Less than 2 years ago...

[USAFChief]

...We were all celebrating a postseason series win, even if just a Wild Card. There seemed to be the corps of a good team in place, with help potentially on the way. Packed houses at TF, with delirious crowds. Good will all around.

 

A couple weeks later the Twins have been bounced from postseason play yet again and management is stepping in the infamous "rightsizing" cowpie with both feet. Thus started a seemingly nonstop downward spiral that has yet to hit bottom.

We sit here 22 months later without much hope of competing in the foreseeable future.  Ownership questions. Management clearly on shaky ground or worse. Little help available in the upper minors. Pathetic MLB lineup. Sell off in progress, which isn't going so well.

Man, things changed. 

 

[The Great Hambino]

10 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

...We were all celebrating a postseason series win, even if just a Wild Card. There seemed to be the corps of a good team in place, with help potentially on the way. Packed houses at TF, with delirious crowds. Good will all around.

 

A couple weeks later the Twins have been bounced from postseason play yet again and management is stepping in the infamous "rightsizing" cowpie with both feet. Thus started a seemingly nonstop downward spiral that has yet to hit bottom.

We sit here 22 months later without much hope of competing in the foreseeable future.  Ownership questions. Management clearly on shaky ground or worse. Little help available in the upper minors. Pathetic MLB lineup. Sell off in progress, which isn't going so well.

Man, things changed. 

 

If this were Goodfellas, the wild card series was the Lufthansa heist.

Today, we're finding Duran in a frozen meat truck

[jaimedude]

What is a good way for the fans to protest the Pohlad ownership? I mean we can stop showing up, cancel Twins baseball app, stop buying or wearing all Twins themed merchandise and stop listening to games. It's time to give back to ownership the negativity they are giving us. 

 Are there other Pohlad businesses in community we can boycott by not patronizing?                                       If the Pohlads announce a sale i would  probably not boycott or cancel. 

[cHawk]

The Commanders are a prime example of what can happen with simply a change of ownership. From a seemingly hopeless situation to a Super Bowl contender in only a year.

We can only hope similar events transpire for our Twins.

[tony&rodney]

17 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

...We were all celebrating a postseason series win, even if just a Wild Card. There seemed to be the corps of a good team in place, with help potentially on the way. Packed houses at TF, with delirious crowds. Good will all around.

 

A couple weeks later the Twins have been bounced from postseason play yet again and management is stepping in the infamous "rightsizing" cowpie with both feet. Thus started a seemingly nonstop downward spiral that has yet to hit bottom.

We sit here 22 months later without much hope of competing in the foreseeable future.  Ownership questions. Management clearly on shaky ground or worse. Little help available in the upper minors. Pathetic MLB lineup. Sell off in progress, which isn't going so well.

Man, things changed. 

 

True. I thought the winter after could be pivotal. I saw Julien, Miranda, Wallner, Larnach and even Jeffers and Lewis as solid choices to trade. Clearly not all of them, but my targets to trade were Julien, Wallner, and Jeffers. I believed real value could be returned. 

Ownership and front office combined to stifle any growth or energy. 2024 was a repeat. More nothing. Now today and who knows what happens by the close of tomorrow. 

[Eris]

16 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Man, things changed.

Correa, Julian, Wallner,  Lewis, Miranda and to a lesser extent Kepler had almost career years and the fans and the FO wanted to believe the good times would last forever. Julian and Miranda are struggling in AAA, Wallner has less than 20 RBIs. Correas is producing at about 1/2 his value and Lewis is just starting to put this together after a body change screwed up his swing. To be fair the hope seemed reasonable and the disappointment only something the Twins can deliver. There is a possibility that Kepler, Miranda nor Julian will be on a 40 man roster at the end of the year. That is how a team goes from playoff contender to total system failure. 

[bunsen82]

Success in the MLB is fickle, especially with the Pohlads at the helm.  I still like the outlook especially for the medium and long term. We have 3 nice long term pieces in the bullpen in Jax, Varland and Sands.  The SP still look like a top 10 group with Lopez, Ryan, Ober as your primary 3 starter.  SWR, Mathew’s and Festa are still trying to find consistent success at the MLB level.  
 

The next group is Raya, Priellip Lewis, Culpepper and Morris. Right now a Priellip seems dominant even with minimal innings. He really has an elite ceiling and he is a lefty.  Now you add Abel into the mix.  
 

This draft and prior drafts we have picked up some really talented pitchers. Soto, Hill, and Priellip who has already been mentioned. We have 4 very talented pitchers in Quick Ellwanger Reitz and Barr plus our usually flyers. We have talked about pitching pipelines, I think we can say we are finally there.  
 

We have talented hitters, I really wonder why our prospects have struggled so much when they have come up. I think Lee is turning a corner.   We have some young kids who can really hit in Keashall, Culpepper and Gonzalez. So there are reinforcements. 

we do seem to have a Correa problem. I am ok with the variable performance, but it’s clear we can’t afford his contract which is causing some of the decisions to be made.  My personal opinion is continue to ride it out for another year. Maybe he has a rebound year.  
 

we have the prospect capital to stride for some of our holes. I’m still a massive Twins fan but can understand some of the frustration. 

[Vanimal46]

41 minutes ago, bunsen82 said:

Success in the MLB is fickle, especially with the Pohlads at the helm.  I still like the outlook especially for the medium and long term. We have 3 nice long term pieces in the bullpen in Jax, Varland and Sands.  The SP still look like a top 10 group with Lopez, Ryan, Ober as your primary 3 starter.  SWR, Mathew’s and Festa are still trying to find consistent success at the MLB level.  
 

The next group is Raya, Priellip Lewis, Culpepper and Morris. Right now a Priellip seems dominant even with minimal innings. He really has an elite ceiling and he is a lefty.  Now you add Abel into the mix.  
 

This draft and prior drafts we have picked up some really talented pitchers. Soto, Hill, and Priellip who has already been mentioned. We have 4 very talented pitchers in Quick Ellwanger Reitz and Barr plus our usually flyers. We have talked about pitching pipelines, I think we can say we are finally there.  
 

We have talented hitters, I really wonder why our prospects have struggled so much when they have come up. I think Lee is turning a corner.   We have some young kids who can really hit in Keashall, Culpepper and Gonzalez. So there are reinforcements. 

we do seem to have a Correa problem. I am ok with the variable performance, but it’s clear we can’t afford his contract which is causing some of the decisions to be made.  My personal opinion is continue to ride it out for another year. Maybe he has a rebound year.  
 

we have the prospect capital to stride for some of our holes. I’m still a massive Twins fan but can understand some of the frustration. 

One of the biggest keys to a quick turnaround is solid starting pitching, and unless things change by tomorrow evening, we will retain Lopez, Ryan, and Ober to build upon. The rest of this season is figuring out who 4 and 5 are in that group. 

The rest of the group you mentioned have several candidates who could be bullpen arms next year to replace Duran, and potentially Jax/Stewart who are shipped out (Raya, Priellipp, Morris, Culpepper) 

Correa is the biggest decision tomorrow. If he’s open about being traded back to Houston I likely take advantage of that opportunity. 

We may or may not have talented hitters. What I really want to find out is how the team reacts with new management. I would fire Rocco tomorrow and A/B test how they do with Tingler over the next 2 months. 

[jorgenswest]

Any prospective owner should be really upset at the Duran deal. I don’t want the owner who is not upset. I want one that was going to add for 26 and 27. Now the first task is to add to the top of the bullpen. Jax is too old to be counted on and Varland is the guy you would need on the put out the fire role. He has been as important as Duran coming in with runners in scoring position later in games. They need him in that role.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

The biggest culprit is ownership. I'm furious at them, to be blunt. They're bad managers of a business, particularly an entertainment business. They're just bad at their jobs.

When your entertainment business is cyclical, with natural peaks and valleys, you do not knee-cap your investment when it's HEADING TOWARD A PEAK. That's just poor management, that's short-sighted and not very smart. One might even call it dumb. I would.

Additionally, while you're restricting the ability of this entertainment business to entertain, you DO NOT also make it ****ing impossible for fans to watch your product. And you don't remove $4 ticket flash sales. You don't close the third deck of Target Field in April, forcing hesitant fans into more expensive seats because you're greedy asses. And you don't do a dozen other things this third generation of Pohlads has done in the past two years.

And now, to boot, we've found out they're doing all of this in part because they're siphoning money out of the Twins to prop up their other failing businesses.

The third generation of Pohlads have done everything in their power to make fans not give a **** about the Minnesota Twins. And congratulations, you nit-wits, YOU DID IT. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. I now pay farrrrr more attention to the competent organization one state to the east of us, the Milwaukee Brewers. They've faced the same problems the Twins have in TV, and they play in an even smaller market. Yet they've somehow weathered this RSN apocalypse better than the bigger-market Twins. They've offered in-market streaming for years. They provide a fan experience that encourages people to show up. They're chugging along, making the playoffs every season, and not going out of their way to piss off the fanbase.

Now on to the front office.

It's not their fault ownership knee-capped them. That's a really unfortunate thing to have happen right as you've built a winner with some success. Not their fault.

But it IS their fault that they've been sitting on their hands for literally years now. They didn't try to trade minor-league pitching to round out the roster before 2024. They basically did absolutely nothing in the wake of the team putting up one of the most pathetic collapses we've ever seen in the second half of 2024. All that inaction, and now they're ****ing selling. Pathetic.

Screw this franchise.

[TheLeviathan]

Preach Brock.  The Pohlads have brought this reality upon us.  They pulled the payroll out from under their FO and their chosen FO wasn't creative enough to pivot and find solutions.

We've never quite got the development thing humming and even when we feel like we have talent, we're always facing down the impending doom of having to pay them knowing ownership will fight tooth and nail to do it.

I wish I could believe the Pohlads are in their final days with this organization.....but I can't shake the feeling that their inability to do basic business is going to keep being a problem.  Even down to them selling that business off for a mind-blowing level of profit.

This fan isn't going to believe they're done bungling until the press conference with the new owners happens.

[Mike Sixel]

Brock really hit the nail on the head there!

[jctwins]

Spot on commentary here. The idea they run this like a business implies that they are doing so well. They definitely aren't.