Thad Levine is no longer general manager of the Twins after the club announced his departure on Friday.
He spent eight seasons with the Twins, coming aboard in 2016 with current president of baseball operations Derek Falvey. Together they became Falvey & Co., or “Falvine,” charged with getting the Twins back on track after longterm GM Terry Ryan was let go and the team lost 103 games.
They were successful, the Twins making the postseason in 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2023. And they were on their way to doing the same this season until a September collapse left them out of the running and just two games above .500 at 82-80.
In the wake of a disappointing season, four coaches are moving on and so is Levine. Buy why? Was he forced out? Did he not want to work with a reduced payroll? Or was it something else?
The reporting surrounding his departure seems to suggest that the notion of having a general manager, when a team already has a head of operations (Falvey), has become superfluous.
“Falvey and Levine had initially presented as a forward-facing partnership with both representing the baseball operations department in the public eye for the first several years of their leadership, but Falvey took more of the primary role in the most recent years,” MLB.com reports.
The team certainly had less money to work with in 2024 than in 2023, the Star Tribune reported.
“Following a two-year surge in payroll, the Twins dropped their Opening Day figure below $130 million for the first time since 2021. The last time the Twins carried an Opening Day payroll that ranked in the top half of the major leagues was 2012.
“The Twins were one of nine teams that dropped payroll entering 2024. They cited the uncertainty of their local TV contract as one reason for their payroll reduction during the winter.”
The Twins ultimately worked out a one-year deal with bankrupt Diamond Sports Group, although it was thought to pay them less than the $55 million earned from TV in 2023.
And now Diamond only wants to work with one team going forward — the Atlanta Braves — while dropping 11 other clubs, according to its reorganization plan, ESPN reported.
“A source with Diamond, the bankrupt operator of Bally Sports channels, said the company is still hopeful of agreeing to new terms with the 11 other teams and has previously submitted proposals to each of them,” the ESPN report reads.
Still, if you were a general manager of a major league club with so much uncertainty, would you stick around? Perhaps not.
Extra innings…
-On Oct. 5, 2002, the Twins evened their best-of-five-game ALDS series against the Oakland A’s at 2-2 after an 11-2 win at the Metrodome.
The Oakland Tribune
“Did you really think they were going to win it in four?
“What rock have you been living under the last few years?
“Once again, as they did last year and as they did the year before that, the Oakland A’s have put themselves in a first-round corner: Game 5. An entire season-plus, 166 games, is reduced to one afternoon of ball.
“It didn’t have to be this way this time. The A’s threw the ball all over the yard Saturday, pitched delicately and inefficiently and blew an easy path to the AL Championship Series with an ugly 11-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins.”
Sources: MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com, ESPN.com