Out to Fix the Twins, a New Executive Wants More From the Mound

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The best Derek Falvey can say about himself, as a pitcher, is that he usually put the ball where he wanted. He had a generic assortment of pitches: a curveball, a changeup and a fastball that never reached 90 miles per hour. Sometimes he varied arm angles. He tried anything to survive.

“I was going to work to contact,” Falvey said, “and usually that contact was loud.”

Falvey, now 34 and the Minnesota Twins’ new chief baseball officer, peaked as a pitcher in high school, but he made the team at Trinity College in Hartford. He was not very good by then, but he watched the games intently. He formulated strategies for teammates and studied opponents, hoping to decode their signs. If he could not help the Bantams with his pitching, Falvey would find other ways.

Bill Decker, the head baseball coach at Harvard, who coached Falvey at Trinity, said: “You can hang on and have an attitude, you can hang it up and complain about everything, or you can hang in there and do the best you can, because you’re a team guy. And that’s what he is.”

Pitching captivated Falvey. Part of his fascination came from growing up near Boston in the 1990s, when Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez were with the Red Sox and at the top of their game. But mostly, Falvey’s mind was simply suited for the one position that initiates action. He is a planner, he said. He likes working puzzles and solving problems.

Now he has a big one: how to fix the Twins, who were 59-103 in 2016, the franchise’s worst season since 1949, when it was the Washington Senators. Falvey, whose full title is executive vice president and chief baseball officer, had spent nine years in the front office of the Cleveland Indians, most recently as assistant general manager.

For the proudly insular Twins, hiring a leader from outside the organization sent a clear message.

“Things were broken,” said reliever Glen Perkins, a St. Paul native who has spent more than a decade with the Twins. “I think ownership realized that something needed to change, and what the Twins organization was doing wasn’t working anymore. It had worked for a long time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work.”

The Twins won six American League Central titles from 2002 through 2010. Since then, they have been 158 games below .500, and pitching has been the main reason. For five seasons in a row, the Twins finished last in the majors in strikeouts. Last season they ranked 26th out of 30 teams in strikeouts, with a 5.08 E.R.A. that put them in 29th place, just ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In Falvey — who hired Thad Levine from the Texas Rangers as his general manager — the Twins have an acknowledged pitching expert. That was part of his appeal to Dave St. Peter, the team’s president and chief executive.

“Clearly, his vision for pitching got our attention,” St. Peter said. “But beyond that, it was how he wanted to build in terms of people, collectively, across all aspects of baseball operations. His skill set in building relationships was impressive.”

Falvey created his network of connections in 2007, compiling written and video reports on prospects in the Cape Cod League, listening to scouts’ advice and showing them how he could help. The Indians hired him that fall, first as an intern and then as a scouting assistant.

The goal, Falvey said, was to help whomever he could, knowing that he would learn a lot in the process. The Indians — considered a cradle for budding executives under the team president Chris Antonetti and his predecessor, Mark Shapiro — were struck by how seamlessly Falvey handled various responsibilities.

“He could straddle the line between deep analytics and on-the-field coaching better than just about anybody I’ve ever seen in the front office,” General Manager Mike Chernoff said. “It’s his personality. He was a guy who would do every little thing.”

The Indians hired Terry Francona as manager in October 2012, while he was still finishing up a season as an analyst for ESPN. Francona bonded instantly with Falvey, who shared reports on the team’s players and proved his versatility in a crisis.

One morning late that month, Francona awoke in a panic. He had to drive from Cleveland to Detroit for a World Series pregame show, but stepped on his glasses, which had fallen from his hotel night stand. He called Falvey, who calmly found a repair shop and sent Francona safely on his way.

It was resourceful, sure, but lots of people could have completed that task. What distinguished Falvey was how much he would teach Francona — a lifelong baseball man — about pitching.

It is rare, Francona explained, for those in uniform to so eagerly seek input from a young executive who never played in the pros. But Falvey was not just reciting statistics. He had a keen understanding of pitching mechanics and how they translated to performance.

“He’s a star,” Francona said. “When he started interviewing, we knew he was gone. He gets it, he’s smart, his people skills are off the charts, he’s genuine. Nothing was too big, nor was it too small. And because of that, Chris would have him travel with us a lot, just because we used him so much. He’s awesome.”

The Indians won the American League Central last season, advancing all the way to Game 7 of the World Series, while the Twins sank to the bottom. Minnesota’s 83-win season in 2015 had obviously been a mirage, but the Twins do have an impressive core of young position players, led by third baseman Miguel Sano and outfielders Byron Buxton and Max Kepler, none older than 24.

To make the most of it, though, they must revamp their pitching. In the past, Twins teams chafed at the “pitch to contact” label, but that was what the staff did, filling the zone with strikes and counting on stellar defense for support. When the defense fell apart, the pitchers lacked the stuff to compete.

Since 2008, according to BaseballSavant.com, Twins pitchers have thrown by far the fewest pitches in the majors registering at least 95 miles an hour: 6,516. The Kansas City Royals have had the most, with 22,100, and they picked up two league pennants and a championship along the way.

“There’s an organizationwide desire to shed that label, the pitch-to-contact term,” Falvey said. “So there’s a lot of energy around embracing some new programs to make sure we are talking about velocity development and how we get strikeouts and some elements to finish pitches. I think it’s the right fit now, because the organization is open to that conversation.”

Falvey said there was no quick solution, and he is encouraged that his new bosses have not asked for one. Every pitcher has a distinct way to get the most out of his ability, Falvey said, through nutrition, arm care, mechanics, use of statistical analysis and so on.

Putting his ideas into effect, and tailoring so many individual strategies, will take time and manpower. The Twins will most likely add to their staff, St. Peter said, but in the meantime Falvey has retained all of the pitching coaches, from the rookie-level Gulf Coast League through the majors. He also kept his interim predecessor, Rob Antony, as an assistant.

The previous general manager, Terry Ryan, was revered in the organization and now scouts for the Philadelphia Phillies. But otherwise, the faces around Falvey are quite similar to the ones here last season. Many were around for the good years, too, and Falvey wants to honor that.

“I don’t want to tear away at the fabric of who the Twins are, which is that loyalty,” he said. “People care about the Twins. They’re not just working here for a paycheck. They care very deeply about this organization.”

One of Falvey’s favorite books is “Give and Take” by Adam Grant; he said he thinks about it all the time. The theme is that helping those around you serves as motivation and fuels productivity. It seems like a healthy approach for a proud franchise turning to an outsider for all the help it can get.