MINNEAPOLIS — A few weeks back, in the midst of a collapse that saw the Twins plummet from tied for first place on Labor Day to 14 games back, Derek Falvey made a subtle joke about the team’s season-long bill for MRIs.
Much like the credit card bill at the end of a long vacation, the Twins’ president of baseball operations had no interest in tallying up the damage. Twins players spent enough time on the injured list during the 2022 season that Falvey didn’t want to know how much the team spent examining them.
As it was no surprise, Twins evaluators found that their once-promising season had ended in disaster. One area they frequently returned to was their medical team. Falvey announced on Monday that Michael Salazar, the Twins’ head athletic trainer, was being fired. The Twins had finished second in baseball with 2,333 injuries.
Even more shocking is the fact that Salazar was the sole department head or coach to be fired or transferred after the Twins finished their second consecutive losing campaign with a record of 78-84. Though Falvey was clear that everyone returning must improve, the Twins believe they already have the right pieces in place — if the team stays healthy — to return to the postseason and end the club’s miserable 18-game playoff losing streak.
“The health side of it is a big part of it,” Falvey said. “But this whole group, we feel like, is the right group to help lead us in the direction we need to go. … I feel like we’ve got to do a better job, every person in this room, everyone connected to it. What can we do to improve? In the second half of the game, we felt that a lot more planning was done and some of what we tried to do and execute was actually quite good. So you’re evaluating process relative to outcome.
