Twins Hire Rocco Baldelli as Their New Manager

Seeking a fresh voice for their underachieving young players, the Minnesota Twins have made Rocco Baldelli the youngest manager in the major leagues.

The Twins hired Baldelli, 37, on Thursday, bringing the Tampa Bay player, assistant and coach to Minnesota for his first job as a manager. He replaces Paul Molitor, who was fired after four seasons with a 305-343 record. Baldelli will be the first major league manager born in the 1980s.

Baldelli spent last year on the staff of Rays Manager Kevin Cash, the first three-first-base coach. His role for 2018 was a newly created position of major league field co-ordinator, assisting Cash and the bench coach Charlie Montoyo with in-game strategy, working with the outfielders and focusing on the continued development of the team's young players.

Those were the magic words in Baldelli's bio for the Twins' chief baseball officer, Derek Falvey, and General Manager Thad Levine. They were effusive with their praise of Molitor for his acumen, character and flexibility, but the closest Falvey and Levine came to the fore for a more specific reason for the loss of their relationship with the millennials. players in hopes of more productivity on the field.

"Today's player is growing demanding on coaches and managers relating to relationships and motivation and those spells of things," Levine said then. "We need to continue to help you in this area, in this new generation of player."

Whether or not the 62-year-old Molitor might have done more, the 2018 season was a mess for the Byron Buxton fielder and third baseman Miguel Sano, the two players long groomed to be the cornerstones franchise. The Twins finished 78-84 after making the A.L. wild-card game in 2017.

Buxton, 24, was still affected by injuries and struggled anew at the plate, so much that he spent the last four months in AAA Class. Though Buxton won a Gold Glove Award in 2017 and has 46 steals in 51 career attempts, his on-base-plus-slugging percentage is just .672 in 306 major league games.

Sano, 25, also had a career-worst season in 2018 after making the All-Star team the year before. He spent six weeks in the minor leagues for a midseason reconditioning of his work clothes and hitting approach and struck out.

Before joining the coaching staff with the Rays, Baldelli was a special assistant in the front office of the team, which drafted him sixth overall in 2000 out of high school in Rhode Island. Baldelli debuted with the Rays at age 21 in 2003, finishing third in the American League Rookie of the Year Award voting after batting .289 with 51 extra-base hits and 27 stolen bases. He picked up the nickname "Woonsocket Rocket" for his birthplace city and his speed on the field.

The only year when he was played in 62 games for the Boston Red Sox. In 2008, he went into the race for the Rays in Game 7 of the A.L. Championship Series against the Red Sox and homered for the Rays in Game 5 of the World Series the following week.

Injuries has been reported to be most severe, but it has been caused by muscle fatigue after the 2010 season.

Baldelli will be the 14th manager for the Twins since the franchise relocated from Washington in 1961, only their fourth manager since 36-year-old Tom Kelly took over in 1986 and their first manager hire outside the organization since Ray Miller in 1985.

Cash, who is 40, is the next-youngest manager behind Baldelli. The Twins under Falvey and Levine over the last two years, with a particular admiration for what the Rays have pioneered. They hired Rays Pitching Analytics expert Josh Kalk has a senior analyst before the 2018 season, during which the Twins began copying Tampa Bay's experiment of starting games with high-pitched pitches.