Wow. Twins Fans Really, Really Don’t Like The Pohlads.

[Vanimal46]

2 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

Outside of Twins Daily, who even knows who the Pohlads are? Who owns the Texas Rangers, the Baltimore Ravens, the Montreal Canadiens?

Too much emphasis on the owners.

Who do you think is more likely to purchase Twins products? Someone who participates on a forum about the Twins or 75 year old Dorothy walking her dog around Lake Harriett? 

If I wanted to prove no one cares about Porsche automobiles I’d go to a flower store and ask 20 random people to get that conclusion too. 

[USAFChief]

36 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

Outside of Twins Daily, who even knows who the Pohlads are? Who owns the Texas Rangers, the Baltimore Ravens, the Montreal Canadiens?

Too much emphasis on the owners.

Seriously??

Who owns the Texas Rangers? I don't know, but I wager an overwhelming majority of Ranger fans know. 

Ditto the Baltimore Ravens. Ditto the Montreal Canadians.

And the vast, overwhelming majority of Twins fans knows who owns the team. Even casual fans. Even casual Minnesota  sports fans in general.

It's not just TD readers. 

 

[Eric Blonigen]

47 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

The funny thing is they were actually building a lot of goodwill from 2019-2022! The Bomba squad year was fun, even though they didn’t do enough to supplement pitching. 2020 the Pohlads paid all of the minor leaguers and org staff full salaries when other teams chose not to. 2022 they make a big splash signing Correa and adding salary at the trade deadline. But all of that was destroyed in the 2023-24 offseason 

Sure seems like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

[Eric Blonigen]

47 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

The funny thing is they were actually building a lot of goodwill from 2019-2022! The Bomba squad year was fun, even though they didn’t do enough to supplement pitching. 2020 the Pohlads paid all of the minor leaguers and org staff full salaries when other teams chose not to. 2022 they make a big splash signing Correa and adding salary at the trade deadline. But all of that was destroyed in the 2023-24 offseason 

Sure seems like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

[tony&rodney]

30 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

Who do you think is more likely to purchase Twins products? Someone who participates on a forum about the Twins or 75 year old Dorothy walking her dog around Lake Harriett? 

If I wanted to prove no one cares about Porsche automobiles I’d go to a flower store and ask 20 random people to get that conclusion too. 

You all win. Daily articles about the Pohlads make your day. Whatever makes folks happy.

I'm out on that. I'm just a simple baseball fan.

[Eric Blonigen]

38 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

Outside of Twins Daily, who even knows who the Pohlads are? Who owns the Texas Rangers, the Baltimore Ravens, the Montreal Canadiens?

Too much emphasis on the owners.

they do set the payroll and make high-level business decisions, so some focus is necessary to properly evaluate why the product on the field is the way it is.

[Brock Beauchamp]

55 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

The funny thing is they were actually building a lot of goodwill from 2019-2022! The Bomba squad year was fun, even though they didn’t do enough to supplement pitching. 2020 the Pohlads paid all of the minor leaguers and org staff full salaries when other teams chose not to. 2022 they make a big splash signing Correa and adding salary at the trade deadline. But all of that was destroyed in the 2023-24 offseason 

Oh yeah, the Twins were mostly on a roll from 2019-2023. They were raising payroll and emanating goodwill.

And they burned it all down in roughly 14 months. It was quite the bout of mismanagement. They should teach it in business school under "how NOT to run a public-facing business".

[TopGunn#22]

We've beaten this horse till it's beyond a corpse, but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of Twins fans are not, and probably haven't been, fans of our ownership since 1994.  Yes, we have 2 World Series Championships and they came within 5 years of each other.  2019 was fun as was 2023.  But opportunities lost due to their penurious ways have over taken them.

My disillusionment began in the mid 2000's when the team sported 2 MVP's, a 2 time CY Young winner and the greatest closer in franchise history, yet they never, not even once, "went for it" to try to surround that talent with a trade deadline deal to put them over the top.

When your post World Series victories deadline acquisition "claim to fame" is Shannon Stewart you have utterly failed your fanbase.  The "Baseball Gods" have decided to punish the Pohlad family mercilessly by injuring their pitchers and star hitters continuously.  

The Pohlad family is going to lose a boatload of money this season and it's hard to feel sorry for them.  The longer they wait, the lower their eventual price will be.  Hoping to sell the team at an obviously inflated value to absolve debts from other poorly run Pohlad businesses is going to take a BIG BITE out of their backsides.  

[chpettit19]

15 minutes ago, Eric Blonigen said:

they do set the payroll and make high-level business decisions, so some focus is necessary to properly evaluate why the product on the field is the way it is.

They hire and continue to employ the people who run the team. If you don't think Falvey is doing/has done a good job you have 1 person/family to blame.

Ownership is vital to professional sports teams. Glen Taylor was the reason the Wolves were the worst franchise in major North American sports history just a few short years ago. Dan Snyder was the reason the Washington professional football franchise of many names was a laughingstock. The Steinbrenner family is the reason the Yankees are always competitive. The Wilfs are the reason the Vikings never blow it up (for better and worse). There's no brushing ownership off as just the guys who cut the checks. In any sport. Teams reflect the folks at the top. Dysfunctional franchises are dysfunctional because of ownership. Perennial losers are perennial losers because of ownership. It all starts at the top. Always.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Pohlads deserve every bit of criticism they get, but are still pretty middle-of-the-pack as far as owners go. I mean, Jerry Reinsdorf? I don’t know if the crocodile tears for Falvey and Baldelli are real, fake, or probably somewhere in between for the writers on this site. Those two have a much bigger effect on Wins & Losses.

Credit where due: the Twins have had a nice rotation for a few years now. it came at a high cost in talent, but hey, you do what you need to do. 

I will also add my two cents that I think by yesteryear’s standards, Rocco is, um, not a great tactician. For today’s baseball, my opinion is the same, but there are a lot more Rocco types in the league now too, so it doesn’t stand out quite as much and sometimes the Twins benefit by the mistakes of other managers.

[Craig Arko]

1 hour ago, Vanimal46 said:

Who do you think is more likely to purchase Twins products? Someone who participates on a forum about the Twins or 75 year old Dorothy walking her dog around Lake Harriett? 

If I wanted to prove no one cares about Porsche automobiles I’d go to a flower store and ask 20 random people to get that conclusion too. 

I’d guess people who actually live in Minnesota. Which seems to be less than 20% of the regulars here. And 75 year old Dorothy was probably out marching to try to save the Republic.

[Vanimal46]

1 hour ago, Craig Arko said:

I’d guess people who actually live in Minnesota. Which seems to be less than 20% of the regulars here. And 75 year old Dorothy was probably out marching to try to save the Republic.

If there’s concern of a TD bias in the sample, this article was shared on the Minnesota Twins subreddit with 90 more negative comments about the Pohlads. So it appears to be pretty universal amongst Twins fans. 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

7 hours ago, bean5302 said:

1. Cutting payroll immediately after the playoffs. I tacked on 2024 to my season tickets during the Blue Jays playoffs, the Pohlads took every bit of fan momentum they had and absolutely trashed it. Selling my club level tickets as low as $18 a seat last year burned.

2. TV debacle. Whatever potential their was to bring fans back into the fold was destroyed when the Twins awarded Dave St. Peter with another year of running the show and the subsequent re-upping with Diamond Sports despite the obvious issues. Speaking as somebody who dumped a ton of money into the Twins last year, I was pretty infuriated because it hurt the value of my purchase.

3. Correa jersey day. I had a friend fly in from out of town. We arrived before the gates opened. Season ticket holder line ran out of jerseys before the main line. Are you serious? The team doesn't care about its season ticket holder base (a few other things I was disappointed with as a season ticket holder in previous years as well). I was down right po'ed. I was pretty much done at this point.

4. No move at the deadline. Really? After all they screwed up, they weren't even willing to make it up to the fans by doing right by us. After all the bungling, at least making a trade deadline move as a good will gesture was the least they could do.

5. We're selling! But not really. Way to telegraph the ownership was done with owning the team and didn't believe in the fan base. Then, set a sky high price to pay off their other business debt, botch negotiations, and throw a few bucks into the payroll to pretend to make it all up? 

The Pohalds have made quite a few moves over the past few years which have hurt the fan base. The playoff win in 2023 made up for a lot of it, but they immediately set to work on destroying any good will the fans had one the Astros series was over.

This!

also to add, face value tickets preseason were up 20% over last year. They screwed the pooch last year, then passed on the offseason, took the only option in video broadcast, and raised ticket prices….

this frickin’ team…

[FargoFanMan]

3 hours ago, Eric Blonigen said:

Sure seems like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

To say the very least! Lol

[nclahammer]

Winning a playoff series and then cutting payroll wasn't just a punch in the stomach, but actually a little bit lower.   The Twins then hung Provus out to dry when he said, "No blackouts", although Cory owned that comment at their winter caravan stop this past winter.

[Riverbrian]

On 4/20/2025 at 12:07 PM, Eric Blonigen said:

This is an easy gripe to make, and it generally applies to every year other than 2023. The Twin Cities are the 15th-largest media market in the country.

Easy gripe to make yet incredibly misleading. 

It's been my experience that the people who so easily quote DMA rankings to prove this particular point, have no idea how the market area was DESIGNATED or why the market area was DESIGNATED in the first place. They tend to not understand what DESIGNATED means and they don't care. When you explain it to them, they tend to not understand or care how much power they are giving to the Nielsen company as long as it makes their argument. They also don't understand or care why Bemidji is included in a TMA and Rochester, Duluth and Sioux Falls are not. They just quote the rankings and say look... see... let's all get pissed. 

They also can't explain why Tampa is ranked #11 and Miami is ranked #18. They don't seem to care if Forbes estimates these two franchises to be 29th and 30th ranked in value.

They don't care why or how San Francisco, Oakland and San Joes combined is 10th. They don't seem to care that Oakland is leaving the #10 market for the 40th because the 59 COUNTIES that have been designated to make up the Minneapolis/St. Paul/Bemidji market is ranked 15th or 16th and payroll is 20th. 

Case Closed. All hail the influence the Nielsen Company has on the sport of baseball.  

 

[Diane]

23 hours ago, Mark G said:

 See the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball, and run like hell until you are out (or until you are safe).  Baseball.  That's the game I played and that is the game I want to see.  We don't play that way anymore, not because the game has changed, but because that is the way we manage it (along with others, I know).  Anyway, if you actually read all of this, I thank you, and apologize for making you.  🤭

THIS!!!!  We were season ticket holders for 30+ years and gave up our row two seats two years ago for financial reasons.  It's tough on a retiree's budget.  Now I still have to pay to watch them on TV, and the coverage is less than optimal!  If you aren't going to give me commercials, then let me see a live picture of the field between innings and I'll feel like I'm at the game.  Nothing exciting about the on field play OR the TV broadcast these days.

[VH 1]

I started to lose interest in the team after they announced the payroll cuts after the 2023 play-off run. I have been a fan since they moved to Minneapolis, but it's hard to follow them when the Pohlads seem to have no interest in fielding a competitive team. It's time for them to SELL before they gut the team trying to save money.

[Twins GFP]

Even if the Twins were successful, the Pohlad-as-owners would still be hated.

Pretty much sums up everything.

[Linus]

I don’t “hate” the Pohlads - hate is an emotion that is too strong for sports. I don’t think they are good owners and Thats goes all the way back to relocation and contraction threats. They have made a series of mistakes, especially lately that has likely sealed the deal with most fans. I do believe they have realized they would have a tough time reshaping their reputation with their customers.