The Minnesota Twins are into the offseason now, and several important questions face the front office after what was a disappointing finish.
Despite a solid start to the 2022 season, the team really limped to the end and finished well back in the American League Central. Injuries and poor pitching down the stretch meant they were never really in the hunt the last month of the year.
President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey and General Manager Thad Levine do have some decisions to make, especially when it comes to high-priced shortstop Carlos Correa who it is widely thought will opt out of his deal and become a free agent.
Falvey talked to WCCO Radio’s Chad Hartman Show about the 2022 season, and what the team is looking for in 2023.
Chad Hartman: September 4th you're tied for the lead. You finished the season 14 games back. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I called it a collapse. Am I right?
Derek Falvey: As always you come right out the chute. Obviously we're sitting here today, we wish we were playing, ultimately and I'm watching it in my office now, and watching the playoff games that are on TV. And that's always hard when you sit at this position. Certainly we had a chance to be in it all year and playing from the front for a good chunk of it. We ultimately did not finish there and that's incredibly disappointing. But it was unfortunate down the stretch we didn't have all our group together. We didn't play good baseball, the way we needed to get there.
But now the work's ready to get going for ’23. I feel really good about a lot of what is coming back. I'm hopeful about a lot of what will be there and healthy when we kick off spring training in Fort Myers next February. And we'll get going on 2023.
Hartman: No doubt you had injuries to your core players. But a lot of those players were already out and you still were tied for first on September 4. So what took place that last month? And how do you have to take a hard look at that, to try to prevent that from being a part of your team next year?
Falvey: No doubt Chad. I mean, we're not running from that in any way. We did not play well in September at all. And I think there were some elements, like you said, they were still there. We didn't have all of our group that started the month of September. Sonny Gray fell off, we couldn't get Max (Kepler) back on the field. There were a few others that were key to our performance and a good chunk of the early portion of the season.
There's nothing specific as we look at it and we evaluate our group that we say our guys weren't showing up every day. I promise you looking in that clubhouse, with the way the guys were working, trying to get there, trying to get better every day. I can promise you that was happening on a daily basis, but we didn't play well through September and that's what we're spending our time now in October. And certainly through the offseason, evaluating how we can retool, restock and find a way to get back to competing as soon as we get there for next year.
Hartman: Injuries were a significant part of this team. A number of metrics either have you first with injuries in the league, or second in all of Major League Baseball with the Reds. Do you systematically need to make a change with your approach? Or can you look at this season in the area of missed time and say that's an aberration, we're going to go forward as we have been including this past year?
Falvey: Well, I think it's all in the individual. While we'd like to lump it into one conversation about injuries, every single player is different. Every single injury is different ultimately. And what our job is, is to try and find a way to dig deep, to look at what could we have done better for those that are preventable, for those that are things that we could have maybe found away from a training regimen standpoint, from a care standpoint, and otherwise to put a player in a position to be healthier through the year. Sometimes a guy breaks a finger or something else happens. From a torn ligament standpoint or Tommy John surgery, some of those are less related to the specifics of training and ultimately happened over the course of seasons. The good news is when we look at it, there's a lot, a lot of evidence, to point to kind of year over year.
Sometimes you're on a really bad end of that list. Sometimes you're in a better end of that list, but that doesn't mean that we don't evaluate it and we go back and we look through. I think there are some things we can do better on that side of our game and we're already at work trying to do that ultimately.
But at the same time I think we have to evaluate each player independently.
Hartman: Can you stay status quo with everything involved in training and your medical staff? In Fort Myers next year in early February, on the medical approach, if you’re status quo just like you were the previous February, are you going to feel comfortable with that?
Falvey: Well, absolutely not. I think that our view is we're going to have to spend time this offseason going into how we get better now. I would say we're doing that every year, and we have to be doing that every year. We have to be thinking about ways we can better train, prepare, get guys ready. Last offseason was a really challenging one for a number of our players. We were unable to have any interaction with any of our players and ultimately got to spring training and learned through the course of that, that maybe some guys were in better places than others in terms of where they were from a health standpoint, where they were from a training standpoint. There was just so much uncertainty just 12 months ago, around what the offseason was going to look like and when the season going to start.
I feel much better about our approach this offseason. The ability to connect with individuals, make sure they're training and they're planning is aligned with what we're looking for. So, you know, while everyone certainly focuses on personnel and the people in this space, I think a lot about our planning, our training, what we're doing and how we're making sure that we're on top of that as we go into next year.
Hartman: Carlos Correa the last 50 games was fantastic for your club. His numbers were either a little bit better than most of his career or right around it. He lived up to the billing. He hasn't opted out. Do you plan on making him a long term offer before he is out to the open market? I'd love for you to tell me what the numbers are, I know you're not going to do that, but before everybody else has a chance for him, do you plan on making a significant multiyear deal offered to him and his agent, the very well-known Scott Boras?
Falvey: You know, I'm sure you'd love to be in the meetings and come on down to Target Field. But, you know, as we've said before, I did have some conversations with Carlos. Those happened all season long, not just in our last series of course. Ultimately we have a good relationship with his agent, you mentioned Scott Boras and his representation. We have (a good relationship) with Carlos and his family as well. So we've we've made no secret of the fact that we are going to continue to have that dialogue.
Now, he's earned the right through his contract to navigate this the way he would like as well. We understood that going into it. We understand that now. I think the key here is just for us to remain open, have good dialogue in the short to medium term. I won't ever disclose specifics around what that looks like. But rest assured we will be having conversations with Scott and with Carlos over the course of the next month.
Hartman: But are you going to wait until the rest of the market is really on equal footing? Are you going to try to take advantage of this near term when you can make an offer before teams A, B, and C cannot?
Falvey: Well sure, we understand that. That's a unique right of the team that currently has him under control. But it's also a conversation that's warranted with the agent and with the player to understand that they may want to consider that part of the equation as well for obvious reasons, to understand the market to see what it looks like. I have every expectation we're going to continue to have open dialogue over the next month where we are talking terms and things like that. But in terms of specifics, I obviously wouldn't talk about that at this time.
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Hartman: Let's talk pitching and let's talk the approach to it. It is very clear that a lot of numbers are on baseball, not just your organization, but almost every team looks at, we've got the first time through the order, the second time through the order and things really change the third and fourth time through the order. Because you're very involved in this with you, Thad and Rocco, on certain days when a Joe Ryan or a Sonny Gray are going well, why does the team continue to fall back on, ‘well, it's the third time, and it's the fourth time? Versus, you know what? This is just a day when I'm using your top two pitchers. They just are really, really good. And instead of going by the data and a lot of the data is good. This to me looks like an aberration. Let's give them more room to see what they can do.
Falvey: I think it's always a conversation that Rocco is having. Certainly in the dugout with (Bench Coach) Jayce (Tingle), with (Bullpen Coach) Pete (Maki), with the staff as they work through this. I’ve said this, I don't know how many times at this point, but the reality is on a daily basis they utilize the information to make decisions in the dugout, that they talk about the potential risk of going back through the top of that order. That's part of the equation. But that's been part of the equation in baseball forever. So ultimately those decisions lie with the staff as they work through it. We certainly have personnel that at times this year couldn't go as deep into games from either a health standpoint or from a buildup standpoint, early. These are things that they have to work through. What's the best thing that is lining up our staff for getting the most out the remainder of the game and that's the decision they're making every night. And I respect their process.
I can tell you that I respect what goes into that, but I respect their conversations with players. You know, sometimes there's that conversation that happens in game with a player to try and understand how they're feeling and where they're at. And oftentimes it takes the manager to kind of have their back in that moment and maybe make a decision that might not be popular. Ultimately it's the right thing for that player on the team. So that's the way we navigate. We’ll continue to navigate. But hopefully we're able to add personnel that can go deeper into games that can be a part of what we're trying to do as we go forward.
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Hartman: When you had success in Cleveland, before you came here, one of your main calling cards, it wasn't just this, but one of the main ones was developing young pitchers. There are more young pitchers available right now, but I think a lot of us believe since you were hired in 2016 that more of that success might develop sooner than it has. How do you evaluate that when you hear people like myself say this is on Derek? And if this was one of the calling cards, more young developed starting pitchers should have had success on this team by now?
Falvey: It's always fair that we're trying to continue to get better on that side and evaluate what we have done. It's definitely something we've spent a great deal of time investing in trying to get better at. Ultimately, I'm really excited about some of the young guys that we have coming. You know, we've already seen some show up here, whether it's Durand pitching towards the back end of the bullpen or after acquiring Joe Ryan and seeing what he can do up here. We saw it at the end of the year this year with Louis Varland, with Bailey Ober, with Simeon Woods Richardson getting a start there down the stretch. And hopefully with Josh Winder. We're getting closer to where that group of guys hopefully will take on real opportunities for us going forward and we have to continue to add to it, continue to get better.
That was my experience for sure in Cleveland and something that took a great deal of time to get it right and get it going. It's been unfortunate at the minor league level over the last couple of seasons. We haven't had the normal track. But I feel like we're in a good place right now and going to continue to add to it as we roll in the next year. Hopefully with a healthy rotation with a good amount of depth.
Hartman: It's another year where when Byron Buxton plays, you win right around 60%. When he doesn't play about 40%. He doesn't get to 100 games. Again, his skill cannot be doubted. But do you need someone on your team next year, because of Byron's pattern, who can play 40-some games at centerfield and you just have to factor that into the makeup of your team?
Falvey: We certainly think about roster building with, you know, with the players we have and how we're going to build it out. Which areas we might need to be backing up to some degree. And I think Byron went through a year this year, that unlike other years where he dealt with more significant acute injuries, whether it was a broken toe or hit by a pitch and something that knocked him out, he dealt with something that was a bit more chronic in nature through the course of the season. And so ultimately that has to factor into our planning and the way we look at it. Making sure that we keep him as healthy as possible, but also preparing ourselves for the depth that we're going to need through the course of the season and at this stage.
I think we have to keep finding a way to get him on the field because as you mentioned, he is critical to our success and we know that.
We've said it before and it's why we signed him over the long term here. So we'll continue to focus on his health, get him right, play him as much as he can get out there for sure, and ultimately build the team around him that hopefully can support when we have inevitable injuries and things that pop up for any player on our team.
Hartman: Any doubt off this injury that he will be ready to go next middle-February when you gather down in Florida?
Falvey: No, I don't have any doubt with that right now. As he's worked through the surgical procedure that he had right at the end of the year, the feedback we're getting, he should be on a good track through an offseason program. Obviously we'll know more through the winter as he's progressing, but he feels good now. He's resting up and getting back, and hopefully we'll have a really good offseason to get him into a position where in February he's ready to go.
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