How will Twins execs divvy up new duties?
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The Twins have announced a major transition in their leadership. Now what?
The organization has largely operated as a bastion of continuity. But this offseason looks to be setting up a new chapter in the team’s history, from a potential ownership change to Derek Falvey stepping into the team president role to Jeremy Zoll being elevated to general manager -- all while longtime franchise steward Dave St. Peter steps aside into an advisory role.
Just don’t expect all that to happen overnight.
St. Peter and Falvey have indicated that they hope to achieve most of the transition of duties as team president within the first quarter of 2025, but the benefit to St. Peter remaining as a strategic advisor in the organization is that he’ll have the ability to guide Falvey through the process in a controlled manner to ease the burden of the change on all fronts.
“I know that's wide, but I think it's realistic,” St. Peter said. “We're trying to get it right. We're not trying to get it done. We have some time. We have some work to do. … We're going to bring some additional people now into the conversation, which is going to be really healthy.”
Falvey already had been involved in conversations around the organization’s long-range business planning with St. Peter and executive chairs Jim and Joe Pohlad, especially as it pertained to investments around Target Field and the Twins’ various satellite complexes. St. Peter noted that, even as Falvey was hired in 2017 to lead baseball operations, there was already some sense that Falvey could perhaps one day advance to the team president role.
Now that the Twins have announced the changes to the organization, the plan is for Falvey to start more directly building relationships with St. Peter’s direct reports on the business side, so that Falvey can start mapping out a plan of how he hopes to divide responsibilities around business-side decision-making.
The plan won’t be for Falvey to inherit St. Peter’s full suite of responsibilities -- but this transition time will be critical in Falvey’s understanding of how to eventually structure and delegate all those processes according to the strengths of his deputies.
“No one can be Dave's role exactly,” Falvey said. “No one can be Dave St. Peter. I'm not even going to try. But I will take on a different role with different leaders underneath, with different structure, that ultimately will, hopefully, lead this team into the next phase.”
In the meantime, Falvey will continue to lead baseball operations -- though he noted that the time split between his baseball and business duties will likely vary wildly throughout the year.
Contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t necessarily the president of baseball operations (Falvey) or the general manager (now Zoll) who wields some sort of unilateral decision-making gavel in a front office -- especially not with the collaborative approach the Twins use in their process. Falvey has noted that, at any given time, more than a half-dozen leaders in his baseball operations department might be given some level of autonomy to make decisions.
Zoll was one of the most heavily involved among them, especially as it pertained to his home in player development -- and he emphasized the continuation of the group’s delegation of responsibilities, even with the change in his own title.
Falvey’s move away from some of the day-to-day baseball operations will create opportunities for Zoll to begin taking more of a leadership role in some spaces -- like scouting operations -- in which he perhaps had less focus in the past.
“I think in the immediate, day-to-day will feel similar, but my day-to-day is always kind of bringing a new problem or new challenge or different thing that will pop up,” Zoll said. “That’s honestly one of the things I find most exciting and rewarding about the roles I’ve held over the years.”