Although Thad Levine won’t be leaving the Minnesota Twins front office to join the Philadelphia Phillies, a different person with Twins ties will take on that role.
The 2020-21 MLB offseason continues to be slow in the player market for the Minnesota Twins and every other team that isn’t the New York Mets. Despite this, the Mets’ divisional foes, the Philadelphia Phillies, have been somewhat active when it comes to transactions made in their front office.
First reported by Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia, the Phillies are planning to name former MLB and Twins outfielder, Sam Fuld, as their new general manager. This move comes only two weeks after the Phillies made the surprising hire of Dave Dombrowski as their new President of Baseball Operations.
This is Fuld’s first time being in the role of general manager, but he has been apart of the Phillies’ front office operations since 2018. He took the role after a different man with Twins connections, Thad Levine, opted to stay in Minnesota.
Fuld’s playing career spanned from 2007-2015, and included wit a short 53 game stint with the Minnesota Twins in 2014. Fuld’s time with the Minnesota Twins was a strange case, as the Twins claimed Fuld off waivers from the Oakland Athletics on April 20, 2014, only to trade him back to Oakland on the July 31 trade deadline in return for Tommy Milone.
Fuld spent the majority of his career as a backup/platoon outfielder for several teams, including the Tampa Bay Rays and Chicago Cubs. Although Fuld split time between two teams during the 2014 season, it can easily be reflected on as the best season of his career.
In his 113 games that year, Fuld’s season totals included a .239 batting average, .663 on base plus slugging, four home runs, 36 runs batted in, 21 stolen bases, and a 1.8 WAR. Those are pretty solid numbers for a fourth outfielder.
Fuld’s durability and hustle on the base paths made him a fan favorite among Twins fans in 2014, even if he only was a Minnesota Twins player for a short time. Hopefully his career as GM goes as well as his stint here.