Who Deserves the Blame for Another Second-Half Collapse by the Twins?

[chpettit19]

Expectations and the AL not having 6 teams above .500 consistently. That's who's to blame for the perception that there's some collapse happening.

The Twins are, and have been, hitting projections pretty dead on. Mid-70s in wins. In some weird way, fans have taken them not losing 110 games and being "in contention" because of the historically horrific AL to mean that they've over-achieved somehow. They haven't. They're still a bad team. They've been below .500 nearly the entire season.

Falvey, Zoll, Joe Pohlad, whoever was making decisions last year and most of the offseason is who is to blame if you want to point fingers at people. But this was the plan. Zoll and Tom Pohlad get blame for the nonsense expectations, though. The problem isn't the Twins being bad this year, again, that was the plan. The problem is that they tried to pivot from that plan 3/4 of the way through it and hurt their chances to come out the other side with a team really capable of competing.

The Twins were at .500 on April 22nd. They were below .500 on April 23. That's 24 and 25 games into the season. They've been at .500 4 days since then. They've been above .500 1 day since then. They've now played 140 games. In the last 115 games, they've been at or above .500 for 5 of them. The idea that there's "another second half collapse" happening is nonsense to start with. They've been bad all year.

[old nurse]

2 minutes ago, Craig Arko said:

Never saw much value in the blame game. It doesn’t actually solve anything.

It solves the problem of what to write about 

[shimrod]

The Twins have already won more games than I expected this season. It's been a pleasure to watch them win as many as they have. Winning is fun. 

Shelton has elevated this team. He's a mediocre tactician but appears to set clear roles and expectations. No more lineup bingo. I don't like seeing players trying to learn new positions on the fly but to be fair the players moved weren't looking great at their original positions. Royce shows potential to be a plus defensive 1B, Lee is better at third than short, and Keaschall just wasn't working out at second. 

The problem isn't that the team collapsed. The problem is ownership/management moving the timeline based on a better than expected (lucky) few months of baseball. This years deadline was an opportunity to finish the job started last season - trade away expiring veterans, rentals, and a couple surplus outfielders to add youth and clear the field for the prospects. 

 

[jmlease1]

I tend to agree with the arguments that this is only a collapse in terms of the context of being in the playoff hunt because of the poor overall performance of the AL and now not really being in there any longer because the twins have continued to be the twins of 2026 while other teams have performed better. We kind of are who we thought we were.

Now, we would have been better positioned if Falvey hadn't nuked the bullpen and not bothered to try and rebuild it before he was ushered out of the building, and Zoll didn't do much to shore things up when he took full command either until the deadline. Maybe that's because the Tom & Jeremy Show took over too late, maybe they were mostly ok with the Falvey path until we got well into the season...who knows?

The Pablo injury hurt a lot. Lowered the ceiling and the floor in one shot, which is what happens when a lower payroll team loses one of its highest paid and best players. The other injuries to Buxton and Ryan and Jeffers, while significant are more within the "well, injuries are going to happen" range, rather than the catastrophic.

Shelton has been fine as a manager, generally. We tend to overrate managers when the team has success, and overly blame them when the team does poorly. I'm not sure there's been as much actual change in performance or orientation from Rocco to Sheltie as the people who have consistently trashed Rocco over the past few years would like to believe. If the Twins are running more it's because they have more players with speed. The defense still isn't good; Shelton didn't really change anything there, and he's got blind spots like everyone else (like his mysterious attachment to playing Larnach in LF when his attributes almost certain make him a better fit in RF and keaschall's best traits make him a better fit in LF, and Austin Martin had already shown he could be a quality defender in LF and simply never had the arm for RF...)

I think there was a belief that the Twins were going to play better and be more consistent in August after shoring up weaknesses in the roster, and instead they've continued to be inconsistent and frustrating, with flashes of potential and increased expectations. 

[Dakota Native]

You can blame Poland's poor management of the team's finances, which led to too much debt and forced them to sell off players to raise enough money to bring in minority owners to help pay off the rest. I don't think Falvey was a saint either. What did he get for dumping Duran, Jax, and Varland? Jax has 19 starts this season- we could sure use him in our rotation. Duran has 29 saves and a 1.61 ERA, and Varland at 31 and 1.18 is even better. With these guys in our mediocre and injury-prone pitching staff, together with the patchwork lineup Shelton has worked with, we would be leading the Central by 10 games. Boy, did the Pohlands screw the pooch.

[DJL44]

46 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

The guy who's hurt and melts down every second half and recently tied an MLB record for HRs given up in a game?

Do you think Joe Ryan getting hurt and pitching poorly helped them in August?

[mike8791]

This was a team built to be a noncontender.  Most Twin fans recognized this after the 2025 selloff, the absence of meaningful offseason additions to rebuild the pen, the disruption right before spring training in the FO, and the glaring holes in the lineup that left us barren of any real difference makers except Buxton(who still leads the team in WAR despite missing 1/3 of the season).  And no, this was not a "late season collapse"; this was a team that has flirted with .500 most of the season and was in the playoff race only because of the shocking ineptness of the AL this year.

But we all love to play the blame game, so here's my list:

#1 - The Pohlad Family, headed by TP :  With lack of significant prospect player development, the only way this team could have markedly improved was by expanding payroll to sign some difference-making FAs.  Instead, payroll has stayed at $100MM, with a slight($8MM) bump at the deadline.  With a new owner stepping in, saying this was a contending team and that he knew spending money was the only way to improve chances, the onus is on ownership for failing to do this.  They lied to us!

#2 - Falvey/Zoll - Granted their hands were tied somewhat by ownerships failure to go big, but Falvey's complete cleansing of the bullpen doomed this team's chances from the beginning.  While some of his transactions, e.g., Bradley, Abel/Tait, look reasonable, there is no excuse for unloading Varland, who could have provided stability in the pen from Day 1.  And Zoll did nothing about the pen until it literally was too late.  Morris and Gomez were pluses until recently, but the rest of the additions were pure crap shoots and as expected, did little to improve our chances to contend.  Zoll's trade deadline moves were too late and too little to markedly improve the rotation or bullpen.  And his worst performance were his non-moves in not trading Larnach, Jeffers and yes, even Ryan.  Larnach's continuing presence blocks development of Keaschal, E-Rod in LF, Jeffers will be lost for nothing, and Ryan might have been the one player who could have brought in 1 or 2 top prospects who could be the long term answers at filling existing weaknesses in the middle of the lineup.  Sure, Zoll's passivity can be partly attributed to TP's continued insistence that the Twins were competitive this year, but his deadline moves were underwhelming in any case and certainly did nothing to enhance chances of real contention in the next couple years.

Shelton and the players are not even included with the above two.  In reality this team has exceeded expectations, given the innate talent level on the roster. No, this is strictly on ownership, followed by GMs with little ability to shape a winning roster.  Let's just hope that new ownership with the ability and desire to build a true contender, recognizing they need an imaginative, risk-taking GM to accomplish the goal, and then step aside to let them do their job, will emerge  soon!

 

[Rod Carews Birthday]

Collapse?  I’m not sure that’s applicable here.  The Twins have been a slightly below average team all season.  They’ve never fallen way back and they’ve never pulled out above .500.  It seems a little more dramatic than that because the season has been full of little 3-4 game winning streaks nd 3-4 game losing streaks. 

So, the real question is “Who’s responsible for the team being consistently mediocre?”  I’m not sure pointing fingers is going to change much or that it’s nearly that cut and dried.  Everything plays a part and hopefully better decisions get made so that better things can happen next year.  In the meantime, I’m still going to root for the Twins to pull a rabbit out of their hat and sneak into the playoffs this year.  I’m not proud.  I’ll take it any way I can!

[Wedman13]

Lewis and Wallner screwed it.  They were supposed to produce and did not..  we are not a 2-deep team and will never be.  The guys expected to produce have to.  75% of this board claimed Wallner was a top 5 outfielder.  But he wasn't.  Put any 'blame' on all of us I suppose 

having said that / great article.    Frustrating, but I've enjoyed the season.

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I take Shelton off the list.  He has done as well as anyone would with what he has - injuries to Buxton are the norm, Wallner and Lewis collapsing in the first half is not on him.  Having a roster and minor league cupboard of lefthanded OF was not his creation.

I mostly agree, but I know I wouldn't have excluded Baldelli from blame, so I don't feel right doing so even though I like Shelton more.

Managers have an impact on momentum, tone and focus. But I think the margins for error for this team were always razor-thin. 

[PuckettPond]

Buxton is MapQuest & Jenkins is GPS. Not selling @ the trade deadline has set back the Twins success for years. How many of the trade deadline pitchers will still be with the Twins this time next season? We need an influx of YOUTH! No one likes an over ripe banana. No more No-trade contracts as the last two have been very bad for the Twins having to keep worthless players. Stats don't lie!

[MeleMouth]

51 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

The problem isn't the Twins being bad this year, again, that was the plan. The problem is that they tried to pivot from that plan 3/4 of the way through it and hurt their chances to come out the other side with a team really capable of competing.

This continues a multi-year trend of trying to have multiple simultaneous plans and pivoting from them based on the last two or three weeks of data. "Competitive rebuild" is definitionally having two plans in conflict with each other. Deciding to make most of your players utility players, so they can play multiple positions but not be very good at any of them, is having two plans in conflict with each other. Trying to develop prospects but then bringing them up when they've had a few weeks of good games and the team has a long-shot chance of the playoffs is having two plans in conflict with each other. Having a superstar who clearly needs medical help muddle through months of poor performance before deciding to get medical help is having two plans in conflict with each other. Hiring baseball experts while also having a new owner with extreme self-confidence whose main baseball experience and business accomplishment was inheriting billions of dollars, but who who wants to be involved in running the team, is having multiple plans in conflict with each other.

[Wedman13]

1 hour ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Can't disagree more.  If a business isn't meeting its goals it is absolutely worth figuring out what is going wrong.  How can you fix something if you don't diagnose the problem?

The problem is the industry of MLB

[bean5302]

Reasonable Question: If the message to the fans was this team was going to be competitive and be aiming for a World Series, why aren't they in that position?

Tom Pohlad: Not his fault for relaying his expectations the Twins would be competitive. He set the expectation on the front office, and fired Falvey almost immediately when the incompetent former head of a front office defecated the bed immediately on how he was going to accomplish the expected goal. That said, we don't know how much salary Pohlad was willing to take on, but sure seems like the Twins went el cheapo on Gausman. No reason the team shouldn't have aimed WAY higher than Dean Kremer. Also, ownership was clearly averse to investing in the team pre-season where Pohlad later realized a $100MM payroll was not going to get it done.

Jeremy Zoll: Yep. The vast majority of this falls on Zoll. Given a goal and a budget, he continued the bed defecation Falvey started. The same pattern as always. A total lack of decisiveness or willing to do what needed to be done. A total lack of ability to construct a roster which makes sense or make tough decisions. Overly risk averse. He was given the keys and did his best impression of Derek Falvey instead of differentiating himself.

Players: I think the team is right about within projection models based on the roster. They haven't outperformed or underperformed as a whole. Bad roster = bad results. 

[nicksaviking]

1 hour ago, Woof Bronzer said:

He also approved more than $8 million in prorated salary at this year's Trade Deadline.

No way, a whole $8 million?  That's 80% of what the team is paying Carlos Correa to play for another team!  What a kind and generous overlord, raising our payroll from 22nd in the league to...22nd in the league!  If he would have contributed only $38 million more we'd pull even with the large market Kansas City Royals.  

Before the season Tommy said he wanted to be judged not on payroll, but on wins and losses.  In accordance with his wishes, he should be judged for this season.  It will be interesting to see how he spins this, and how many fans just lap it up and refuse to believe the team's CEO has any accountability for the team's performance.

What I'm looking forward to is when the league does install a salary floor and the Twins roll out the press releases proudly declaring they increased payroll by 40 or 50M as required, but act like it was their intention to do so this whole time!

[Coach Wheels]

2 hours ago, TroyVang said:

Roster construction. Whomever you want to put that of the feet of (ownership, GM, previous GM), that's my answer. 

Terrible bullpen construction, no real partner for Buxton, Too much reliance on best-case scenario for everything.

At the end of the day, this team wasn't built to be good. When they started turning in above average performances, that sent everyone scrambling.

💯 accurate. The expectations were zero to start the year, defensively this is a bad team. Offensively, they've played well enough to be 5 games under .500 but I refuse to give Zoll and Pohlad credit for adding $8 million at the deadline for guys that are ok, at best.

This team will change over the winter; we need a #1 catcher, and the OF needs to have actual OF'ers not DH's. It will be interesting to see who we keep and who moves on.

 

[TheLeviathan]

4 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

What I'm looking forward to is when the league does install a salary floor and the Twins roll out the press releases proudly declaring they increased payroll by 40 or 50M as required, but act like it was their intention to do so this whole time!

I, for one, can't wait to see the Twins Daily articles gushing about how aggressive the Pohlads are being when they sign a gaggle of players that are the 2026 versions of Bob Tewksbury, Rondell White, and Tony Bautista.

[Parfigliano]

28 minutes ago, PuckettPond said:

Buxton is MapQuest & Jenkins is GPS. Not selling @ the trade deadline has set back the Twins success for years. How many of the trade deadline pitchers will still be with the Twins this time next season? We need an influx of YOUTH! No one likes an over ripe banana. No more No-trade contracts as the last two have been very bad for the Twins having to keep worthless players. Stats don't lie!

Can't make banana bread without over ripe bananas.

[Woof Bronzer]

40 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Do you think Joe Ryan getting hurt and pitching poorly helped them in August?

The way he had been pitching, yes, almost definitely!  It led to Zebby getting more starts and Zebby was great.  A healthy Joe Ryan was busy giving up 6 HR to the 27 Yankees Guardians.  

Blaming a bad year on injuries is such loser talk.  Every single team could use this excuse if they wanted.  

[TheLeviathan]

Quote

Falvey, Zoll, Joe Pohlad, whoever was making decisions last year and most of the offseason is who is to blame if you want to point fingers at people. But this was the plan. Zoll and Tom Pohlad get blame for the nonsense expectations, though. The problem isn't the Twins being bad this year, again, that was the plan. The problem is that they tried to pivot from that plan 3/4 of the way through it and hurt their chances to come out the other side with a team really capable of competing.

Credit for @chpettit19for this.  I blame regression for the failure of the team to meet the elevated expectations set forth by the owners and the diehards.  Like many here I saw this team for what it's been all year.

What I wanted to add to this was that everything the Pohlads are doing is about manipulating public sentiment enough to get their windfall in a sale.  They don't care that they pulled the rug out of a rebuild right as a fresh, fun new wave of talent was coming.  All they care about is that they wedge a few more easily fed fans into the stadium so they can sell their pricetag to the next buyer.  

Two relievers and 8 million was all it took for Skor North, Twins Daily, and a bunch of other media/internet spots to gush about a new kind of Pohlad.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[killercarewoliva]

2 hours ago, Eris said:

An additional issue with roster construction is that in several positions there was a huge  fall off in capability of the starter and the injury replacement. This is mostly seen at CF but applies for many positions. Also, before Culpepper there was not acceptable defense at SS and there is still inadequate/inconsistent production at 1B and poor defense in LF and RF. Even with a healthy Buxton CF defense was below league average. 
 

 

I am looking at a team of average to above average hitting. two people who might reach low 80s to upper 80s in rbi this year they can put some excitement on the field. like and Clemons. lots of bonehead mistakes on the field though. Culpeper looks like a great future player but he really has to work on that defense. correct. we lost some good pitching especially Abel on the new pitching group. a little more healthy going on next year with the starting pitching we could have an excellent group of five. I feel we gave too much for Hoffman. it was like this was our lights out closer. well he's not exactly that. rating each position for offense and defense. how many star guides do we have on the field? we have some sort of adequate guys on the field. we need more power in the lineup. we're not hitting 307 homers anymore. I would like to see Rodriguez come up for a couple of weeks who goes down well since we have been Ross up maybe real good guy kriedler just because he's he's no hitting but please dfa our third catcher Alex again. he had a chance to play a little bit and got another hit over 300 hitter. I don't think we'll have Jeffers next year, so this guy is sorely needed until one of the new catchers is ready. I love watching him come to bat. 24 million a season is probably low. crazy money baseball for Jeffers. I do not believe that kind of money should be spent. plus it would need to be several years. at least then we can't play the new guys because we're not going to put $24 million plus on the bench. Yes I realize you need two catchers but at that money he needs to be a guy that plays about 65% of the time. I seem to be seeing a much better situation next season. there is a lot to like to put around Buxton in the outfield and when he's hurt there is good replacement people. what did we see? four guys from AAA on the field came before last? I looked at that as a better representation of what this team has available. there are so many Major league ready outfielders that bat left. you can't just leave them sitting down there and you can't play but three at a time. so what you have to do is get some pitching for some of them. I think a lot of great improvement can be made with all that left-handed hitting. okay got to go

[David Maro]

Coming out of ST everyone knew this team wasn't going to be good. They lost Lopez and anyone who thought Lee was the answer at SS was asleep. Moving on to 2nd base and Keaschall who because of a weak arm was positioned there. Signing Bell to play 1st base knowing he was not good on defense. Hoping that Lewis would be a player from the past that didn't happen. He is the new Buxton,a player who is hurt or slumping. Bringing Buxton back to play in the Field of Dreams game was a bad idea. Taking half the season to figure out who's at 1st and 2nd,SS and 3rd cost them probably 10 games.

Who on this site if you were a GM would trade for Ryan after seeing him give up 6 homeruns in a game and look really bad in his next outing. There was talk that Larnach was traded to the Astros but the owner stopped the deal. And then of course thinking Wallner playing himself back to St Paul because he struck out 50% of the time.

The trades that Zoll made to upgrade the pitching haven't worked. Hoffman is a bust,he walks too many hitters. Kremer can't pitch 3 or 4 innings without giving up multiple runs. Minter seems to be a after thought for Shelton to use and he's a FA this OS.

 

[Woof Bronzer]

 

9 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Reasonable Question: If the message to the fans was this team was going to be competitive and be aiming for a World Series, why aren't they in that position?

Because Tommy didn't actually do anything to be competitive and aim for a World Series.  The message was just that, a message.   An attempt to lie to fans in order to boost attendance so the Pohlads can sell the team for billions.  There was nothing concrete behind the message.

"We're aiming for the World Series, here's a $100m payroll" doesn't compute if you are paying attention.  

The Twins were a bad team last year and didn't do much of anything to improve the team.  The best GM in the world isn't turning a 72 win team into a 90 win team while cutting payroll to $100m. 

Like with any organization, the buck stops at the top.  

[rdehring]

Don't understand why we needed another article talking about the Twins collapse?  I guess writers feel a need to crap all over this team, management and ownership.  But it sure has gotten a lot of comments.

I don't know about most of you, but I enjoyed the heck out of this season with the Twins still playing meaningful baseball the first week of September.  Yes, the odds of their making the playoffs have gotten much longer the past week to ten days.  But a three-game sweep in Chicago this weekend and they will still be in the hunt.

I wasn't in Minnesota the years leading up to the '87 series team.  But I have this feeling that this team may have a lot of similarities to those teams.  A solid nucleus of young players (Lee, Keaschall, Culpepper, Jenkins, Prielipp, Bradley, Zebby, Morris and Rojas) learning what it takes to be successful major league players.  With a couple injured pitchers returning and a few outfielders, Houston, Lackey and others arriving in the next year or two, the Twins just might be a formidable team come 2028.  As one of the older guys following TD, hope like heck I am still here to see it.

 

[Saxophone Joe]

7 minutes ago, David Maro said:

Who on this site if you were a GM would trade for Ryan after seeing him give up 6 homeruns in a game and look really bad in his next outing. There was talk that Larnach was traded to the Astros but the owner stopped the deal.

I also wonder what offers were out there for renting Jeffers for two months coming off a hamate injury - and with Shelty saying he was still battling through it.

Imo doesn't seem like there was a big market for Twins to be sellers this season. The optimal time to trade Ryan was last season (I still question if the rumored package with Boston was legit). Who knows though, maybe trading Ryan in 2025 would've been the last straw for Buck to waive his no-trade clause. 

[MapleGroveTwinsFan]

Isn't a bit early to say the Twins have collapsed? I mean they have pretty much been a sub .500 team all year. They could go 15-7 and still miss the playoffs, but looking back would anybody say the team collapsed the second half if that happened? I think the only way to define a second half collapse this year is to end the season with less than 9 wins in the last 22. Any more wins than that and they will have finished better then they played all year. @chpettit19 comment should have been the last one, because he hit the nail on the head.

[LastOnePicked]

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

The idea that there's "another second half collapse" happening is nonsense to start with. They've been bad all year.

I think this is a fair take. They've had ups and downs, but they've never put up a real fight in the division. The bullpen sunk them pretty early on, and then starting pitching unraveled.

Here's the thing I'm most concerned about: I don't want Tom Pohlad to get a free pass from the media or the remaining fans because of the way he talks about winning. He got "vibe points" for keeping the roster intact and saying they were "going to win." That backfired. They lost future value and they will still end up out of the playoffs. Will he take any blame for this? Does he even understand how his moves cost this team crucial depth - depth from which they could make promotions or deadline trades - in the future? 

When one person's decisions make an organization worse, it deserves real scrutiny. His only hope at this point is that Lopez and Ryan return to form in '27 and that they can supplement with a free agency splash. Because once Ryan and Lopez are gone, this team's competitive window slams shut again - and it's going to close right when Kulpepper and Jenkins and maybe even Lackey hit their stride. They simply do not have enough promising young arms.

[Blyleven2011]

Some have already said that it wasn’t a collapse and I would agree …

we’ve had a fun season of baseball when expectations were so low , no helpful additions to bullpen in the off season and additions at deadline was a day late and a dollar short  …

I’ve. Enjoyed the season of some good games and some badly played games …

Shelton has steered the ship and has been adequate , let’s see how he does in his second season before we really start criticizing him …

I expected the team coming out of spring training to lose a lot ( like 162 games 🤣 ) and finish in last place …

so no collapse , just a team that is not consistent enough but played more entertaining games this year than the past years …

yes blame goes to front office and ownership , the players were fighters this year you have to grant them that , even last night when we all thought we couldn’t comeback down by 4 runs , they fought and tied it , but lost in extra manfred innings …

always rooting for the twins , I’ll take what they have given as a positive , GO TWINS …

[DJL44]

11 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

The way he had been pitching, yes, almost definitely!  It led to Zebby getting more starts and Zebby was great.  A healthy Joe Ryan was busy giving up 6 HR to the 27 Yankees Guardians.  

Blaming a bad year on injuries is such loser talk.  Every single team could use this excuse if they wanted.  

An injured Joe Ryan was getting lit up. That’s why he went on the injured list. His injury caused him to pitch poorly in three straight games after the All Star game, which they lost. The rotation had an ERA of 4.75 in August. A healthy Joe Ryan would have helped. An injured Joe Ryan lost them games.

[LastOnePicked]

2 minutes ago, MapleGroveTwinsFan said:

Isn't a bit early to say the Twins have collapsed?

Twins August Record 2025: 11-17

Twins August Record 2026: 9-17

You're right, the season isn't done yet. But it's worth pointing out that the Twins had a worse August after being buyers than they had after being sellers. 

If the Twins fall 4-5 games short of a WC spot, it's the August collapse that probably made the biggest difference. Maybe it was just the overall quality of the competition.