Josh Donaldson Says Minnesota Fans “Don’t Even Care” About Baseball

[lukeduke1980]

'Minnesotan fans don't care about mediocre baseball' fixes it for me.  Summer is too precious and the mediocrity has become too prevalent 

[JD-TWINS]

8 hours ago, ashbury said:

I'm glad you pointed out Cincy.  They're an important example and no theory is complete without taking it into account.  (Whatever "theory" I have is half-formed and less than half-baked anyway.)

I pulled up a table (shown below) comparing W-L rankings versus attendance rankings across the last 20 seasons.  There is indeed a very strong correlation between winning and attendance.  The Reds happen to fit exactly to that pattern - 21st in winning percentage, 21st in attendance.

Statisticians always warn that correlation is not causation. You can say "build a winning team and the fans will come."  I could be contrary, given a century-plus of baseball history to build on, and put it the other way around to say that if a city supports its team they'll be rewarded with winners.  The truth?  Possibly somewhere in between.  What I don't like about "win and they will come" is that it's awfully transactional - "we give you this and you give this to us in return" - when pro sports are (or should be) about love and excitement instead.

Also, attendance is not the only measure of fan engagement, and neither is equivalent to team profitability.  I mention this just to keep clear the limitations of trying to do an amateur study.

Anyhoo, the blue and red symbols in the table highlight the biggest outliers.  Despite consistent winning teams the past two decades, Cleveland hasn't supported the Guardians.  It's interesting if Cleveland fans will travel southwest to watch their team play an interleague game but not attend at home. (Yes, I know, Ohio is very regional so we're talking about Dayton and Columbus fans and so forth.)   I'm sure MLB has been studying their situation for years, and would have a solution if there was one.  FWIW that home-attendance history flies in the face of my one bit of anecdotal evidence - I went to a game in Cleveland late last month and the Friday night crowd (against the non-bitter-rival Diamondbacks) was large and enthusiastic - remaining so even in the final innings after an 8th inning bullpen meltdown. 

The Phillies and Rockies are the biggest ones in the other direction.  Philadelphia is a large city and they're quirky so that one doesn't interest me too much as anything the Twins could learn from. But what eldritch magic does the Colorado FO have that pulls fans in to see the woeful product they put on the field?  That needs to be bottled and shared.

Have to mention the Brewers of course.  They also demonstrate you don't have to win to draw.

Back to Donaldson's point about the Minnesota Twins - the Twin Cities do not shine in this table.  The team is 15th in wins, but only 18th in attendance.  They are not as bad about this as the Athletics or Rays, but then again you don't want to be mentioned in the same breath with basket cases.  No table is going to give a good picture of the atmosphere at the ballyard - in my experience Red Sox fans lean forward and shout "we're here to have fun," while Twins fans sit back and say "entertain me."

I'm sure there is much more to be gleaned than I mentioned, but I don't plan to make this into a big undertaking for myself.  Here is the table.  Thanks for the nudge.

 

attendance rank compared with the winning-percentage rank:

Team	W–L % rank	Attendance rank	Difference	Attendance / win*
Dodgers	1	1	0	~38,500
Yankees	2	2	0	~33,400
Red Sox	3	4	+1	~32,900
Cardinals	4	3	−1	~35,100
Braves	5	10	+5	~28,700
Guardians	6	29	+23 🔴	~20,100
Astros	7	13	+6	~28,500
Rangers	8	12	+4	~29,200
Giants	9	8	−1	~31,600
Angels	10	9	−1	~31,200
Cubs	11	6	−5	~32,600
Mets	12	5	−7	~33,500
Tigers	13	15	+2	~28,900
Blue Jays	14	14	0	~29,200
Twins	15	18	+3	~27,600
Mariners	16	16	0	~28,200
Athletics	17	25	+8	~23,800
Padres	18	11	−7	~30,500
Diamondbacks	19	22	+3	~26,100
Phillies	20	7	−13 🔵	~33,700
Reds	21	21	0	~26,700
Nationals	22	24	+2	~25,100
Brewers	23	17	−6	~28,800
Rays	24	28	+4	~22,500
Orioles	25	23	−2	~26,500
White Sox	26	19	−7	~28,700
Pirates	27	27	0	~24,300
Marlins	28	30	+2	~19,400
Royals	29	26	−3	~25,000
Rockies	30	20	−10 🔵	~29,000

The winning % equates to what range of time? Last year? Last 5 years? Last 25 years?

The Giants haven’t been #9 in winning % for a bit & the Brewers at 23rd in winning% seems really outdated.

Can’t blend down years with good years and draw any conclusions that relate to specific years of winning & specific years of drawing well or not.

Rays 24th in winning%???

[ashbury]

13 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

The winning % equates to what range of time? Last year? Last 5 years? Last 25 years?

The Giants haven’t been #9 in winning % for a bit & the Brewers at 23rd in winning% seems really outdated.

Can’t blend down years with good years and draw any conclusions that relate to specific years of winning & specific years of drawing well or not.

Rays 24th in winning%???

I thought I stated, but it was across 20 years.  Trying to rule out small sample sizes, and thereby derive some kind of big-picture about the behavior of the respective markets, but of course the details of season-to-season matter too.  I suppose that's why consulting firms rake in the big bucks.

[JD-TWINS]

12 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I thought I stated, but it was across 20 years.  Trying to rule out small sample sizes, and thereby derive some kind of big-picture about the behavior of the respective markets, but of course the details of season-to-season matter too.  I suppose that's why consulting firms rake in the big bucks.

Stating the obvious here - if a team has 3 deep playoff runs in 20 years and makes the playoffs 3 other times…….that’s 14 years of OK to Bad ………….6-7 of those 14 years can be assumed to be Bad. The winning and attendance are generally in lock step…,,,towns like St. Louis come out regardless …….but, as the Team that’s won 2nd most World Series, there’s a pretty solid case of winning tradition to overcome the lulls.

[HarmonK03]

15 hours ago, olerud said:

 Donaldson--"Everything analytics no reasoning." I 100% agree with his assessment about that time period of the management!!!!!!

Nothing has changed from that regard.

[chpettit19]

8 hours ago, IndianaTwin said:

I’ll look forward to the series and I’m sure you’ll cover this then, but how many trips did you do? Lots of one-offs or were you able to string a lot together?

It'll end up being 6 trips total.

[LastOnePicked]

22 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

Rocco and Falvey and the team and the clubhouse must have cared the year before he got there when they won 101 games. 

Cool. What happened next?

I don't want to be a jerk, but that's kinda the crux of it. They really haven't won anything significant in a very long time. And they don't seem to be able to capitalize on an open window. They're a mid-tier organization at best.

Donaldson is only saying what many of us already believe.

[knothole61]

13 hours ago, sampleSizeOfOne said:

It's just an old children's book i read as a kid, I suppose i could have also selected any number of Theodor Geisel publications, or also Mike mulligan's steam shovel, "are you my mother?", or if slightly older demographic, Frank Baum or the Mother Westwind series. But the ball seemed to fit with baseball, if not explicitly, and when joined TD and selected the avatar, i had relatively recently taken up playing tuba. So it seemed an appropriate if obscure reference. (and in some fashion, obscurity is a bonus) but it did seem doubly appropriate during the era where we wrote game thread intros, and i tried to pick up the slack, and it so happened that i was in a parade that day, and hurriedly typing something up while waiting for step off.

 

Thanks for asking.

Thanks...now there's one less mystery in my life.

I enjoyed the reference to L. Frank Baum. As you probably know, in the novel Dorothy wears silver, not ruby slippers, and some believe that the book was intended as a Populist political allegory. This has nothing to do with baseball of course, but Baum fascinates me.  

[dcswede]

Look what we Twins fans have been willing to accept for the last 30 years. Donaldson is a jerk - but he's not wrong.

[Mike Sixel]

Why does anyone care?

[bean5302]

On 8/14/2026 at 10:30 AM, DJL44 said:

Baseball is the #4 sport in this market after football, hockey and basketball. 

I think it's #5 now behind soccer.

[bean5302]

Honestly, I peeked into this topic for the reaction watching. I don't care enough about Donaldson to give his opinions any value LOL

[olerud]

15 hours ago, HarmonK03 said:

Nothing has changed from that regard. Oh but I think it has. Shelton is great!!!! Rockhead sucked!

 

[Twodogs]

On 8/14/2026 at 8:50 AM, ashbury said:

If you've ever lived in a "good baseball town" you'll at least understand where he's coming from.

And still, a player just doesn't, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't say the quiet part out loud.  It serves no purpose.

Typical Josh Donaldson pot-stirring.

Unfortunately, most of these pod casts are designed to create a stir or create a ruckus.  I mean look at Stephen A Smith?  That's all he does is say stuff that makes people uncomfortable.  Guess what, it drives ratings.  I mean had Donaldson just said, Minnesota was just another stop in my career, it wasnt any better or worse that many of the other squads I was on, then nobody would be talking about it.  Which again is unfortunate.  

 

Roger Lodge, commentator and tv personality said way back in the day he filled in for Jim Rome, he said that he went after the jugular and said some questionable things about certain athletes, coaches, athletic personnel, etc....  He said the producers were stoked, they loved it so much, they requested him back time after time and he said he ate it up, got his own show and after awhile he said when he went home at night, he just didn't feel good anymore.  Pointing out negatives all of the time and trying to bring people down all of the time actually wore on him.  So he quit, now he does a local show prior to the Angels games the sports Lodge, and he is pretty upbeat all of the time and he says hed make a lot more money had he kept being cutting edge and bringing up negative things all of the time, but he said he just feels so much better when he gets home nowadays that he said he would never go back.  It just goes to show that someone like Josh Donaldson or any one else will get more clicks or play nowadays if they say some negative stuff and get everyone upset.  So hard to blame him in todays climate that he would say something questionable.  

 

If I remember right, the Twins were really focused on signing someone else and got Donaldson sort of as a consolation prize?  Best memory of Donaldson was the homerun robe.  Too bad he was hurt all of the time, might have a different opinion of him had he helped win a couple of division titles??

[tony&rodney]

6 hours ago, Twodogs said:

Unfortunately, most of these pod casts are designed to create a stir or create a ruckus.  I mean look at Stephen A Smith?  That's all he does is say stuff that makes people uncomfortable.  Guess what, it drives ratings.  I mean had Donaldson just said, Minnesota was just another stop in my career, it wasnt any better or worse that many of the other squads I was on, then nobody would be talking about it.  Which again is unfortunate.  

 

Roger Lodge, commentator and tv personality said way back in the day he filled in for Jim Rome, he said that he went after the jugular and said some questionable things about certain athletes, coaches, athletic personnel, etc....  He said the producers were stoked, they loved it so much, they requested him back time after time and he said he ate it up, got his own show and after awhile he said when he went home at night, he just didn't feel good anymore.  Pointing out negatives all of the time and trying to bring people down all of the time actually wore on him.  So he quit, now he does a local show prior to the Angels games the sports Lodge, and he is pretty upbeat all of the time and he says hed make a lot more money had he kept being cutting edge and bringing up negative things all of the time, but he said he just feels so much better when he gets home nowadays that he said he would never go back.  It just goes to show that someone like Josh Donaldson or any one else will get more clicks or play nowadays if they say some negative stuff and get everyone upset.  So hard to blame him in todays climate that he would say something questionable.  

Shock jocks have been around for some time. Henny Penny, The Rainmakers who traveled from town to town,  Howard Stern - The King of All Media had a copycat by the name of Bubba the Love Sponge. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes loved All Star Wrestling and brought that to television. Their big star was a failure at every stop until his act made him god - Bill O'Reilly. Josh Donaldson, Smith, and all these guys are just chasing the dough and they don't have a single iota of conscience. It's all about the Benjamins.

The really odd thing is that millions of people are thoroughly entertained  and the truly weird angle is that many people think they are saying legitimate things. Plouffe makes sense, Donaldson .... not.

[MeleMouth]

On 8/15/2026 at 10:48 AM, ashbury said:

I'm glad you pointed out Cincy.  They're an important example and no theory is complete without taking it into account.  (Whatever "theory" I have is half-formed and less than half-baked anyway.)

I pulled up a table (shown below) comparing W-L rankings versus attendance rankings across the last 20 seasons.  There is indeed a very strong correlation between winning and attendance.  The Reds happen to fit exactly to that pattern - 21st in winning percentage, 21st in attendance.

Statisticians always warn that correlation is not causation. You can say "build a winning team and the fans will come."  I could be contrary, given a century-plus of baseball history to build on, and put it the other way around to say that if a city supports its team they'll be rewarded with winners.  The truth?  Possibly somewhere in between.  What I don't like about "win and they will come" is that it's awfully transactional - "we give you this and you give this to us in return" - when pro sports are (or should be) about love and excitement instead.

Also, attendance is not the only measure of fan engagement, and neither is equivalent to team profitability.  I mention this just to keep clear the limitations of trying to do an amateur study.

Anyhoo, the blue and red symbols in the table highlight the biggest outliers.  Despite consistent winning teams the past two decades, Cleveland hasn't supported the Guardians.  It's interesting if Cleveland fans will travel southwest to watch their team play an interleague game but not attend at home. (Yes, I know, Ohio is very regional so we're talking about Dayton and Columbus fans and so forth.)   I'm sure MLB has been studying their situation for years, and would have a solution if there was one.  FWIW that home-attendance history flies in the face of my one bit of anecdotal evidence - I went to a game in Cleveland late last month and the Friday night crowd (against the non-bitter-rival Diamondbacks) was large and enthusiastic - remaining so even in the final innings after an 8th inning bullpen meltdown. 

The Phillies and Rockies are the biggest ones in the other direction.  Philadelphia is a large city and they're quirky so that one doesn't interest me too much as anything the Twins could learn from. But what eldritch magic does the Colorado FO have that pulls fans in to see the woeful product they put on the field?  That needs to be bottled and shared.

Have to mention the Brewers of course.  They also demonstrate you don't have to win to draw.

Back to Donaldson's point about the Minnesota Twins - the Twin Cities do not shine in this table.  The team is 15th in wins, but only 18th in attendance.  They are not as bad about this as the Athletics or Rays, but then again you don't want to be mentioned in the same breath with basket cases.  No table is going to give a good picture of the atmosphere at the ballyard - in my experience Red Sox fans lean forward and shout "we're here to have fun," while Twins fans sit back and say "entertain me."

I'm sure there is much more to be gleaned than I mentioned, but I don't plan to make this into a big undertaking for myself.  Here is the table.  Thanks for the nudge.

 

attendance rank compared with the winning-percentage rank:

Team	W–L % rank	Attendance rank	Difference	Attendance / win*
Dodgers	1	1	0	~38,500
Yankees	2	2	0	~33,400
Red Sox	3	4	+1	~32,900
Cardinals	4	3	−1	~35,100
Braves	5	10	+5	~28,700
Guardians	6	29	+23 🔴	~20,100
Astros	7	13	+6	~28,500
Rangers	8	12	+4	~29,200
Giants	9	8	−1	~31,600
Angels	10	9	−1	~31,200
Cubs	11	6	−5	~32,600
Mets	12	5	−7	~33,500
Tigers	13	15	+2	~28,900
Blue Jays	14	14	0	~29,200
Twins	15	18	+3	~27,600
Mariners	16	16	0	~28,200
Athletics	17	25	+8	~23,800
Padres	18	11	−7	~30,500
Diamondbacks	19	22	+3	~26,100
Phillies	20	7	−13 🔵	~33,700
Reds	21	21	0	~26,700
Nationals	22	24	+2	~25,100
Brewers	23	17	−6	~28,800
Rays	24	28	+4	~22,500
Orioles	25	23	−2	~26,500
White Sox	26	19	−7	~28,700
Pirates	27	27	0	~24,300
Marlins	28	30	+2	~19,400
Royals	29	26	−3	~25,000
Rockies	30	20	−10 🔵	~29,000

Help me out here. The text says this table is for the "last 20 seasons," but between 2006 and 2025 the Rays had 1650 wins while the Twins had 1541 wins, more than 100 fewer. The Rays have more wins in 2026, also, and a separate review I did shows the Rays as having the 3rd best winning percentage in MLB between 2010 and 2026, and 2008-09 were also good years for them, so their bad years in 2006-07 couldn't have dropped them from 3rd to 24th. However, this table shows the Rays as being 24th in winning percentage over this time period and the Twins as being 15th. What am I missing? Thanks.