Derek Falvey choked up, his voice quivering and then paused and took a sip out of a water bottle as he tried to get his emotions in check.

As the Twins’ president of baseball operations recounted the six-week collapse that led to this — the Twins’ season ending on Sunday at the end of the regular season rather than in the postseason, as expected — the pain of it all was clearly weighing heavily on Falvey.

Despite some fans’ calls for Falvey and the manager he handpicked in 2018, Rocco Baldelli, to be replaced, both will remain in their jobs and be given the opportunity to turn things around.

Executive chair Joe Pohlad threw his support behind Falvey on Sunday before the Twins lost 6-2 to the Baltimore Orioles in the season finale, and Falvey did the same with Baldelli.

“I don’t judge employees off of six crummy weeks,” Pohlad said. “He’s got eight years of a resume and I talk with Derek daily, so I know — I know what he’s doing. He’s got a player-development resume. He’s got a major league resume and yeah, he’s busting his ass. He’s the right guy.”

Falvey sung a similar tune about Baldelli, saying “Rocco is my manager,” when asked if Baldelli would return for his seventh season at the helm of the Twins.

“We’ve been gutted during this process and trying to figure out how we fix it,” Falvey said. “That’s led to sleepless nights and challenging conversations and one-on-one conversations between he and I … trying to figure out how to fix it. I believe in his process. I believe in him. I believe in the partnership I have with him. That is how I feel and ultimately, that’s the way we’re going to go forward.”

Falvey declined to comment on other personnel, including general manager Thad Levine and the coaching staff, but the expectation in the coming days is that everyone will be evaluated and there could be changes coming.

The Twins were well-positioned to make the playoffs for most of the season, reaching a high-water mark of 17 games above .500 on Aug. 17. The next day, Jorge Alcala blew a late lead, the Twins lost a game they should have won and the spiral began.

There were any number of contributing factors — a sagging offense and injuries, among them — and Falvey and Baldelli spent long hours digging deep and trying to figure out how to turn the Twins around.

Falvey said he wakes up most nights now wondering what he could have done differently. He pointed to his watch, which tracks the quality of his sleep, and suggested he might as well throw it in the trash.

As the team parts ways until spring training, the two leaders will embark on an offseason with “even more work,” than any winter before them, Baldelli said. The manager said he did not take the vote of support lightly, saying he wanted to make fans, ownership and the organization proud.

But before they left, both imparted a similar message: Don’t forget what happened.

“I don’t want anyone to walk and in a week feel fine. At some point, you have to turn a page and figure out how you focus on next year. But I don’t want anybody to feel that in a week. If you’re feeling that right now, that’s a problem, if you’re fine right now,” Falvey said. “If you’re feeling it in a week, it’s probably a bit of a problem. If you’re feeling it … by the time the turn of the year rolls around and it’s fueled you through the offseason, great. We can’t linger on it forever. We’ve got to focus on ’25 and figure it out. But I think there’s a lot of things that we need to go deep dive on now that I probably don’t have answers for today.”

Falvey may not have the answers today, but he and Baldelli will spend an offseason searching for them after the bitter disappointment of the 2024 season.

“I want to do my job well and I want to bring glory to this area, to the people that care about this organization. I want to bring that happiness to this fan base,” Baldelli said. “We all have personal reasons for doing what we do. We love doing what we do. We have passion for doing what we do. But baseball is about bringing people together and bringing a fan base together for a common goal. I want to get back to that. That’s what I want for this team. We have our work cut out for us, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I’m up for it.”

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