'I don't have a specific plan': Twins appear ready to go on without a GM

Twins Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey indicated that he'll run the show without a GM going forward.

Twins Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey / FOX 9

Thad Levine has left the Minnesota Twins after eight years as the general manager and it doesn't sound like the Twins have any plans to bring in someone to replace him. In other words, that job position may very well have been eliminated.

Instead, President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey indicated that he'll run the show with the help of the rest of the baseball operations department.

"I really do trust the group that we have. Our jobs have been, my job is to shepherd the growth and development of a lot of people in our baseball operation who can contribute to a lot of decisions," Falvey said when asked if he'll be looking internally or externally for a new hire.

"We have a handful of people that have done negotiations with agents and negotiations with other teams. We have a number of people that have played roles in minor league, free agent recruiting and all the things that you would typically would just have done 20 years ago, just my position alone would have most of those conversations, and ultimately that has grown over time. I don't have a specific plan for any of that. I believe in the group that we have."

The Twins say Levine's departure is on his own terms. It came five days after the season ended in disastrous fashion as the Twins, who were 70-53 on Aug. 17, crumbled to an 82-80 final record by going 12-27 over the final six weeks of the regular season.

"This has nothing to do with that. This has nothing to do with the specifics of the way the season went," Falvey made clear of Levine's timing to exit.

Levine leaving the Twins comes on the heels of the team firing four assistant coaches earlier this week. All three hitting coaches — David Popkins, Derek Shomon and Rudy Hernandez — were let go, as was assistant bench coach and infield coach Tony Diaz.

"Those are difficult decisions to make," Falvey said. "There were just things from a performance standpoint and as we dug deep into what we were doing, how we were doing it, that when you don't get the results you were hoping for — it's well intentioned, it's certainly part of the process of how you put everything together, you try to evaluate — but admittedly over different stretches of time for us offensively this year we had some struggles in a way where it felt like we had a hard time getting out of."

Falvey says his first order of business now will be working on "what we need internally for our staff."

But again, no more changes to the baseball operations department are expected — and that means a new general manager isn't coming.

"I don't expect major change in this going forward in terms of our baseball operation," Falvey said. "We don't have any other baseball operations-related-focused changes at this time."