Derek Shelton

Current Position: Twins Bench Coach (2018 – Present)

Age: July 30, 1970 (49)

Managerial Experience: GCL Yankees (2000 – 2001), Staten Island Yankees (2002)

The 2019 Minnesota Twins were not the first time Rocco Baldelli and Shelton shared the same clubhouse and dugout. For that matter, it was not the only time they went to the postseason. The first time that happened was in 2010 with the Tampa Bay Rays.

Baldelli’s last year as a player would prove to be Shelton’s first year as the Ray’s hitting coach. Apparently, in that time and the ensuing years, the two formed a close enough bond where Shelton felt comfortable enough serving as Baldelli’s bench coach after the Twins passed over Shelton, the team’s 2018 bench coach, to hire Baldelli. On the decision, Shelton would tell Dan Hayes of The Athletic:

First and foremost, (Rocco and I are) friends. I have a ton of respect for him. He’s a smart baseball guy and we have a relationship. I think it was a matter after it went down, making sure he and I had a chance to sit down and discuss some things and talk one-on-one. … We sat down and had breakfast together and talked through what his vision was going forward.

The pitch from the Twins was for Baldelli and Shelton work in tandem to help guide the Twins. The end result was the Twins winning 101 games, the second most in franchise history. As a result, Shelton is once again garnering interest with teams reaching out to interview him for their managerial vacancies. After Shelton was the runner-up for the Twins and Texas Rangers jobs last year, he appears poised to get one of the eight openings this year.

Aside from working with Baldelli, Shelton has served as a hitting coach under Joe Maddon, who is also interviewing for managerial openings, Eric Wedge, and John Gibbons. In terms of Maddon and Wedge, Shelton has worked with two managers who have had a unique ability to connect with their players, and he has worked with managers who have won.

As a manager, Shelton does have a connection for one current Mets player, Robinson Cano. Shelton was his manager in 2002 with the Staten Island Yankees.

With his one year with the Blue Jays, he was their quality control coach. As we saw with Luis Rojas this year, this was a job which required him to be the liason between the front office and the coaching staff and players in how to incorporate analytics into team decision making. This job would be a good transition for Shelton from hitting coach to bench coach to potentially being a future Major League manager.

With the Blue Jays and then with the Twins, Shelton has learned about team expectations and how to handle communication between the front office and players. He apparently did it well with Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins saying, “He’s very comfortable with analytics, certainly interpreting the information and even asking questions that can make us better.” (Ben Nicholson-Smith, Sportsnet)

This job like all of his other jobs has arguably well prepared him to be a manager. In looking towards what type of manager he would be, Shelton, himself said, “You have to manage to your personnel. The type of team you have will kind of dictate how you play, but putting guys in motion, whether it’s through a hit-and-run, or on 3-1 or 3-2 counts… I’m a fan of that.” (David Laurila, Fangraphs).

What the Players Say

Trevor May – “We love Sheltie. What he’s doing now, he’s really good at. He’s a guy that, if something doesn’t have value, we’re not going to do it just because we have done it in the past. And it fits in well with a lot of analytic stuff.” (La Velle E. Neil, III, Minneapolis Star Tribune).

Kevin Pillar – “He’s been a huge asset to this team. I know his strength, more than anything mechanical is breaking down pitchers and that’s something I could benefit from.”

Recommendation

When we discuss managers, most fans yearn for managers of yesteryear like Gil Hodges or Davey Johnson. They want a manager who controls his clubhouse and who is completely in charge of the team guiding them through a 162 game season all the way to a World Series. The problem is those days are long gone.

The managerial position has become a collaborative one where, arguably, the manager has become a middle man between the front office and the players. He is someone hired to execute the orders made by the front office while managing the personalities in the clubhouse to get everything they can from the players.

When done poorly, you get accusations the manager is just a feckless puppet. When done well, like with Alex Cora and the Red Sox, you have a manager who challenges the front office to get better data and to find ways to help the team win a World Series.

Based upon what we have seen with his tenure with the Blue Jays and the Twins, Shelton at least appears to be cut from the cloth of Cora. In fact, Shelton would compare himself to Kevin Cash, a manager is another example of exactly the type of manager you want in today’s game. If you are going to take a risk on a manager with no Major League experience, Shelton may just be that man. Certainly, his sharing some of the duties with Baldelli helps ease the concerns of his not having any Major League managerial experience.