A month after the Minnesota Twins fired manager Rocco Baldelli following the conclusion of a disappointing 92-loss season, the team has finally settled on his replacement: Derek Shelton.
Shelton will become the 15th manager in club history, a source with knowledge of the hiring confirmed. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Shelton was the Twins’ bench coach for two seasons serving under both Paul Molitor and then Baldelli in 2018-19 before getting hired to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates for five-plus seasons. He was fired by Pittsburgh in May and replaced by bench coach Don Kelly.
President of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey is very familiar with Shelton, 55, who was finalist in the Twins’ last managerial search before Baldelli was hired. Good friends from their time with the Tampa Bay Rays, Shelton, a long-time major league coach, agreed to stay on Baldelli’s staff for his first season at the helm.
Following the 2019 season in which the Twins won 101 games, Shelton was hired by the Pirates, where he remained until the middle of this season. Shelton had a 306-440 (.410) record during his time in Pittsburgh. Working with the low-budget Pirates, Shelton lost 100 games in two consecutive seasons. The Pirates moved on from him after a 12-26 start to last season.
Shelton, who was a minor league catcher in the early 1990s, pivoted to coaching later that decade. He managed a New York Yankees’ affiliate before moving on to work for the then-Cleveland Indians, first in the minor leagues and then the majors.
He first became a major league coach in 2005 in Cleveland, serving as hitting coach through the 2009 season. He then moved to Tampa Bay and held the same role, overlapping on the coaching staff with Baldelli, before serving as the Blue Jays’ quality control coach for a season in 2017. From there, he joined the Twins for two seasons before getting his first chance to manage.
Other reported finalists for the job included James Rowson, who was the Twins’ hitting coach from 2017-19, former Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais and Ryan Flaherty, the Chicago Cubs’ bench coach.
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