This weekend series in Pittsburgh is big for the Minnesota Twins, a team that has survived on chaos all season long. But maybe most important to manager Derek Shelton.
A series win and the team could get themselves back to .500. They’d close the distance in the early AL Central race and put distance between them and other AL teams for the wildcard race, where the Twins hold the final spot. Shelton would also get a series win over the team that fired him last May.
How did Shelton end up with the Pittsburgh Steelers? How did he do there? And why does this weekend matter so much?
Shelton’s Past
To understand how Derek Shelton got to this point, fans must look into how he got to Pittsburgh.
Shelton was a catcher during his playing days. During his sophomore season at Southern Illinois, he led his team to the Missouri Valley Conference championship, sending the Salukis to the NCAA tournament. In his junior year, he led the Missouri Valley Conference by throwing out 43% of opposing base runners attempting to steal.
After leaving Southern Illinois, he had a short playing career with the New York Yankees. He played two seasons of A ball before an elbow injury requiring surgery ended his playing career.
Shelton became a minor league coach for the Yankees in 1997. After the Yankees bumped him up to minor league manager in 2000, he won the New York-Penn League Championship with the Staten Island Yankees in 2002.
The Cleveland Indians took notice and hired him as a minor-league coach. Eventually, they hired him as their major-league hitting coach.
After coaching in the Tampa Bay Rays’ and Toronto Blue Jays systems, Paul Molitor hired Shelton as their bench coach on November 6, 2017. He served as Molitor’s bench coach in his final season and as Rocco Baldelli’s in his first before the Pittsburgh Pirates hired him as their manager.
Managing the Pirates
Shortly after the 2019 season, the Pirates parted ways with Clint Hurdle and named Derek Shelton as their new manager. The COVID-19 pandemic reduced his first season to 60 games. Pittsburgh went 19-41, good for the worst record in baseball.
Pittsburgh won fewer than 65 games in the next two seasons. In 2023, the Pirates extended Shelton, and he led his team to a 76-86 record, good for fourth in the NL Central. They won 76 games again the next season, finishing in last place in the division.
Not even a quarter of the way into his sixth season, the Pirates parted ways with Shelton. He spent 2025 without a team after starting 12-26. He spent five full seasons in Pittsburgh without a playoff berth.
Why this weekend matters
All roads led back to Minnesota. Here we are, entering a weekend where Derek Shelton can make a statement in managing his first series back in Pittsburgh since his departure.
By beating his old team, Shelton can help galvanize a Twins team that’s hovering around .500. While the Pirates currently sit in fifth place in the NL Central at 29-27, the Twins are in third place in the AL Central at 27-30.
Shelton has had success with a team that has had no expectations before. He can build off that in Minnesota by taking the Twins to the playoffs. A series win in Pittsburgh could boost a team that’s surprisingly playing .500 ball through May.
If the Twins can find a way to use Shelton’s past and his knowledge of PNC Park to Minnesota’s advantage, fans might look back to this series as the pivotal moment that propelled the team to Shelton’s first playoff berth.
