Derek Shelton used his time off after the Pirates fired him to present the Twins a better candidate

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Derek Shelton spent the first couple of weeks after his firing by the Pittsburgh Pirates in his feelings, bitter about the dismissal just 38 games into his sixth season as manager and defiant about his ability to do the job well.

That sudden free time turned out to be an unexpected gift. As he candidly assessed in conversation with several confidants the approach he used, the adjustments he made and the lessons he learned, Shelton took the notes that helped him land in Minnesota – because the Twins took notice.

“I honestly believe the reflection period is probably the reason that I’m in this chair right now,” Shelton said on Tuesday after his introductory news conference at Target Field as Minnesota’s 15th manager. “I think if that happens to you at the end of the season, it’s really hard to turn that back around and be able to say, ‘I could have done this differently.'”

Twins president Derek Falvey already knew Shelton well, from their overlap in Cleveland when Falvey first began his career and the two seasons in Minnesota when Shelton worked as the bench coach for two different managers – Paul Molitor in 2018 and Rocco Baldelli in 2019 – before getting his big break with Pittsburgh.

Falvey would call Shelton from time to time for an outside perspective while he was with Pirates, a relationship that unequivocally influenced the decision by the Twins.

“I think we were harder on him than maybe we were on other candidates,” Falvey said. “Shelty and I talked about some of the real challenges that he had in Pittsburgh, very specific challenges, whether those were with players or staff or with the front office or otherwise, which we all have. These aren’t easy jobs. They’re challenging, and you go through them and you learn a ton. I was able to actually hit him on some of those things and say, ‘How would you handle that differently? Because I know how you handled it then. I know what you were frustrated by.’ That helped us a ton to kind of understand that.”

Shelton, who went 306-440 with the Pirates, didn’t pull any punches from his side of the interview, either.

The Twins, who fired Baldelli with a 527-505 record after three AL Central titles in seven seasons but only one trip to the playoffs over his last five years, have cut costs since the 2023 team ended the club’s professional-sports-record 18-game postseason losing streak and won a series for the first time since 2002. Executive chair Joe Pohlad led an exploration of a sale of the franchise his grandfather bought in 1984, before the family recently opted to stay put and add yet-to-be-identified new investors to the ownership group to help pay down debt and reset the financial outlook.

While neither Falvey nor Shelton would reveal a specific payroll target for 2026, in part because of the fluidity of the offseason transaction period that is just starting, both of them gave strong hints that they won’t be asked to further pare down the roster and be forced to trade, say, one or both of their All-Star starting pitchers, Pablo López and Joe Ryan.

“When I sat down with Joe Pohlad, and I asked him the question, I said, ‘What’s on the table? What’s off the table?’ And his response to me was, ‘Ask me anything you want,'” Shelton said. “I got the answers that made me really want this job.”

When Shelton arrived with the Pirates, long one of the lowest-spending clubs in Major League Baseball while playing in one of its smallest markets, they were in clear starting-over mode. The Twins, despite their 10-player sell-off leading up to the trade deadline this past season, don’t consider themselves to be in that same category.

“My goal this offseason is not to take away from this team,” Falvey said. “We’re going to have to evaluate every opportunity that comes our way. There’s going to be a lot of calls on players on our team because we think we have some talented players. I have little doubt that will be part of our process. At the same time, my personal goal is to find ways to augment and add around it.”