After 22 years leading Twins, Dave St. Peter stepping aside; Derek Falvey becoming team president

By Betsy Helfand, Pioneer Press – November 12, 2024

He wanted to work for the North Stars, and had Minnesota’s former NHL club offered him a job during his internship, one of the most influential figures in Twins history may never have worked a day in his life for the baseball team.

The fact that the North Stars never offered him the opportunity to stay full time turned into a blessing in disguise for Dave St. Peter.

The kid from Bismarck, N.D., who promised himself early on that nobody would ever outwork him, went on to intern for the Twins in 1990, the beginning of his lifetime journey in baseball. In 35 years in the Twins organization, St. Peter went from an intern to the manager of the Twins Pro Shop in Richfield to, many years later, the president and CEO of the team.

Now, it’s time for his next position within the organization that he has given so much of his life to. On Tuesday, St. Peter announced to club employees that he would step aside after decades of leading the organization and transition to the role of Strategic Advisor. The move is expected to take place in early 2025.

St. Peter, 57, said talks about this move date back at least two and a half years, when he started having conversations with control owner Jim Pohlad.

“This is a difficult decision, because this has been my life,” St. Peter said. “This has been my journey. I’ve given everything I have to this organization and have been proud to do it. It’s been a privilege. … I feel really blessed to have had the run I’ve had here in this chair, and I’m very much at peace with this decision. It’s the right time.”

St. Peter referenced a desire to spend more time with his family and feeling a calling for another chapter after steering the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic. He will remain around — “I’m not retiring,” he said — in an advisory role for both Twins ownership — the Pohlad family announced last month it is exploring a sale of the team after 40 years of family ownership — and team leadership.

Derek Falvey, who has run the team’s baseball operations since his hiring in 2016, will succeed St. Peter and become the Twins’ President of Baseball and Business Operations while Jeremy Zoll will be promoted from Vice President, Assistant General Manager to Senior Vice President, General Manager, taking over for Thad Levine, who departed this offseason.

“Nobody not named Pohlad cares more about the Minnesota Twins than Dave St. Peter,” Falvey said. “Nobody ever has. I’ll take on that argument with anybody who wants to sit across from the table from me and feel otherwise.”

While St. Peter said his greatest regret is that the team on the field did not do more damage in the postseason — they have not made it to the American League Championship Series since 2002 — he leaves behind an impressive legacy.

St. Peter played a leading role in helping get the bill passed to grant funding for Target Field, ensuring the team would stay in the state for decades to come. He helped oversee the design and opening of Target Field, regarded still, even 14 years after its opening, as one of the best parks in Major League Baseball.

Under his stewardship, the Twins were twice named “Organization of the Year” by Baseball America and have received awards for being among the top workplaces in the state.

He helped bring both the 2014 MLB All-Star Game and the 2022 Winter Classic to Target Field and has been a community leader in the Twin Cities for decades. Among that work, he oversaw the expansion of the Minnesota Twins Community Fund, the organization’s charitable arm.

“I owe an immense amount to Dave,” said executive chair Joe Pohlad, who mentioned that St. Peter once interviewed him for a job with the organization. “I think that the impact he has had on me, it’s really around work ethic and how to build relationships and treat people, and I think he has done that across all aspects of our organization, our community, our brand.”

While the Twins may not have advanced far in the postseason during his tenure overseeing the club, they did reach the playoffs 10 times and won six division titles in nine years in the 2000s. One of the hardest things he ever had to do, St. Peter said, was firing Terry Ryan, the general manager and architects of those successful teams.

St. Peter was then part of the group that hired Falvey, his eventual successor.

“As painful as it was with the Terry move, I felt Derek was the right leader at the time in 2016 and again today,” St. Peter said. “I think he’s the right leader at the right time taking on this incremental responsibility for everything he stands for as a person and as a leader.”

Among the things he expressed he was most proud of, St. Peter pointed to the way the Twins show up in the community and the people in the organization, Falvey included. Never, he said, have the Twins have more collective talent across the broader organization than they do now, a testament to the culture he helped build and sustain.

“We got better over the years. I got better as a leader and finally figured out it’s smart to hire people that are smarter than you,” St. Peter said. “I feel like the mark of a good leader is leaving the organization in a better place than you found it, and I’m confident that I did that.”