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Aaron Gleeman (The Athletic)<\/a> was in Florida last month, where he saw Minnesota\u2019s spring promises on defense quickly morph into an iceberg of a problem for the 2026 Twins ship right before his eyes.<\/p>\n

I was pessimistic about the Twins\u2019 defense coming into camp and watching them for two weeks confirmed my suspicions. Like every new manager, Shelton has talked a lot about cleaning up fundamentals and playing better defense, but the roster simply lacks the fielding chops to make that a reality.<\/p>\n

Aaron Gleeman (The Athletic)<\/a><\/p>\n

When it comes to the former criticisms hurled at Baldelli for his quick trigger on the mound and strict platooning of hitters vs opposite handed pitchers, we\u2019ll have to take a wait-and-see approach.<\/p>\n

2026 Twins ~ 2025 Twins\u2026?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, when you study the Minnesota Twins\u2019 roster, the lack of talent in both the rotation and bullpen stands out as another serious problem, as we enter March, especially following Pablo Lopez\u2019 season-ending UCL tear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Without Lopez<\/a>, the Twins\u2019 rotation has gone from one of the best and deepest in baseball, to one of the worst. Pair that with a bullpen that was blown to smithereens at the 2025 trade deadline<\/a>\u2026 and you have a recipe for early starter hooks and lots of bullpen blowups on tap.<\/p>\n

With the caveat that bullpen performance can be the trickiest part of any team to predict, and quality relievers often materialize and vanish without warning, I can\u2019t recall the last time I\u2019ve had less faith in the Twins\u2019 bullpen a month out. Hopefully the veterans just need more time to round into form.<\/p>\n

Aaron Gleeman (The Athletic)<\/a><\/p>\n

So all that context forces some obvious questions surrounding how different the 2026 Minnesota Twins really look from the team that lost 90 games and sold off half the big league roster before the 2025 trade deadline.<\/p>\n

All the Baldelli detractors who were constantly levying complaints<\/a> thought they were getting something new with Shelton. Unfortunately, the \u201cnew\u201d leaders above Minnesota\u2019s \u201cnew\u201d skipper haven\u2019t equipped him with enough talent to appease, not just Rocco critics, but Twins fans in general.<\/p>\n

Psst\u2026 Shelton was never going to be that much different than Baldelli<\/p>\n

Even if he did have a better roster, there\u2019s little guarantee Shelton wants to do things differently than his predecessor. When he managed for Pittsburgh, Shelton was hearing A LOT of the same criticisms Baldelli was simultaneously getting in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll also say this, that was cited (lack of energy) as a weakness of his in Pittsburgh. When he was fired in May, and you read Pittsburgh Post Gazette about him, it was very striking to read it because it was almost point-for-point the criticisms of Baldelli. He\u2019s platooning too much, he\u2019s pulling starters too early. He\u2019s overworking the relievers, and he\u2019s struggling to sort of, connect to some of the young core players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron Gleeman \u2013 Gleeman and the Geek<\/a><\/p>\n

So if you are hoping to turn on Twins.TV later this month, when the Minnesota Twins\u2019 regular season begins and see a much different product than what we did in 2025\u2026 you might want to temper those expectations.<\/p>\n

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Related Headlines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Twins gave many fans what they wanted this offseason when Joe Pohlad stepped down from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2388],"tags":[30986,5,7045,1728,822,60,3190,4,8578,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-605447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-aaron-gleeman","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-derek-falvey","11":"tag-derek-shelton","12":"tag-minnesota","13":"tag-minnesota-twins","14":"tag-minnesotatwins","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-rocco-baldelli","17":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116170282157003129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605447","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=605447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}