MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 4, 2023

Rocco Baldelli

Minnesota Twins

Press Conference

Q. A lot of conversations just around the media sphere surrounding your group going into the offseason. With Polo, he has been a fixture at the top of your lineup for a long time. How important has he been to your lineup construction and what are your thoughts about the uncertainty around his future?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Yeah. I mean, Polo is clearly an established player, but he's been one of the most important players that we've had in my tenure with the Twins. I've said it before, but middle infielders who switch hit and are always productive when they're on the field, who you can hit really almost anywhere at the top of the lineup, there's very few of those guys anywhere in the world that can do what he does.

On top of that, great teammate. I can sit here and just talk about all the positive things about Polo, but I try to always make sure that I'm appreciating Polo and everything that he does for us, helping us win games because he's a very, very good player.

If you ever don't have a player like that -- like for instance, when he has been off the field -- you look up and quickly realize what you are missing. You're missing a lot.

Q. When you have a guy that presents value like that to you as a manager, how do you balance that's value to a lot of clubs and to you guys as well versus that's a guy you want at the top of your lineup as a switch hitter balancing things out?

ROCCO BALDELLI: You just don't want to lose him. That's it. That's pretty easy. Because no matter what you do -- you can find other good players and acquire players -- you can't replace all the things he does. I like the idea of also keeping him and having Polo with us as long as possible and watching him just play.

Q. What's kind of your view on center field? (Indiscernible.)

ROCCO BALDELLI: I don't want to sit up here and just talk in three different directions. We have one of the best center fielders out there in Byron Buxton. He's doing very well right now. I'll let Derek probably give more of a medical update, but he's doing very well after his procedure went well. He's doing very well. He's doing a lot of rotational stuff right now and feeling good.

We're going to go into Spring Training planning on, if everything continues to go well, having him out there in center field and very hopeful that the procedure he had puts him in the spot he needs to be in. We have to plan for everything, as usual. Michael did a tremendous job for us this past year.

Defensively the solidification of everything going on defensively, a lot of that revolved around him and Carlos up the middle. Having a guy like that -- we don't necessarily have that player unless you're talking about Buck. There are some other guys. I won't, again, dive into every name, but we have some guys that we think have the ability and could grow and could come into playing that position. But right now it's still early in the offseason. I'll probably say that a few times as I sit here.

We're quietly building. We're quietly kind of assessing everything going on around us, and we just have to stay ready in case there is a move that presents itself. You never want to put yourself in a spot where -- you're never going to have too many good players where you are impeding yourself in any way. But you also need to protect your team and have as much good depth as possible.

Q. When you say you're planning on him playing center field, how difficult is it this time of year to not know what his capacity for that will be? Like, planning around that.

ROCCO BALDELLI: No matter which player you're talking about, you don't know anything for sure. It's December. Anyone that's rehabbing and coming back, you have a plan and then you have a different direction you can go if that plan doesn't work out exactly the way you want.

But the news is positive so far. The little video clips that I get, they look good. He's doing well. He's doing well.

Q. Have you had a chance to talk to him at all?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I have not talked to Buck. I've talked to Nick recently. He had a visit up in Minneapolis. I don't know if you guys have gotten any details on that, but I think it was a checkup and also kind of like a good session where everyone got to lay eyes on him up in Minneapolis.

It went just as good as we could have hoped.

Q. I'm sure you didn't want to lose Sonny, but could you give us a scouting report on his competitiveness, had fire on the mound as a guy that you managed?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Yeah. I mean, we had him for a couple of years. As productive on the mound of any pitcher you're going to be able to acquire. Very successful.

The way he goes about it, different than most. He's got a good kind of older-school approach and personality to a lot of the things that he does, which a lot of people in the game appreciate. Especially on the day he pitches. He's a different cat when he's out there on the day he pitches.

I could tell you all the things that I think, but the one thing I can say is that his teammates when he has the ball in his hands, they want to jump on his back every time he goes out there and takes the mound. And he's going to want to keep pitching. He's going to want the ball. He's going to want -- not want -- but he's going to be extraordinarily straightforward and aggressive just focusing on getting outs.

He doesn't get distracted very easily, if ever, even if things don't go his way. He just worries about making a really good pitch, the pitch he wants on the following pitch, and that's it. He approaches things the right way. He's going to be very good with the Cardinals. I'm certain of that.

He is still getting better and still willing to make adjustments at this point in his career, which is why he's been such a good pitcher as he's gotten older. He's continually -- you could say he's pitching better now than he was probably even a few years back.

Q. He threw a sweeper twice as much. Was that something that came from you guys or your analytics people?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Everything that eventually happens, I think, comes from the player. I mean, the player has to buy in, and Sonny had to feel good about whatever pitch he is throwing. And Sonny also can do anything he wants out there. Any pitch he wants to throw, he's going to throw it. Whatever pitch is on his mind, that's the one that's coming.

Obviously that was something that he's been doing more of, but it was a good pitch for him, but I don't label his pitches. Only he's the one that really knows what he's about to do as he's about to rear back and release the ball. Because he can manipulate and do different things with all of his pitches so well, and that's his harder stuff and his off speed.

Almost all of them, they're pretty effective.

Q. Losing Sonny and Kenta, how do you feel about just the rotation as it stands right now?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Well, you never want to lose some of your good players. But part of what we do, and as I was just saying, you constantly just have to be looking around at ways to get yourself better.

We've done it over the past, you know, five years since I've been here. That's really all I can talk about in a variety of ways. We're going to have to continue to do that. We're going to have to be aggressive when the opportunities are in front of us. You don't know when those opportunities are going to come.

Whether you're fielding a phone call from another club or developing your own players and pushing them kind of out there into the spotlight and on to the field and kind of supporting them and just letting them play, you're going to have to take some chances because you're not going to have the same club.

Losing those guys is tough, but you don't want to have the exact same club every single year. I also think some movement on the roster creates a little hunger and shakes things up in a good way for a lot of the players too.

Our rotation was good to us last year. They were very productive, very effective. Every time we handed the ball to someone, we got a good start, it felt like. It's not going to be the same rotation. But you start adding Paddack in there, you start looking at Louie Varland. Again, he can pitch in different roles. But we have some guys, but we're going to stay open-minded and see if maybe we can even add to the group.

Q. Back on Buxton, it was evident pretty early in the spring that you were going to wait a little while to put him in center and build him up later. Was there ever any point where you thought, yeah, this is getting close, this is real, or did it stay pretty removed for you throughout the year?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I don't know how to really necessarily answer it where early on in Spring Training we were just kind of going off of how he was recovering and how he was doing. Again, I feel like I'm kind of just stating some of the same things that we talked about kind of all year long. I'll probably avoid doing that, but he's one of the best players in the game.

If he was capable at any point of playing more or getting out there on the field, he would be out there. Believe me. He knows that, and I think everyone here who has been around him on a regular basis knows that.

Again, there's reasons to be optimistic right now about how he's doing. But again, you have to evaluate -- any guy coming back from something, once we get down to Spring Training and that first week of workouts, that first game or two or three that they play, it's going to tell you how the player is doing. But it's going to be a buildup one way or the other. That's, I think, obvious.

He's doing fine right now, which we're pleased about, and we're not going to know anything for certain ever until we get to opening day. And that's ultimately when the decisions are going to come to light.

Q. Just curious, the success of the Texas Rangers and the success of the Arizona Diamondbacks, do you think that changes the way organizations possibly build their rosters?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Well, you're always learning from the teams around you and try to pay attention to everything going on. So those two teams, congratulations to them on all their success, because they had two wonderful seasons.

But I don't necessarily think that success that a team has in a given year is going to change the approach of our club or probably any other club. You're going to pick and choose what you're kind of looking at and what you're trying to learn.

I mean, the way we approach things this year is different than last year and certainly five to ten years ago. You just have to keep evolving, and those teams evolved very quickly.

Q. You mentioned the approach Sonny had, and I wonder for you if you saw that impact the rest of your pitching staff and how that might have played out for you over the last couple of years?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I think some of those things are tangible, some of the things that Sonny brought to the table were very tangible. They'd watch him pitch and pick and choose and mimic some of the things that they would see. But I think some of them are not necessarily things that you can really grab ahold of, like his desire to hold on to the ball in his starts.

Just how much -- not physically with his fist -- but how he kind of fights out there on the mound when things get more challenging in an outing, the way he approaches all of those different situations, and the pitches and the way he acts out there and things like that, I think those are the things that the players really liked watching and probably drew something out of, maybe even more so than the pitches that he was throwing during the game.

But he's one of the best pitchers in the game still. Everyone's eyes are on him when he takes the ball, and I think it's going to be like that in his new home as well.

Q. With Jose coming off injury and (indiscernible) -- you guys brought in Solano late in the spring -- with those guys (indiscernible) is first base something you're looking at where you guys could use some help potentially?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Yeah. I would say it's a spot on the field where we still have some things to kind of work out before Spring Training starts. A.K. coming back from some of the health stuff that he's been dealing with. A.K. is an exceptional hitter.

The year that he had last year was a very -- I would call it high-end offensive year, and he did it unhealthy. He actually was a well-above-average Major League hitter struggling through periods of time to take the field and to even swing the bat.

You sit there and go, well, this guy should be able to get to a good spot and get strong upper body-wise. Then you really wonder what he's capable of.

We got some good news on him, so knowing that he's not coming back from something that should take him into the season, something that he should probably be able to come back from sooner than later, that's good. I mean, that's something we were real happy to see.

With that said, he's still coming back from something again. We're going to need to kind of figure out how everyone fits on the roster.

I mean, one roster move -- which every team is going to have several times over -- and the way everything fits kind of changes. We don't necessarily have a plug and play group where everyone just goes out there and plays for nine innings. We make moves. We're going to platoon at times. We're going to do different things, and our players are open-minded to that. I think they've seen some of the benefits of it, a lot of them.

Can we get stronger in some ways? I think we can, but we don't know how that's going to happen yet. We have the right pieces already that we feel good about. But, again, we grab Solano right as Spring Training is starting -- after Spring Training is starting. We're just going to keep working throughout and see what happens.

Q. Still going to feel a need to continue filling that other half of the platoon with guys like Julien and Wallner and Kirilloff moving forward?

ROCCO BALDELLI: We have Farmer right now too who can help us in a lot of different spots. Miranda coming back. We have some guys that are very capable, but what I would say is we probably have more of those left-handed bats to go out there and face those types of pitchers and fewer guys at the right-handed hitting side of things.

Every year you go into the offseason with a few spots that you're paying more attention to. That's probably one of them for us. But how we fill those holes, we're not going to probably fill them at the Winter Meetings. We're going to probably do that throughout the offseason going into Spring Training.

Q. Entering the second year of the notable rule changes, do you plan to do anything differently? It seemed like you stole more in the second half, especially with Castro, but try to do more things with the new rules?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Well, when we have some guys that can run a little bit and do some things, we're going to let them go and track meet it out and run. Let them do what they do well.

Willi was great. Stevenson late in the year came up for a short period of time; we let him run. The game is set up to let athletic players go out there and just run around and do things and help you win. So the more guys that we have like that, the more we're going to run. Pretty simple stuff. But I would love to have a bunch of guys that could go do that and just sit back and green light them and let them go.

It's also our job to help some of our other guys, whether it veteran players or guys that maybe they don't run the same way as Willi Castro, pick and choose their spots. We did a little bit of that last year. Most of our base-running production came from the guys that we were just letting them go.

And even Buck who, again, wasn't 100% last year clearly, still was a really good base runner, and he's helping us do a lot of positive things when he's out there too even if he's not running 100. Buck at 90% running around on the bases is a better base runner than almost everyone in this game, so that's another weapon that's right there for us.

Q. How you might use Varland (indiscernible)?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I don't know when that decision is going to be made. I love having Louie Varland. I love giving Louie Varland the ball. I think I told you guys said at the end of the year, when he is throwing 100 with a 90- to 92-mile-an-hour cutter and you're sending him out there against the best hitters that you are going to face and he is going right through them, it makes you kind of open your eyes a little bit. That's exciting. But he can also start. It's hard to developing starting pitching in this game too.

We're going to have probably some -- we're going to have some decisions to make as far as what we're going to eventually do with him. I've talked with Pete a whole bunch on this. Pete is optimistic that he could be a very good Major League starting pitcher. When you have those guys in front of you, you don't look away. You don't just put a guy in the pen just because he ticks up when he's in the pen. If you have a Major League starter, you're going to want to start him and give you innings and help you win.

Just the fact that we're even talking about this, it's a real good thing. The decision will probably be made later on in the offseason or even going into Spring Training, because either way Louie is going to be stretched out. We're going to let him get out there. He's going to put innings under his belt. He'll be ready. Going into the second, third week of Spring Training, he is going to throw a bunch.

Whatever happens and the decision we make, we're going to probably make it at that point.