MINNEAPOLIS -- At a press conference after the 2016 season, chief baseball officer Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine laid out their plan for the Twins: They wanted to build a consistent winner by means of collaboration, revamping their analytics department to go along with an already strong core of scouts.
Falvey and Levine haven't wavered from the grand scheme after a surprising 2017 campaign that saw the Twins improve from a 103-loss '16 to winning 85 games en route to the American League Wild Card Game. Minnesota is now in a contending phase, and signed manager Paul Molitor to a three-year extension this offseason.