It's easy to have hope when all is in front of you, and there's nothing left to lose.

The 2025 Twins stand at an intoxicating crossroads. And no, I do not include the Pohlads in this equation - I'm referring to whichever 26 players end up being asked to bear the burden of taking this team to the postseason over the next few months, payroll and franchise financials be damned.

Given the status of things, this should logically be a rebuilding year. In fact, let's take stock of recent events- after putting to bed the cruelest streak in sports, and finding themselves with the greatest opportunity in 30 years(!) to seize the fanbase's imagination, the decision was made to not only *refuse* to do so, but to instead lower the current team's payroll, and ensure a regression in their fortunes. It was, without argument, the greatest subversion of anticipation that I can recall in my lifetime as a sports fan. It is the franchise equivalent of self-harm - to actively shrink away from the responsibility of healing the trauma of the Twins fanbase. To reject this call was to deny the very reason one should have for bothering to own a team in the first place. To take the promise we had all collectively tasted for the first time since 2004 and instead poison it, cementing the acid in our veins we had generated through our fandom, rather than exorcise it once and for all. 

These decisions helped to sow the seeds for what we saw transpire in 2024. A promising squad who knew the quality of their craft. Flashes of brilliance that refused to stay buried, even if they could sometimes be lost in the quagmire that was the unyielding streakiness plaguing the roster. Royce Lewis naively proclaiming that he "didn't do slumps", only to be patiently reminded by the fates that he, too, wasn't immune to misfortune. The constant roll of the dice that was the health of the team's core. And once again, a roster that only needed the support of the Pohlads to ensure the cavalry would arrive when needed - only to find, come the trade deadline, that reinforcements were not coming through the clubhouse door. The burden would be fully placed on the shoulders of an already depleted staff to carry our hopes across the finish line, and it didn't matter how obvious it was that it wouldn't be enough - that was the end of it, in more ways than one. The collapse that followed was gargantuan. In many ways, it was undeserved. None of this should have even been on the table. And yet, it transpired in the open for all of us to experience. And then, weeks later, those responsible announced it was time for them to wash their hands of it all by placing the team on the auction block.

Where does that leave the Twins in 2025? The fanbase? The players? It's an impossible question when there's no telling who the absentee landlords will be replaced with or when that substitution will happen. Can you be excited about a squad when you know, deep inside, that there is every reason that its construction should be better than it is, if not for a refusal from the owners to do the bare minimum? How do you cheer for a team when to do so is to accept the cynicism and banality that is the cravenness of professional sports in the 21st century?

But if I could ask one thing of you, it would be to attempt to shut out the noise that capitalism screams at us in this day and age, and think about what's possible with the players and coaches already here. To read FanGraphs and understand the numbers suggest is possible - if not probable - for the Twins in 2025 is to be provoked to get one's hopes up again. To foresee a year where the pitching is dominant, the lineup rises to the heights that we already know is within reach, and where October baseball isn't just a thin layer of icing on an already flimsy layer cake. 

It feels strange to try and aggregate how the world feels about this team in this moment. The fanbase is (rightly) agitated over the limbo the organization currently finds itself in, preventing it from moving forward. The pitching staff (and especially the bullpen) are projected to be one of the best in baseball, while power rankings still plunge the Twins to as far down as the bottom third of the league. It's enough to send one hurtling deep into a bleak emotional spiral, but only if you haven't already been down this road many times before. Because, honestly, this location is the address where Twins Territory has lived for more years than I can remember. A team everyone seems to understand is capable of wonderful things, but refuses to come to the consensus that those things are likely to ever happen.

It is a battle I find myself in as spring training starts its trudge towards the regular season. As a former poker player, I am reminded of a thought exercise I was taught to help combat the frustrations of losing a big hand - 

Look at your chip stack. Look at your cards. Forget what just happened and how well you were doing before this moment. Imagine in the previous hand that instead of losing, you just doubled up, and that you are in twice as good of a position as you were before. How would you feel in that moment? Because the numbers match exactly the situation you're saddled with in real life. Think and play as if you've just doubled up, and if you truly have the skills to do so, you'll do just fine.

The Twins have the pieces to astound a lot of observers. It'll require some luck and unexpected consistency, but there is no reason to believe such an outcome isn't in its grasp. I might be guilty of rose-colored glasses, but I would forever prefer that to any other perspective.

Here's to 2025, and this roster of neglected misfits running roughshod over the expectations of all who dare to believe that they aren't capable of great things. They have at least one believer in their cheering section, and I hope that number is far greater than myself.

If one cannot believe that this is the year, then I don't understand the point of baseball.