The Minnesota Twins have a big off-the-field week, with the team's Diamond Awards Thursday night, TwinsFest this weekend plus their annual caravan as the visit Twins Territory and get players, coaches and broadcasters across the region to meet-and-greet Twins fans.
But on-the-field is coming soon enough. The Twins are about a month away from Spring Training getting underway and Twins Manager Rocco Baldelli spent time with WCCO's Chad Hartman on Wednesday talking about many of the upcoming challenges the team faces heading into the 2025 season.
One of those challenges comes at the very top of the organization. The team is for sale with the Pohlad family exploring potential buyers. Rumors say the team could have a person or group identified by opening day, which is March 27th in St. Louis.
Here are a few of the things Baldelli addressed as the Twins try to get back into the postseason:
With new owners potentially on the way, and payroll cuts last season, does Baldelli worry about payroll and cuts affecting on-field success?
"Things like that don't frustrate me. That's not my role, to worry about what ifs and hypotheticals. And watch, say, what the Dodgers are doing, you know? Currently, we have tremendous support from our owners."
Baldelli says the Twins ownership has been great about supporting the players with resources.
"We put a ton of the resources that we bring in, right back on the field in order to succeed. A lot of the, you know, whatever you want to call it, I don't use the words revenue very often. I don't like to talk like that, but like the revenue we bring in gets reinvested right back into our club over and over and over again."
One of the biggest issues the Twins faced in 2024 was going through long run-scoring droughts, something he knows they need to address.
"We have to find a way to score five or six runs without hitting two homers at times. The way you do that is you make better swing decisions. There are ways to do that. You can do that by, frankly, trying to do a little less. And you actually do it by trying to focus on just simply hitting a line drive somewhere."
Does Baldelli have a goal for 2025?
"The goals heading into spring training for our team are to talk about approach and to talk about winning, how to win games when you don't hit two home runs."
When it comes to players, the Twins have a few cornerstones that they'll lean on in 2025 and it starts with shortstop Carlos Correa who again battled injuries in 2024. Baldelli says he's confident Correa is 100% ready to go but the foot issues should be a concern.
"When he's been healthy and fine, he's been good. The plantar fasciitis has shown up out of the blue. It's not like that's something that there's not one direct link of evidence or anything that we know of from our doctors, from our medical staff, that connects those things. This is something that some players deal with."
Another up-the-middle position that the team thinks is locked in? Centerfield where last season, at least for a portion of the year, Byron Buxton played again after only being a DH in 2023 due to injuries. Is he healthy and ready to return to the field this season?
"This is the first time Byron Buxton's had a clean, smooth, normal offseason because most every offseason, he's rehab something. He's had a procedure. He's had something going on. So he's been in - he's been in a really good spot. He's just able to go do baseball stuff."
After Correa, there are major question marks around who plays in the infield which Baldelli acknowledged.
"I don't think we have one player that is going to hold down first base or second base right now for us. We have guys that are going to have to go out there and earn those spots."