Are the Twins Becoming the American League’s Version of the Pittsburgh Pirates?

[Cody Christie]

Image courtesy of © Sam Greene/The Enquirer / Imagn Images

For much of the past decade, the Minnesota Twins took pride in being a small-market success story, a team that could win without spending like the Yankees or Dodgers. But after a disastrous 2025 campaign and a fire sale that gutted much of the roster, the franchise is starting to flirt with an uncomfortable comparison: the Pittsburgh Pirates of the American League.

Like the Pirates, the Twins are slipping into a pattern that prioritizes financial flexibility over on-field competitiveness. In the most recent Gleeman and the Geek podcast, Aaron and John discussed the connections between the Pirates and Twins. The warning signs are hard to miss, from payroll slashing to dwindling attendance and an organizational model that risks turning the club into a developmental stopover for stars of other teams.

Payroll Problems and Profit Priorities
The Pirates have long been one of baseball’s poster children for maximizing ownership profits while minimizing payroll. Last season, Pittsburgh’s Opening Day payroll was a meager $87 million, ranking near the bottom of Major League Baseball. Only the Miami Marlins and Oakland Athletics spent less.

Minnesota hasn’t reached those depths yet, but the direction is eerily familiar. The Twins’ 2025 payroll averaged around $136 million, ranking 20th in MLB. After the team’s late-season sell-off, that number dipped closer to $120 million, and early indicators suggest that the front office could trim even more heading into 2026. A payroll in the $100 million range would put the Twins dangerously close to the Pirates’ operating zone.

For years, ownership has sold the narrative that spending efficiency, not spending limits, is the goal. But at some point, it’s fair for fans to wonder if the Twins are still trying to win or simply trying to make the balance sheet look better.

Empty Seats in Beautiful Ballparks
PNC Park and Target Field are often celebrated as two of the most beautiful venues in baseball. Both parks sit along scenic backdrops, one with the Pittsburgh skyline, the other overlooking downtown Minneapolis. But lately, the view from the stands has come with a lot more empty seats.

Minnesota entered 2025 hoping to top two million fans in attendance for the season, but the reality was far bleaker. The Twins finished with 1.77 million total fans, averaging just under 22,000 per game. That marks one of the franchise’s lowest totals since Target Field opened in 2010.

Meanwhile, the Pirates drew 1.52 million fans to PNC Park, averaging about 18,800 per game. The gap between the two clubs’ attendance figures has nearly evaporated. With season ticket renewals expected to drop for 2026, the Twins could soon find themselves right next to Pittsburgh on the attendance charts, a place no ownership group wants to be.

Minnesota’s ownership touted that Target Field was built to keep the team competitive and financially stable. But like in Pittsburgh, a sparkling ballpark doesn’t mean much when the product on the field fails to inspire confidence. Fans can only be sold on skyline views and craft beer for so long before apathy takes over.

From Contenders to a “Quad-A” Club
In Pittsburgh, the model has been clear for decades: draft and develop elite talent, utilize it for a few years, and then watch those players become stars elsewhere. Gerrit Cole became a Yankee ace. Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows were traded away. Now, Paul Skenes appears to be the next great Pirate who may eventually find himself in a different uniform once the price tag becomes too high.

Minnesota’s recent moves echo that same troubling trend. The 2025 trade deadline saw the front office flip established talent for prospects, signaling a potential reset rather than a retool. And with rumors swirling that players like Joe Ryan, Ryan Jeffers, and Pablo López could be on the block this winter, it’s fair to ask whether the Twins are becoming a “Quad-A” franchise, one that grooms top talent just long enough for richer clubs to reap the benefits.

It’s a path the Pirates have walked for years, one that trades long-term competitiveness for short-term cost control. The Twins were supposed to be different. They had modern analytics, a player-friendly culture, and a new stadium built on promises of sustained contention. But as payroll shrinks, attendance falls, and key players are dangled in trade rumors, those promises feel increasingly hollow.

The Slippery Slope
No one expects the Twins to spend like the Dodgers or Phillies. But there’s a big difference between fiscal responsibility and competitive apathy. The Pirates have shown how quickly a team can slip into irrelevance when ownership treats baseball like a business first and a sport second.

If the Twins continue to cut payroll, lose stars, and alienate their fan base, they won’t just resemble the Pirates. They’ll become them. And for a franchise that once prided itself on doing more with less, that would be the ultimate failure.

Are the Twins the Pirates of the American League? Leave a comment and start the discussion.

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[mikelink45]

Another way to look at the team is to stack them up in rank among the local teams -

1. Vikings
2. Timberwolves
3. Lynx
4. Wild
5. Gophers
6. Loons
7. Saints or Twins

[Brandon27]

There going be another fire sell this offseason and starts with byron buxton and Pablo lopez.Twins got rid of one big contract they are not keeping both contracts 

[Mahoning]

You are, in effect, asking for honesty from Twins ownership. Good luck with that. 

[Doug Y]

A salary cap and a salary floor should be implemented immediately. Every other major sports league does it. But that is not what the commissioner wants. He wants the top seven biggest metro area teams in the playoffs and World Series every single year. He doesn’t care about small market teams. And it is pushing fans away in small markets.

[Eris]

A couple of items in context.  Austin Meadows, and right-hander Tyler Glasnow were traded to the Rays for Chris Archer. So on this list, only Gerrit Cole was traded because of lack of affordability. The Chris Archer trade was a horrible trade for the Pirates. Worse than Sending Garza and Bartlett to the Rays for Delmon Young. However, I don’t think it should be used as an example for the point the author is trying to make. 
 

[Jack207]

The Twins organization could easily drop to the level of Pittsburgh this coming year if they 

aren't there already. Why would you devalue an asset that you are trying to sell? It makes no sense. Obviously, the Twins were worth more at the beginning of 2025 than they are now. I think a sell is the only avenue for Twins fans.

[Whitey333]

The article makes a valid point.  Im anticipating more payroll cuts this off season.  Especially Lopez.  It could be a long stretch of very bad baseball in minnesota.

[Patzky]

5 minutes ago, Whitey333 said:

The article makes a valid point.  Im anticipating more payroll cuts this off season.  Especially Lopez.  It could be a long stretch of very bad baseball in minnesota.

If the Pohlads would just come out and state 'Pablo Lopez is your opening day starter..'

[Cory Engelhardt]

Sky is falling articles or comments are hard for me to take.

Why not just let the offseason play out?

[Doctor Gast]

MN does compare to PIT in that they both have beautiful parks that aren't filled. But IMO they compare more to CO ROX as an organization. Both had good teams but INCOMPETENCE from management top to bottom. Mismanagement of the money allotted. Although MN isn't a big market they still often think like a big market in that they think FA is the way to improve. They often spent too much money on FAs & salary dumps that are often useless. To go along with poor player evaluation & development, Lack of vision to see where needs are at & how to fill it. Lack of ability to initiate & close on an essential trade. And bad philosophy based on Falvey's weird analytics.

A team who is just flat out cheap. If they chose to spend more money on extending good players they could turn the team around. But incompentance you can spend like drunken sailor & still not see desireable results. 

[Wyorev]

43 minutes ago, Doug Y said:

A salary cap and a salary floor should be implemented immediately. Every other major sports league does it. But that is not what the commissioner wants. He wants the top seven biggest metro area teams in the playoffs and World Series every single year. He doesn’t care about small market teams. And it is pushing fans away in small markets.

I believe that a salary cap - something owners are pursuing - would be terrible for baseball fans. Owners like the Pohlads would manipulate the heck out such a construct, find a way to spend even less, and claim they weren’t allowed to try to win… Billionaires tend not to care what other people think or to be very benevolent.

[Doctor Gast]

1 hour ago, Eris said:

A couple of items in context.  Austin Meadows, and right-hander Tyler Glasnow were traded to the Rays for Chris Archer. So on this list, only Gerrit Cole was traded because of lack of affordability. The Chris Archer trade was a horrible trade for the Pirates. Worse than Sending Garza and Bartlett to the Rays for Delmon Young. However, I don’t think it should be used as an example for the point the author is trying to make. 
 

PIT biggest problem was that they were totally lost at developing pitching. I advocated for years to focus on obtaining their pitchers & then develop them (ex. Cole, Glasnow & Musgrove). PIT had a good eye for pitchers but could not develop them. PIT could see that Archer was a good SP just like MN did but MN didn't want to spend the player capital. TB won the trade because they could see the value in Glasnow's upside. But PIT gain value with Archer, but didn't know how to continue to develop Archer, so instead of helping Archer, they damaged him. PIT has since seen the error of its ways & greatly improved its pitching development; unfortunately, it was too late for Archer. So to blame Archer for the imbalance in the trade is lack of understanding. That's the problem of looking only at stats.

[Dawgzilla]

Team scouting has been a problem, with few big hits.  Then, if you do have a scouting hit, it takes until they are 25 years old+ to get to the majors, almost enough to qualify for social security😉!  Touche'!  MLB has to have a salary cap floor and ceiling, or penalize the big spending teams more for going over the cap.  Lastly, if you never want your team to be at least competitive, every year, sell!!!!!!!!!!!  Oh, one final point:  people have better things to do with their hard earned money, especially when professional sports are already waaayyy expensive to attend (food, tickets, parking, merchandise, etc.), this also goes for expensive local or out of town tv rights, which most can't afford subscriptions to now!!!?

[Dawgzilla]

Twins have already attained that status late in the year with dwindling and lethargic attendance.  It will be hard to reignite any enthusiasm going into next season.  As in the movie Taken, with Liam Neesome quote .."good luck"!!!!!

[nicksaviking]

This is a bridge too far and feels like it's inviting a defense of the Pohlad's, which nobody wants to do. 

Yeah, the Pohlad's ransomed the Twins so we'd give them our free tax money, clearly prioritize their other businesses over the baseball team and are currently giving no damns about putting a product on the field the fans would want.

Yet they still aren't anywhere close to Bob Nutting. The Twins tend to be somewhere like 14th to 21st in payroll just about every year. The Pirates are somewhere between 28th and 30th. The Pohlads would have to cut payroll another 30% and keep it that way for the next two decades to reach Pirate levels.

[Trov]

Baseball is a business, and the fact that fans expect owners to be willing to lose money on it to me is crazy.  The writer also talks about trading Glasnow and Meadows in same as Cole, but they were not similar type trades.  Cole was traded because it was clear he would not resign and they wanted to get something in return outside a single draft pick.  Glasnow and Meadows were traded in an effort to help win then as it win now move, that failed terrible.  

The pirates have been a terrible run organization for years, not just because the owner is trying to max out profits, but because they never seem to have a clear direction.  They trade prospects for vets, but then trade vets for prospects. They have also failed at developing hitters for several years too. 

[Woof Bronzer]

43 minutes ago, Cory Engelhardt said:

Sky is falling articles or comments are hard for me to take.

Why not just let the offseason play out?

"Everything is going to be great" articles or comments are hard for me to take.  I guess we're in a stalemate.

Why not try not to police what others think?

[Cory Engelhardt]

1 minute ago, Woof Bronzer said:

"Everything is going to be great" articles or comments are hard for me to take.  I guess we're in a stalemate.

Why not try not to police what others think?

I didn’t say it has to be puppies and kittens either. I just meant why worry about something before it actually happens? What is the point?

[mluebker]

“The Twins were supposed to be different. They had modern analytics…”

Pretty much everyone counting on analytics these days means it’s not going to be an advantage anymore. No team with a roster of cast-offs and lower-tier free agents that strictly follows the numbers is ever going to dominate teams with better players that also strictly follow the numbers.

If the Twins continue to be the former under the Pohlads, they’re going to need a different approach, starting with a manager who’s aware of the numbers, but willing to listen to his gut, and think outside the box once in a while.

Otherwise fans in other cities with low-performing teams will be posting articles cautioning that they don’t want to become the Twins of their league or division.

 

[bunsen82]

Can I call an article stupid?  

The premise is he doesn't don't like that the Twins tanked at the end of the year so will compare them to the worst franchise in baseball.  Did I get that right.  Are there issues yes.  We have had competitive teams for the most part for the last 8 years,  absolutely.   There are some things to like in the minor league system.  Ownership I think is an issue that will resolve itself in a couple years.  If declining attendence occurs until the next wave comes that is to be expected.    

[Twinkie in Deutschland]

The Twins are more like the Montreal Expos before they moved to Washington and not the Pirates. There, the team fell into irreverance completely, to a point where there were lack of signage to even the Expos Stadium. Eventually MLB bought the team to rebuild it before selling it to a manager who vowed to move the team to its present site. But the Twins are really, REALLY close to becoming the Expos, maybe not in 2026 but before 2030 when the team is sold to someone who will eventually move it out of state because the fans are strangers to the team. I remember how they came very close to contracting in 2001, together with the Expos. That can realistically happen if the Pohlads don't start investing in the team and talent right now or sell it to a group of investors who have the cash and resources to rebuild from the ground up. What will it take for Minnesota to wake up before the worst case scenario happens?

[jorgenswest]

The Pirates have had a top 10 ranked prospect pool for several years running. I looked at the last 14 Fangraphs team rankings and they are top 10 in 13 of 14. They are top 5 in many. I have wondered if there is a relationship between prospect ranking and winning. Those strong prospect rankings have not translated to winning for the Pirates.

[Woof Bronzer]

1 hour ago, Cory Engelhardt said:

I didn’t say it has to be puppies and kittens either. I just meant why worry about something before it actually happens? What is the point?

By this logic TD would shut down until April.  If fans didn't "worry about something before it happens" we wouldn't have sports radio, ESPN, sites like Twins Daily, etc.   The point is to talk about sports.  

[tony&rodney]

Personally  I'm not seeing any comparison. A huge focus has been payroll, which can be important. At this time payroll doesn't factor into the roster build unless the Twins plan to sign 2-3 top free agents. Do any of the people who own, write, or read Twins Daily believe Realmuto, Alonso, Bregman, Bellinger, Bichette, Cease, or Valdez are targets for the Twins to sign? How many people are hoping for the Twins to sign Kepler, Polanco, Paddack, etc?

The main concern (imo) with the Twins is that their position guys were poor at supporting their pitchers with either their gloves or bats. The draft is a way to build talent and every team has misses there but the Twins went a few times too often for DH types who haven't delivered yet. The draft is tough. Additionally the Twins have been reticent to trade players when their value is high and subsequently watched as those players' crashed. In short, the Twins have been more reactive than proactive.

While I wasn't exactly cheery about the selloff in July, it does seem like the Twins were trying to be proactive in those trades. Will that continue? We don't know. Trading Pablo Lopez or Byron Buxton won't make sense unless the return is fabulous, which seems very unlikely. I doubt either are traded. Trading any or all of Jeffers, Lewis, Wallner, Ryan, Ober, and Larnach could make sense dependent on what players are gained in any transactions. Some players have higher value, others have lower. The decisions need to improve the outlook of the team. I don't see standing pat with the current roster as an option.

[USAFChief]

3 hours ago, Doug Y said:

A salary cap and a salary floor should be implemented immediately. Every other major sports league does it. But that is not what the commissioner wants. He wants the top seven biggest metro area teams in the playoffs and World Series every single year. He doesn’t care about small market teams. And it is pushing fans away in small markets.

It's not the commissioner that doesnt want a salary cap and floor. It's the MLBPA fighting tooth and nail.

[jmlease1]

1 hour ago, nicksaviking said:

This is a bridge too far and feels like it's inviting a defense of the Pohlad's, which nobody wants to do. 

Yeah, the Pohlad's ransomed the Twins so we'd give them our free tax money, clearly prioritize their other businesses over the baseball team and are currently giving no damns about putting a product on the field the fans would want.

Yet they still aren't anywhere close to Bob Nutting. The Twins tend to be somewhere like 14th to 21st in payroll just about every year. The Pirates are somewhere between 28th and 30th. The Pohlads would have to cut payroll another 30% and keep it that way for the next two decades to reach Pirate levels.

I mean, Cody is the king of click-bait stories/headlines.

There's reason to fear: if you have bad/cheap ownership, it's easy to have the whole thing collapse on you and stink for extended periods of time. After 1992, we had 8 seasons in a row where the club finished 4th or 5th in the division under TK. After an extended period of success under Gardy, we saw 4 straight 90 loss teams that were really really bad.

But Pittsburgh has also drafted poorly over the last decade outside of Skenes. Looking at the first 2 rounds from the last decade, outside of Skenes (a generational talent) their best picks were: Lodolo (who they didn't sign), Baz (who they traded), Triolo (pretty good!), and a trio of ok pitchers. Not great.

They've gotten basically zero value from their later round picks as well. If you look back, you're not finding a Bailey Ober or a Griffin Jax in there. Even with the Twins struggling to translate prospects to consistent regulars, there's little question that the Twins have drafted better than the Pirates.

Pirates have some potential in their rotation, but after Skenes their 2nd best starter would have been the Twins 4th best starter. Not great. Their bullpen was pretty good, but so was the twins before we intentionally decimated it. As bad as the Twins lineup is, Pittsburgh had 1 hitter on their entire roster who was above league average. ONE.

Frankly, I'm amazed the Pirates won 70. Don Kelly might be a magician.

[Ricky Vaughn]

I don't see the comparison. The Pirates have been winning 65-75 games a year for what. the last 15 years . They compare more with the St Louis Browns. The Twins have a way to go before reaching that level.

[Doug Y]

2 hours ago, Wyorev said:

I believe that a salary cap - something owners are pursuing - would be terrible for baseball fans. Owners like the Pohlads would manipulate the heck out such a construct, find a way to spend even less, and claim they weren’t allowed to try to win… Billionaires tend not to care what other people think or to be very benevolent.

I think that is why they also need a salary floor.

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, Cory Engelhardt said:

I didn’t say it has to be puppies and kittens either. I just meant why worry about something before it actually happens? What is the point?

Somebody has to write articles every day. Not every day has something actually happening.