Rocco Baldelli, Minnesota Twins. (Photo by Duane Burleson/Getty Images)
Two older Minnesota Twins coaches won’t be able to coach this season.
The Minnesota Twins are now down two coaches on Rocco Baldelli‘s staff for 2020.
Because of the global pandemic, a pair of Twins coaches have been informed by the organization they will not be coaching this year. Per USA TODAY’s Bob Nightengale, “The Minnesota Twins have informed bullpen coach Bob McClure, 68, and major league coach Bill Evers, 66, that they won’t be working games this year, citing health and safety concerns, per LaVelle Neal. They will still be paid.”
Because Bob McClure and Bill Evers are over the age of 65, they are more at risk to contract the coronavirus and have debilitating symptoms than other players on the team and other coaches on Baldelli’s staff. It’s a crummy situation, but thankfully, the Twins are getting out ahead of this and will keep McClure and Evers on the payroll for 2020.
The Minnesota Twins won’t have two older coaches coaching this season.
McClure was hired by the Twins organization back in January to serve as their bullpen coach. He had most recently been with the Philadelphia Phillies back in 2017. The Twins were the fifth big league ball club he had worked for as a coach. McClure spent 19 years in the big leagues as a pitcher from 1975 to 1993, most notably with the Milwaukee Brewers from 1977 to 1986.
Evers is on his second stint a major league coach. He had previously been on Joe Maddon’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ staff as the bench coach from 2006 to 2007. Baldelli played for Maddon in the Tampa Bay outfield. He joined Baldelli in the Twin Cities last year as his catching coach, working alongside McClure with the pitching staff.
Minnesota is expected to contend for a World Series out of the American League this year. Of course, the Twins need to find a way to overcome their perpetual Junior Circuit postseason nemesis in the New York Yankees. They are one of a handful of teams who can realistically win it all in a coronavirus-shortened season, but losing two coaches on the staff doesn’t help at all.
We should expect other MLB clubs to have similar policies in place with older coaches on their staffs. It’s a tricky situation to remove that much veteran coaching experience from a big league club, but this is the world we live in today. The most important thing is the safety and the health of the players and coaching staff this season.
Minnesota may be one of the first teams to do this, but the Twins won’t be the last.