Rocco Baldelli

Rocco Daniel Baldelli (born September 25, 1981) is an American former professional baseball outfielder and coach who is the manager of the Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball (MLB).

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays picked Baldelli in the first round (6th overall) of the 2000 Major League Baseball draft, so he decided to decline an athletic scholarship offer from Wake Forest and signed with Tampa Bay for $2.25 million.

He began his professional career with the Princeton Devil Rays, the team's High Rookie League affiliate.

Initially, Baldelli had to adjust to professional baseball.

Says Baldelli, "In Princeton, I had a hard time with all parts of the game…I didn't know how to play the game. Coming out of high school, I'd just come up to the plate and swing as hard as I could every time and try to smoke the ball. I didn't know about hitting mechanics, breaking pitches or reading pitchers."

Baldelli overcame his struggles as a hitter and quickly rose through the Tampa Bay organization.

In 2000, he was ranked the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' ninth-best prospect.

In 2001, he was considered the fifth-best prospect in the organization.

By 2002, just two years after being drafted sixth overall, he won the Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year Award.

Baldelli made his major league debut on Opening Day, starting in center field.

He and fellow rookie outfielder Carl Crawford would be two of the few bright spots on a Devil Rays team that lost 91 games.

As a player, Baldelli quickly progressed through the minor leagues and made his big league debut with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, on opening day 2003.

Baldelli quickly established himself as an excellent hitter and outfielder, and placed third in voting for American League (AL) Rookie of the Year.

Baldelli finished the 2003 season batting .289 with 11 home runs, 78 RBI, 89 runs scored and 27 stolen bases.

He also finished in the top ten in many hitting categories in the American League.

He was seventh in at bats with 637, tenth in hits 184, tied Ichiro Suzuki in eighth place with eight triples, and fourth in singles with 133.

He also led the AL in outfield assists and ranked 2nd in range factor, indicating that he was one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball.

Baldelli came in third in the voting for 2003 AL Rookie of the Year behind New York Yankees' outfielder Hideki Matsui and winner Ángel Berroa of the Kansas City Royals.

Baldelli had a similar sophomore campaign in 2004, batting .280 with 16 home runs, 74 runs batted in, 79 runs scored and 17 stolen bases.

In 2005, Baldelli's promising career was derailed by channelopathy, a rare metabolic/muscular disorder which causes frequent soft tissue injuries and severe fatigue.

He was unable to play at all in 2005 and missed significant time over the following seasons as doctors struggled to diagnose and treat his condition; from 2005 until his retirement in 2010, the former everyday center fielder spent long stretches on the disabled list and only once appeared in more than half of his team's games.

Baldelli signed a free-agent contract with his hometown Boston Red Sox in 2009 and appeared in 62 games as a backup outfielder and part-time designated hitter.

Unsure if he was physically capable of continuing his playing career, he returned to the Rays organization as a minor league coach in December 2009.

As the 2010 season progressed, he decided to attempt another comeback and began rehabbing in the Rays' minor league system.

Baldelli returned to the major leagues in September and hit a pinch-hit home run in his first at-bat.

He appeared in 10 games over the last month of the regular season and was included on the Rays' playoff roster, but severe muscle cramping during the team's first round series forced him out of the lineup, at which point he decided to end his playing career at age 29.

After retiring as a player, Baldelli spent three years in the Tampa Bay Rays organization as a roving minor league instructor and special assistant to baseball operations.

He was named the club's first base coach before the 2014 season and was promoted to major league field coordinator in November 2017.

Baldelli was named manager of the Minnesota Twins after the 2018 season.

In 2019, he led them to 101 wins and an AL Central Division title and was named the 2019 American League manager of the year.

At 38 years old, he was the youngest manager to win the award.

Rocco Daniel Baldelli was born to Dan and Michele Baldelli in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Rocco Baldelli attended the PEGASUS Gifted and Talented middle-school program at La Salle Academy in Providence.

He played baseball for the Rhode Island Tides, an AAU ball club.

Then he switched to Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, Rhode Island, for high school.

During his senior year at Bishop Hendricken High School, he pulled his oblique muscle, but still managed to hit .531-5-13 with nine steals in only 32 at-bats.

Not only did Baldelli excel at sports, but in the classroom as well.

There he posted a 4.25 grade point average.

On the SAT, he scored 1300, and considered attending University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University, Princeton University and Yale University.

He was also a four sport star, earning all-state honors in baseball, indoor track, basketball, and volleyball.