This whole organization sucks

[DaveW]

Serious question:

Is there honestly any reason to watch this team at this point?

 

I can't ever remember a time in my life where I was this apathetic towards the Twins, but over the past few weeks not only have I had zero desire to watch/listen to a game, but really don't even care to see the boxscore every day. Even when I was just a lad in the mid nineties it was always exciting to see the boxscore.

Surely I am not the only one...

[Willihammer]

I still watch half the games or so, but this might be the first year I don't make the effort to go to the ballpark and see a single game in person. Just not worth the time/money for me.

[Boom Boom]

Usually by the bottom of the second inning I've moved on to paying bills, folding laundry, or taking a nap.

 

In a rare instance of watching almost an entire game yesterday, I had to laugh out loud when Bremer announced that there's a discount for college students on standing-room only tickets.

[Bill]

I listen to every game on the radio, although you can do other things with the radio on.  My attention may seriously wane by the end of the game and I often do not make it all the way through.

 

They have kept my attention because there are plenty of (hopefully) up-and-coming players to follow.  Also, I guess listening to the game is just a habit that I like.

[Circus Boy]

I like the kids we're playing, and the old dogs are still learning new tricks and playing with some fire, so yeah, I'm still watching with interest. Wasn't the case the previous three seasons when we were uncompetitive the last month. Now we may lose, but are still competing most games. That's important and will reap benefits.

 

Or I hope so, anyway.

[James Richter]

I'm much more engaged than this time last year. Part of it is rooting for some exciting young players to solidify spots for next year - I really got into May working his way out of those jams last night where he had previously fallen apart (baby steps!). Another is that they are, more often than not, in the game even when they lose. They came up on the short end pretty regularly against the Royals and Angels recently, but they were competitive in 6 of the 7 contests, and it made for some entertaining baseball. Much better than last September, when more than half the losses were blow-outs.

[Kwak]

Usually by the bottom of the second inning I've moved on to paying bills, folding laundry, or taking a nap.

 

In a rare instance of watching almost an entire game yesterday, I had to laugh out loud when Bremer announced that there's a discount for college students on standing-room only tickets.

It was only 2-3 weeks ago Bremer was announcing "that you can still buy season tickets"!  He should have added:  "...from the present owners of season tickets."

[Mike Frasier Law]

I still pay attention because of the young guys. I'm also enjoying watching Hughes make history with his k/bb ratio. I'm going to try and catch all his starts to see if he can keep it above 11 and have the best season all time.

[twinsnorth49]

Enough young guys with upside to keep me interested as well as some more in the pipeline to come next year.

 

Combine that with Hughes, Dozier, Mauer and Perkins and I'll still watch.......mostly.

[Danchat]

I'm a bit young for the 90s, but this stretch of baseball has been bad. It'll go down as the "early 2010's slump" or something like that.

 

If there's a game on, I'll turn it on, but rarely ever does it draw my attention. I love watching the young guys like Santana and Vargas play, but so many times we blow so many games, I can predict them. Once the Twins had the bases loaded with no outs and I bet my sister that the Twins would score zero runs that inning. I won that bet. That's how bad we are.

[goulik]

I was born in 1969 so do not remember the 69 or 70 season....First playoff season after that? 1987.

[DRizzo]

'This whole organization sucks' might be a little bit of a stretch.

 

I hope everyone noticed that our minor league system did pretty darn good this year, in my opinion. Ft. Meyers won the FSL Championship, Cedar Rapids made the playoffs, and Rochester should have made the playoffs but they play in the more competitive division of their league that has strict playoffs. Plus, I feel like the organization moved a lot of guys around to give them chances at higher levels of competition.

 

As for the Twins, yes it had been hard. If I'm driving, I throw it on the radio and I watch a couple innings each night at home but I don't listen/watch the whole game. It's definitely hard to watch but there somethings worth looking into still for the end of this year and how it will affect the start of next year (especially how the whole Vargas, Mauer, Arcia and Pinto 'who play's DH?' works out).

[big dog]

I was born in 1969 so do not remember the 69 or 70 season....First playoff season after that? 1987.

Yeah, I continue to believe that those horrible late 70s-early 80s teams that I followed obsessively were a lot worse than the current teams.  To paraphrase something Casey Stengel once said, a lot of those guys were only 23 or 24, and looking ahead three years most of them had a chance of being 26 or 27.  This team has pretty decent prospects with some positive news for the future.

[Pius Jefferson]

Playing in the Metrodome made the late 90s worse.

[John Kelsey]

I still try to catch Hughes and May's starts and I actually enjoy watching the team hit. This is a good offensive ballclub. 

 

The bullpen has to be the most unwatchable bullpen in the league however. 

[Craig Arko]

Not when you could watch this instead.

 

[Circus Boy]

Yeah, I continue to believe that those horrible late 70s-early 80s teams that I followed obsessively were a lot worse than the current teams.  To paraphrase something Casey Stengel once said, a lot of those guys were only 23 or 24, and looking ahead three years most of them had a chance of being 26 or 27.  This team has pretty decent prospects with some positive news for the future.

 

Excellent Stengel quote, Mr. Dog.

[Physics Guy]

I was born in 1969 so do not remember the 69 or 70 season....First playoff season after that? 1987.

1970 here and if I made it through the 70's and early 80's, I'm not quitting now.  Plenty of good young players to watch.  Santana seems to put together nice at-bats that belie his big-league experience.  Vargas and Arcia can give the ball a ride, albeit surrounded by many not-so-pretty at-bats. 

[Thrylos]

Playing in the Metrodome made the late 90s worse.

 

But made the late 80s and early 90s great.

[DocBauer]

I also watched and mostly listened to the Twins since the very early 70's and still remember a lot of those teams and players on them, though records are lost on me. Naturally, I've been through the 80's and 90's and every year until the here and now. Been through some very lean times as well as some very good ones. I've seen many different "cycles" of losing and winning teams. I think we're on an uptick begining with this season. I really do. Despite a much poorer second half than I was expecting, this team has at least been competitive, unlike a lot of games played the previous three years.

 

Some of the bullpen blown games lately have put me in a bit of a funk, I admit. But I'm still enjoying Santana, Vargas, and the great run Arcia is on. Despite pretty much the same final results, Hughes and Gibson have me excited for the rotation, and it's really nice to May slowly coming around and getting his legs under him. There is work to do, to be sure, but I'm feeling a lot better at the close of this season that I have the past few.

 

If we can avoid another run of injuries, and deep regression, how much fun could 2015 be with Meyer, Berrios, Buxton, Sano all...probably...making appearances at some point. I'm a little uncertain if Tonkin, Oliveras, Achter and a few others are going to be ready for major roles soon. But just look at some of the pen candidates that could be pushing around mid-year or second half. Man, THIS is what gets me excited, and makes another disappointing season hurt less.

[Bark's Lounge]

Personally, this has been the best season to watch since 2010. Sure, the pitching is overall awful, but it is worthwhile to watch a Hughes start and sometimes Gibson.

 

The offense was fun to watch the first 2 months of the season and now the last month it has been pretty thumbs up. It is always a good thing to watch a 24 year old 1B/DH hit a handful of 450ft HR's - plus Dozier, Santana, Plouffe, Suzuki, and Escobar have not been too Shabby. It is also nice to see the occasional mega blast Arcia throws out there... and I hope for Joe to have a extremely excellent September that gets his BA over .300.

 

It sucks to watch a losing team and I watch about 1/2 - 3/4's of the games as life has other demands, but this has been the best in almost 4 years. I can only see it getting better.

[stringer bell]

I've followed the Twins through thick and thin.  I think differently about different down cycles.  Until they moved to Target Field, the Twins were a small market club and I considered winning seasons and contention beating the odds.  The World Series victories proved to me that the ultimate victory could be won, but that it was very tough to sustain. 

 

I thought that with the move to Target Field that the Twins could contend more frequently and would have the assets to reload instead of rebuild.  That is why this tortuous "rebuild" has frustrated me.  Further, it seems good money has been thrown after bad on mediocre players, especially pitchers. 

 

I think there is plenty of young talent either on the team or on the horizon.  Unfortunately, the talent seems weighted to position players when it has been shown repeatedly that pitching wins.  Maybe some of the guys on the club already and a couple of prospects will flourish but I remain skeptical. 

 

Finally, it seems to me that the field staff and front office are probably a step behind.  They have definitely changed their philosophy about power arms, but they have been slow to embrace advanced metrics.  I don't think a 100% conversion is necessary, but the Twins need to get into the second decade of this millennium. 

 

2015 should be interesting and perhaps will be the turnaround year.  The pitching staff needs a big upgrade and it remains to be seen how the front office will accomplish this.