As MLB Trade Deadline Looms, Who’s to Blame for Minnesota Twins’ 2025 Letdown?

[saviking]

Management because they put 25 percent of the teams salary cap into one player. That's like playing Russian Roulette. You miss and it haunts you until you can either unload the player or their contract runs out ..

[nicksaviking]

This is pretty easy because there's a difference between blame and failure. While just about everyone has failed, if we're playing the blame game, it's squarely on ownership.

As soon as they prioritized selling the team to support their struggling real estate ventures, this organization was turned upside down strategically. This impacted the front office, not just with the payroll, but because of how they like to construct a roster. Instead of paying a reasonable amount for veteran players, they then had to both develop their own players and fill the roster with sub-par veteran players. This impacted the manager because he doesn't or can't develop young players and instead appears to want to pass off that job to 'leadership veterans' who also do no appear to be able to do that job. Which is a bit more understandable as their job is to play baseball, not to teach 22-year-olds. And to top it off, firing the manager (or front office) would be less attractive to a new buyer because a new one would require a multi year deal and a new owner is going to want to pick is own toys.

So, while the front office, manager and players failed as they could have stepped up and adapted or improved at what they did, this was all a chain reaction due to ownership who wanted to make the team look more profitable in order to sell it.

[nicksaviking]

2 minutes ago, saviking said:

Management because they put 25 percent of the teams salary cap into one player. That's like playing Russian Roulette. You miss and it haunts you until you can either unload the player or their contract runs out ..

It was only 25% of the payroll into one player because ownership pulled the rug out from under all of us though.

[The Great Hambino]

Just now, saviking said:

Management because they put 25 percent of the teams salary cap into one player. That's like playing Russian Roulette. You miss and it haunts you until you can either unload the player or their contract runs out ..

I agree that that sort of allocation is tough for a mid-market team, but in the Twins' case I don't blame the front office for that.  It was Joe Pohlad who signed off on the Correa contract and Lopez extension, only to do all his "right-sizing" nonsense a few months later.  You can't say he was forced into it by the TV situation because those issues were known well before those contracts were signed. 

Since I highly doubt Falvey went rogue in signing these contracts given that he's been granted more power within the organization since they were signed, one of two scenarios must be true:

1. The coming reduction in payroll was known to Falvey, and ownership was in full agreement with signing these contracts anyway

2. The coming reduction in payroll was not known to Falvey, and ownership pulled the right-sized rug out from under him.

Personally, I lean more toward scenario 2.  But either way, it's on the nepo-owner

[Major League Ready]

Just now, saviking said:

Management because they put 25 percent of the teams salary cap into one player. That's like playing Russian Roulette. You miss and it haunts you until you can either unload the player or their contract runs out ..

Agree but I took a lot of crap for this position in the past when trying to make the point that production per dollar spent is essential when there are teams with literally double the revenue of the Twins.  Many posters told me they were not interested in winning the award for production per dollar spent.  There were a significant portion of posters here who were adamant the Twins sign Correa even when it looked like he might get a 12-year contract.  There were impassioned posts suggesting the twins were cheap / unserious if they would not pony up for Correa.  Even at the start of this year, it sure seemed like a significant percentage of posters were dead against trading Correa if they could find a trade partner.  The tone has sure changed now that he is underperforming.

[Dman]

It's a team sport so every area of the team has failed at some point this season.  The bullpen was bad early in the year.  The rotation was bad a little after the first month. The lineup never was all that great except for that 13 game winning streak when the pitching and hitting were phenomenal. If I had to blame one area it would be the lineup.  The hitting just wasn't good enough and I too believed the younger bats would have shown more improvement by now and they really haven't.

I will say I thought Correa might be the missing piece this team needed to get over the hump.  A player with a great defensive reputation that seemed good to OPS around .800 every year.  I knew the large contract would hamstring the team in the future, but looking at the numbers at the time it seemed like a one of the safer bets you could make on a player.  Being a top of the order bat his decline severely limited this team IMO.  He was near automatic out at the top of the order.  I'm not saying it's all on him, but I expected much more from a former all star and veteran player.  To top it off his defense hasn't been that great either.

Still for all the warts everywhere this team just felt a bit snakebit.  When the offense clicked the pitching wasn't good.  When the pitching was great the offense couldn't even score a run. Lot's of one run losses to start the season.  A close but no cigar kind of year. A just good enough to lose team early in the year.

For me I don't really blame the FO for the mess. I too wanted to see the young players play and expected maybe not rapid improvement but improvement.  I wanted the Correa signing despite knowing it would hamstring payroll.  I too thought after last years collapse things were likely to be better this year.  It looked close at times but just too many areas blew up at inopportune times and here we are a middle of the pack team with lot's of questions.

I still think they have to roll with the young guys and see who shakes out.  It seems like Correa is coming around and this is the time of year he normally gets hot, but we'll see.  Getting the younger arms some more experience and maybe some bats too would be helpful.  They need the young players to rise up to complete the team so hopefully that happens.  It's young players or bust like a lot of the lower payroll teams because they can't buy their way out of this mess and while hope is not a strategy it looks like that might be all we have left right now.

[nicksaviking]

3 minutes ago, The Great Hambino said:

I agree that that sort of allocation is tough for a mid-market team, but in the Twins' case I don't blame the front office for that.  It was Joe Pohlad who signed off on the Correa contract and Lopez extension, only to do all his "right-sizing" nonsense a few months later.  You can't say he was forced into it by the TV situation because those issues were known well before those contracts were signed. 

Since I highly doubt Falvey went rogue in signing these contracts given that he's been granted more power within the organization since they were signed, one of two scenarios must be true:

1. The coming reduction in payroll was known to Falvey, and ownership was in full agreement with signing these contracts anyway

2. The coming reduction in payroll was not known to Falvey, and ownership pulled the right-sized rug out from under him.

Personally, I lean more toward scenario 2.  But either way, it's on the nepo-owner

For sure. I've seen no evidence ownership has actually had a strategy for the on-field product since Joe took over. It really seems like they're winging it year-to-year.

[Major League Ready]

7 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

It was only 25% of the payroll into one player because ownership pulled the rug out from under all of us though.

At $150M his salary this year would be 24.6%.  The Twins were never going to be much over $150 and we can't use the year they got $50M in BAM money as a benchmark.  With $150M it will drop to 21% the next 3 years which will still be an anchor if he continues to perform at this level.

[jmlease1]

17 minutes ago, Dman said:

It's a team sport so every area of the team has failed at some point this season.  The bullpen was bad early in the year.  The rotation was bad a little after the first month. The lineup never was all that great except for that 13 game winning streak when the pitching and hitting were phenomenal. If I had to blame one area it would be the lineup.  The hitting just wasn't good enough and I too believed the younger bats would have shown more improvement by now and they really haven't.

I will say I thought Correa might be the missing piece this team needed to get over the hump.  A player with a great defensive reputation that seemed good to OPS around .800 every year.  I knew the large contract would hamstring the team in the future, but looking at the numbers at the time it seemed like a one of the safer bets you could make on a player.  Being a top of the order bat his decline severely limited this team IMO.  He was near automatic out at the top of the order.  I'm not saying it's all on him, but I expected much more from a former all star and veteran player.  To top it off his defense hasn't been that great either.

Still for all the warts everywhere this team just felt a bit snakebit.  When the offense clicked the pitching wasn't good.  When the pitching was great the offense couldn't even score a run. Lot's of one run losses to start the season.  A close but no cigar kind of year. A just good enough to lose team early in the year.

For me I don't really blame the FO for the mess. I too wanted to see the young players play and expected maybe not rapid improvement but improvement.  I wanted the Correa signing despite knowing it would hamstring payroll.  I too thought after last years collapse things were likely to be better this year.  It looked close at times but just too many areas blew up at inopportune times and here we are a middle of the pack team with lot's of questions.

I still think they have to roll with the young guys and see who shakes out.  It seems like Correa is coming around and this is the time of year he normally gets hot, but we'll see.  Getting the younger arms some more experience and maybe some bats too would be helpful.  They need the young players to rise up to complete the team so hopefully that happens.  It's young players or bust like a lot of the lower payroll teams because they can't buy their way out of this mess and while hope is not a strategy it looks like that might be all we have left right now.

This is far too rational a take to be allowed.

[rdehring]

Even with a limited budget, you can develop a team that can be competitive with the big boys.  How? Get very good pitching, defense and a lot of speed.  Was so impressed when we had that stretch of games a bit ago against the Reds, Brewers and another team I don't remember who.  Unfortunately, what impressed was the opponents.    

What have the Twins done, they have created a team that in the field is the exact opposite.  Yes, they have a great center fielder who can run, really run.  But the rest of the team is slow, weak defensively and couldn't hit their way out of a paper bag.

I remain hopeful that the FO will change and bring in some speed, defense and grit like when we had the piranha's.  Like Milwaukee, they have the budget to be both good and exciting.  Please make it happen.  And for us old guys, hopefully they will do so soon.

[TheLeviathan]

Finding fault with a broken process is probably not ever going to be an easy answer.  I'd fault ons "thing" and one "who":

1. Ownership - they deflated the entire organization and fanbase by penny pinching.  They just fail at marketing and messaging so thoroughly that I can't imagine the same level of exasperation we feel as fans....is somehow not being felt in the organization

2. The process from draft to major league success seems to be yielding fairly steady/ok results on the pitching side.  It isn't a pipeline or anything to highlight on the FO's future resume, but it's doing ok.  The hitting side?  Full on tire fire.  We're not getting guys to the big leagues who can run, or field, or have an approach that can translate and flex to the challenges of the majors.  Now...every organization has failures and many players struggle.  But the consistency and persistence of what we're seeing on the hitting side is the problem.  I don't know how to assign blame to that...but development of our position players is just woefully inadequate.

[TwinsDr2021]

21 minutes ago, Dman said:

For me I don't really blame the FO for the mess. I too wanted to see the young players play and expected maybe not rapid improvement but improvement. 

Which young players do you speak of? The Twins have had 3 guys this year below the age of 25? SWR, Keaschall and Lee. Can we stop calling guys 25 and older young and maybe replace that with inexperienced? The Brewers for example have had 6, and a few of the guys that are 25, 26 or 27 are established everyday players (Conreras, Frelick, Turang) then they have guys like Collins, Durbin (Similair to half the Twins roster) 

[Doctor Gast]

You can blame the owners for not knowing how to run a baseball team. But that's why they hire people to do it. If they can't do the job, you fire them. That's why I blame the Pohlads for hiring Falvey & being too stupid to fire him, let alone promote him.

Falvey, through his minions, has blamed injuries for the team's shortcomings. But a good FO sees where the team is fragile & shores it up, plus has the health properly managed where no player is overextended by playing injured, etc.

Another one is, it's the coach's fault. His favorite is the hitting coach. It was Popovich's fault, not his hitting philosophy. Popovich was so bad that he was quickly grabbed by TOR & now they are hitting like crazy, when last year the couldn't hit a lick. IMO, the coaches are bad. They let go of good coaches like Tanner Swanson (catcher coach, who many Twins catchers sing his praises) & James Rowson, who work individually with the hitters, and also many sing his praises. Yet promotes those who should be fired, coaches who adhere to his analytics & ignore the fundamentals. IMO, Twins are not being properly developed, coached & managed like a team like MIL. You can blame the coaches, but who hires the coaches & sets the philosophy?

Pohlads aren't giving me enough money. As has been said before, the Twins' salary is normally higher than other teams in our market size. The problem is how the money is allocated. If the focus was on developing our players properly, giving them every opportunity to advance, raise their value so when you have a surplus, you can have good trade value on them. You can trade to fill holes instead of going to FA, But there are no trades out there (I've heard that for years), but other team seems to find more complicated trades. The problems are whoever shall seek shall find, if you don't look & initiate trades, they won't happen. If you sit back & wait for other FOs to seek you out, normally they don't work out, unless they are very desperate. The other is that if you hug prospects, you don't trade them even if they offer you a sweetheart deal. 

If all fails, blame the core. This core, despite everything, did well in '23. All we had to do was build off it. That has not been done. For the excuses that have been discussed, the core went through subtraction without properly compensating. Fragile areas have not been shored up. Another area I'd like to discuss is player evaluation. Evaluation that is strictly analytical, ignoring underlying & physical conditions, when trading for players. Often showcasing players they obtain, no matter what, to the detriment of the team as well as positioning player where they don't belong, based on their bat not their glove,

IMO, a good leader will say with confidence the buck stops here. There are a lot of people you can blame but IMO, it all boils down to Falvey.

 

[Whitey333]

I saw in a podcast the other day that Correa has a WAR of near zero.  Not very good for a man eating up about 35 mil per year on payroll.  Except for a few flashes here and there he's been a big disappointment for the Twins.

[AKTwinsFan]

Sell short term rentals. I don't like trading Castro but it's logical at this point. We can get some bats in return and try to pull off a Tigers 2024 sell and run to playoffs. Ryan, Jax and Duran should not be on the table unless we dont plan on being in the mix the next few seasons.

[NYCTK]

1 hour ago, Hosken Bombo Disco said:

My number one thing of actions that could be taken right away is that I wish Rocco would make an everyday lineup and stick to it.

This has worked for decades. The Twins new philosophy of “anyone anywhere anytime, be ready” is not sustainable over a full season.

A set lineup would let players know their roles and expectations and help their preparation and would make Rocco’s late inning substitutions less of a guessing game.

Keaschall has earned a promotion and may be back with the team next week. What’s the plan for the middle infielders, Keaschall, Lewis, Lee, Correa? Keep shuffling them around the infield up and down the order with random off days? 

You know how you get to play consistently at a position? You make yourself irreplaceable. And the Twins DON'T have an "anyone, anywhere" philosophy, and you can tell because only 4 players (Bride, Clemens, Lee and Castro) have been asked to play 5+ games at multiple positions. Sure seems like that number would be way higher if your criticism were accurate. 

Lee doesn't suck right now because he's been asked to play 2B, SS, and 3B. He sucks because he plays all those positions pretty poorly, he's slow as ****, and he has pretty lousy swing decisions. This isn't to say he can't improve, but I promise you it has absolutely nothing to do with the burden of playing one IF position instead of a different one. 

[LA Vikes Fan]

I tend to agree with the posters who say that the failure is on multiple levels. I would rank them in this order:

(1) Ownership - Not only have these guys been bad, they have gotten worse over time. Signing Correa to a big money deal and then "right-sizing" payroll relatively shortly thereafter is just a stupid business strategy. It also completely hamstrings your Front Office and stifles creativity and roster management. We should not be surprised that such a strategy happened when they clearly assigned the team to the least business experienced, and probably least competent, family member to run. Joe Pohlad is simply not good at this and it's hard to believe experience will make him better. I also think that the Pohlads are suffering from fairly common second generation inherited business flaw; that next generation doesn't care about the business, it only cares about the money it generates. The business is not something this generation built so they have no emotional connection to its performance. As a result, progress and innovation are stifled in the name of maintaining profit for lifestyle and the business suffers. No surprise that Thad Levine left; he was the most dynamic and creative of the management group. It's hard to attract dynamic incompetent front office people when your job is to maintain a machine so that the owners can maintain a lifestyle. Ownership has made turning this into a winning team very difficult.

(2) Rocco and the Coaches - I wouldn't say the coaching staff has done poorly, they just haven't done well. I think Rocco and the coaching staff are very average. They don't get teams more wins than their talent but they don't cost the team a lot of wins either. This is a problem because the very job of a good manager and coaching staff is to get the absolute most out of players and squeeze out extra wins. This group simply has not done that in any meaningful way. I was a little optimistic because finally we have started to steal more bases and play more small ball. This roster doesn't have the hitting talent to win any other way and it should not have taken the coaching staff half of the season to understand that. I think managers often times get too much credit and too much blame. Here, I think the team's performance is very reflective of their talent level, or even a little below, and Rocco and his group appear incapable of improving that record. They manage this team not to lose, they don't manage this team to win. It also looks like the players are pretty much tuned coaches out. It very well may be time for Rocco to go and I've always been one of his supporters.

(3) The Players - The bottom line is that we are not playing well because the players are not playing well. We can rail about coaching not teaching fundamentals but these guys have been playing baseball since Little League and know the fundamentals. They just aren't executing. They are freezing up in critical situations, having poor at bats with runners on base, and pitching their worst in late and tight game situations. Even worse, I haven't seen many if any stories about guys getting in extra batting or fielding practice, agitating for more running or anything like that other than Lewis getting in extra batting practice. And guess what, he's starting to hit. I don't even mind him going off in the newspapers like he did recently because that shows he cares. Ultimately, a player's performance is up to the player. This team has to win at the margins to be successful and most nights, they don't. That's only partially the managers fault, it's mostly on the players.

(4) The Front Office - While these guys are far from blameless, I actually think they have done a decent job assembling pitching talent. Having said that, they have done a poor job of evaluating hitting talent and have only recently gotten better at drafting talent. They also were far too slow to adapt away from the power driven three true outcomes approach when MLB changed the rules. Overall, I think they been basically a neutral to below average, not elevating the team but not dragging it down either.

Realistically, this team is a little short on talent to be a true contender, particularly on the hitting side. Even so, there's enough talent to win 85+ games and I don't think were going to get close to that unless something dramatic happens. This team needs an infusion of new ideas. Maybe new ownership will help, maybe a new manager is necessary, and maybe we need to turn over 35 – 40% of this roster. But we can't do is continue to run out the same group night after night and have them play in the same way. That is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Dman]

21 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

Which young players do you speak of? The Twins have had 3 guys this year below the age of 25? SWR, Keaschall and Lee. Can we stop calling guys 25 and older young and maybe replace that with inexperienced? The Brewers for example have had 6, and a few of the guys that are 25, 26 or 27 are established everyday players (Conreras, Frelick, Turang) then they have guys like Collins, Durbin (Similair to half the Twins roster) 

Yes I am still calling Larnach and Wallner "young" guys and they have quite a bit of experience now.  Still I was expecting improvement and Wallner regressed and Larnach is maybe just slightly better this year but still not enough better IMO.  Maybe they aren't young anymore, but still needed more from them.

[Mike Sixel]

1 hour ago, nicksaviking said:

This is pretty easy because there's a difference between blame and failure. While just about everyone has failed, if we're playing the blame game, it's squarely on ownership.

As soon as they prioritized selling the team to support their struggling real estate ventures, this organization was turned upside down strategically. This impacted the front office, not just with the payroll, but because of how they like to construct a roster. Instead of paying a reasonable amount for veteran players, they then had to both develop their own players and fill the roster with sub-par veteran players. This impacted the manager because he doesn't or can't develop young players and instead appears to want to pass off that job to 'leadership veterans' who also do no appear to be able to do that job. Which is a bit more understandable as their job is to play baseball, not to teach 22-year-olds. And to top it off, firing the manager (or front office) would be less attractive to a new buyer because a new one would require a multi year deal and a new owner is going to want to pick is own toys.

So, while the front office, manager and players failed as they could have stepped up and adapted or improved at what they did, this was all a chain reaction due to ownership who wanted to make the team look more profitable in order to sell it.

Great post. The delta between fault and failure is a good one. 

This is mostly on the ownership, as they clearly changed the rules right after allowing the FO to spend .

Then the FO for me. They pick the players and manager. They have utterly failed to develop good, let alone great, players. Their insistence in keeping bad veterans around is a huge issue. 

[Blyleven2011]

The front office is not creative enough to be creative and there wait a see approach is worthless , we have waited and see mediocre baseball  ....

Lack of grooming the young talent to another level of talent at the ML level  , coaching fundamentals is non-existent on this professional team ...

What's to blame and where to point fingers , starts at the top and goes all the way down to the players , they can't find success because they seem to not know what success is  ( adjustments is one , usually takes the offense 1 time through the order to get there first hit in the 4th inning  )....

Twins Players play lousy defense and offense ,  pitching has been the strength  ...

I could go on , but you know the rest of the story of this unexciting team ...

[Road trip]

I blame Buxton for doing the hard rehab work, staying healthy, running like he was still 22 years old, hitting the snot out of the ball, and giving us false hope for three months 😁

As a Twins fan I've seen more bad years than I care to recall.  Most of them don't hurt in retrospect, but this one may be remembered for wasting Buxton's career-defining year as a Twin.  Without Buxton there is no "2025 Let Down", as we fans would have given up by the end of April.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, The Great Hambino said:

I agree that that sort of allocation is tough for a mid-market team, but in the Twins' case I don't blame the front office for that.  It was Joe Pohlad who signed off on the Correa contract and Lopez extension, only to do all his "right-sizing" nonsense a few months later.  You can't say he was forced into it by the TV situation because those issues were known well before those contracts were signed. 

Since I highly doubt Falvey went rogue in signing these contracts given that he's been granted more power within the organization since they were signed, one of two scenarios must be true:

1. The coming reduction in payroll was known to Falvey, and ownership was in full agreement with signing these contracts anyway

2. The coming reduction in payroll was not known to Falvey, and ownership pulled the right-sized rug out from under him.

Personally, I lean more toward scenario 2.  But either way, it's on the nepo-owner

Great follow-up post to Nick's great post.  I think it is clearly 2.  The FO was aggressively adding and utilizing payroll in such a way that indicated they had the expectation that their flexibility was going to maintain, if not expand.

When it contracted?  They had no recourse.  It was already too late and their options became extremely limited.

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, arby58 said:

It's hard to claim that the season was lost in April, when they had a 29-22 record on May 24th and were still 5 games over .500 at the end of May. The season most assuredly was lost in June, and that is pretty far removed from the end of 2024.

It was the rough start that made the margins thin very early. That rough June would have still left the Twins in position for a WC run if they had come out strong in April. Or even competent.

[LastOnePicked]

44 minutes ago, Whitey333 said:

I saw in a podcast the other day that Correa has a WAR of near zero.  Not very good for a man eating up about 35 mil per year on payroll.  Except for a few flashes here and there he's been a big disappointment for the Twins.

My two thoughts on Correa: 1) When teams with better track records in player evaluation refuse to sign a free agent after a physical, probably smart to take a pass. 2) Or, it's possible that he's still a high-adrenaline big-game hunter surrounded by players/coaches with zero killer instinct. It's maybe draining on him. It shouldn't be, but it might be.

[Major League Ready]

9 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Great follow-up post to Nick's great post.  I think it is clearly 2.  The FO was aggressively adding and utilizing payroll in such a way that indicated they had the expectation that their flexibility was going to maintain, if not expand.

When it contracted?  They had no recourse.  It was already too late and their options became extremely limited.

They spent $150M Correa's first year (2022).  In 2023 they had a record payroll of $156M.  Of course, they had a $50M windfall from BAM that year so I think it's safe to assume they did not expect to have the same budget going forward.  They are at roughly $149M this year or roughly $1M less than their highest payroll in a year when they did not get BAM money.  The assertion that a spending reduction of $1M of previous levels is responsible for this year's failures is yet another attempt to support a narrative that unwillingness to spend is the problem.  Apparently, every team in this division has the same problem.

[Mike Sixel]

1 minute ago, Major League Ready said:

They spent $150M Correa's first year (2022).  In 2023 they had a record payroll of $156M.  Of course, they had a $50M windfall from BAM that year so I think it's safe to assume they did not expect to have the same budget going forward.  They are at roughly $149M this year or roughly $1M less than their highest payroll in a year when they did not get BAM money.  The assertion that a spending reduction of $1M of previous levels is responsible for this year's failures is yet another attempt to support a narrative that unwillingness to spend is the problem.  Apparently, every team in this division has the same problem.

The implication is that we think they were going to be allowed to spend more. We could be wrong! But I doubt this FO signs those two thinking the payroll wouldn't go up more. We were doing see well avoiding snark in this thread.....

[C-Gangster]

I wouldn't really call it a let down I would call it a old boring roller coaster that you just want to get off of.

[The Great Hambino]

13 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

They spent $150M Correa's first year (2022).  In 2023 they had a record payroll of $156M.  Of course, they had a $50M windfall from BAM that year so I think it's safe to assume they did not expect to have the same budget going forward.  They are at roughly $149M this year or roughly $1M less than their highest payroll in a year when they did not get BAM money.  The assertion that a spending reduction of $1M of previous levels is responsible for this year's failures is yet another attempt to support a narrative that unwillingness to spend is the problem.  Apparently, every team in this division has the same problem.

That's an even bigger indictment of ownership if they greenlit a $200MM, 6 year contract and a 3 year, $72MM extension based on a one-time $50MM windfall

[P Meyer]

I have a couple issues and people can point to whomever, but here they are.

 

1 - The team doesn't do anything well. They don't hit well. They don't field well. They are not, as a group, consistent. IMO, you have to have some type of core that you can fall back on when times are tough. I don't see that with the Twins.

 

2-They do not develop prospects OR they don't identify and draft good prospects. I don't know which it is but it is one of the two or maybe both. The Twins have gotten very little MLB production from their farm system and that is an issue for a team with a hard budget.

[Vanimal46]

1A Ownership - This organization has no direction, no vision. Just hoping that someone offers them a golden parachute to get out of their massive debt and escape the public eye forever. 

1B Front Office - They’ve had 2 offseasons to pivot after getting the rug pulled from them by the Pohlads. They’ve done the bare minimum in the offseason and trade deadlines ever since. Falvey continues doubling down on this core of players, even though we are the slowest team in baseball, one of the poorest fielding teams in baseball, and prone to long offensive slumps. Oh, and they quietly pick up Rocco’s contract for another year. 

2 Manager/Coaches - How can the players take things seriously when the same manager and 80% of the coaches remain the same after an epic collapse? 

3 Players - Correa, Wallner, and Lewis have been extremely disappointing with high expectations in preseason. Miranda and Julien crashing and burning. Our depth was vapor thin and were relying too heavily on marginal talent.