The Twins Are Giving Their All, But It's Not Enough

[HarmonK03]

32 minutes ago, Coach said:

I'm just putting this out there. What if we released BB... and moved on.

And eat over $30m in salary, that will never happen.  Accept the fact that he is here for another two years unless he changes his mind.

[HarmonK03]

12 minutes ago, Wedman13 said:

Now that a really interesting thought .......(and yes of course he would have waived the no trade clause - he and his agents aren't idiots)  

So you are saying that Buxton is lying when he says fairly emphatically he wants to be here.

[LastOnePicked]

3 hours ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

Great article which speaks for me. I absolutely love the hustle and the effort and the "NO QUIT"! attitude  from top to bottom. This team respects the game. 

Are people actually watching the Minnesota Twins? Maybe folks have been getting the Brewers feed by mistake.

Folks, this team is 8 games under .500 in the most winnable WC race in MLB history.

And I like a lot players on this team, yes, But "no quit attitude" is taking it a bit far for a team that routinely can't score after the 4th inning.

[Saxophone Joe]

1 minute ago, LastOnePicked said:

Folks, this team is 8 games under .500 in the most winnable WC race in MLB history.

And I like a lot players on this team, yes, But "no quit attitude" is taking it a bit far for a team that routinely can't score after the 4th inning.

In my heart, I want to disagree but can't.

Sad but true.

[RpR]

2 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

Are people actually watching the Minnesota Twins? Maybe folks have been getting the Brewers feed by mistake.

Folks, this team is 8 games under .500 in the most winnable WC race in MLB history.

And I like a lot players on this team, yes, But "no quit attitude" is taking it a bit far for a team that routinely can't score after the 4th inning.

I quit watching the Vikings because they failed,  always,  when they should not have.

I watch baseball, regardless of record because I truly like baseball; why do you even pay attention to the Twins if they annoy you that much.

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

Our desperation is showing when we keep emphasizing our feels in place of emphasizing sound planning and systems.

I could give this more likes than Minnesota has lakes and it still wouldn't be enough. Perfectly stated.

The Twins are not a serious organization. Until new ownership arrives to confront this reality, nothing can or will change.

[RpR]

5 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

And I like a lot players on this team, yes, But "no quit attitude" is taking it a bit far for a team that routinely can't score after the 4th inning.

THAT has been a problem for the Twins for more than just a few years.

That , I guess,  is Very annoying.

[LastOnePicked]

3 minutes ago, RpR said:

I watch baseball, regardless of record because I truly like baseball; why do you even pay attention to the Twins if they annoy you that much.

I wrote about this a few years ago - a little post called "Why Winning Matters." It's about what the Twins have meant to me since I was ten years old. And now that my father is fading away, it's about how thankful I am that we had memories together of the Twins winning it all.

I want every baseball-loving parent to have that experience with their baseball-loving kid. Period. Every opportunity this organization lets slip by is another generation that loses the experience of rooting for their team on the near-impossible quest for a championship.

Trust me, I would love to quit this version of the Twins. Sadly, they're in my blood at this point. But if my crankiness bothers you or anyone else here, then feel free to block or ignore me. It's gotta be easy to do.

[LastOnePicked]

53 minutes ago, HarmonK03 said:

So you are saying that Buxton is lying when he says fairly emphatically he wants to be here.

This has kind of been hashed and re-hashed to death. Just for clarity's sake, Buxton was very upset after last season and made it clear to Dan Hayes and others that he would drop the no-trade clause if the Twins were rebuilding the entire team around him. Falvey also wouldn't clarify that they would never try to trade Buxton, and by all accounts, this hurt Buxton's pride.

But then Tom P. took the reins and Zoll - probably at his directive - made a public statement that the Twins are never going to try and trade Buxton. And that seems to have satisfied Buxton.

So, yes, Buxton does want to be here. And yes, he is now untradeable because Zoll has already clarified his status here. But, yes, he could have been traded last offseason. Maybe that would have been good for all involved. Or maybe whomever they got in trade wouldn't have even put up career numbers as good as what Buxton put up in the first half. Who knows?

He's here until the end of his contract - that much is now 100% certain. The challenge for the Twins will be to build roster contingencies around his inevitable injuries.

[Saxophone Joe]

17 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

Trust me, I would love to quit this version of the Twins. Sadly, they're in my blood at this point. 

I'm 43, was a hardcore Twins fan from '90 through around 2010. I've read several books on the team's history, didn't follow too closely from around 2012-2022 but was on board again for 2023, the epic collapse in '24, etc.

So maybe this is my recency bias showing, but can any of you longtime fans recall a Twins team that has struggled more than this one in winning/finishing close games? The 9-65 record after the 6th inning is eye-popping. And it's not just failures in clutch hitting but all aspects. It was a problem of course in the early parts of the season, but for about six weeks from early June to the All-Star Break, we had done a much, much better job of closing games, especially the bullpen.

But this part of the 2026 season has been so hard to watch lately. This season has gone from fun and rewarding to uber frustrating over the last six weeks or so. We truly had a shot at legitimate shot at the playoffs. I draw a line at the Mariners series when it started to go south, bad. 

[LastOnePicked]

1 minute ago, Saxophone Joe said:

So maybe this is my recency bias showing, but can any of you longtime fans recall a Twins team that has struggled more than this one in winning/finishing close games? Not just clutch hitting but all aspects. It was a problem of course in the early parts of the season, but for about six weeks from early June to the All-Star Break, we had done a much, much better job of closing games, especially the bullpen.

The recent second-half-of-the-season collapses probably each have their own reasons, but maybe the biggest reason that connects them all is that they continue to roll out a roster of previously injured players and just hope they all don't get injured. And when they wind up injured, there's just not the roster depth there to salvage the season.

The other reason is this: the Twins are just not that good. They haven't had an elite player at any position in years. They haven't had an MVP, a ROY, a Cy Young Winner, a saves leader or a home run king in a very long time. Many hyped top prospects also went belly-up way too quickly. Clutch situations usually expose talent level pretty quickly.

Okay enough to play close baseball, but not strong enough to win. I keep hoping that ownership might take this seriously some day.

 

[Autist75]

     Sad to say, as dysfunctional as they are, the Vikings at least seem to be making a germ of an effort in leadership (Nolan Teasley).  The Twins have owners that are liars and deliver empty promises and a GM that's just a Falvey clone.

[Wedman13]

1 hour ago, HarmonK03 said:

So you are saying that Buxton is lying when he says fairly emphatically he wants to be here.

Negotiating.  Doesn't matter now leverage is gone on both  sides. And I love the guy.

[Hunter4848]

2 hours ago, HarmonK03 said:

So you are saying that Buxton is lying when he says fairly emphatically he wants to be here.

Of course he's happy to be here. He has zero expectations here, he can sit out half a season and no one cares. Do that in an organization that has a passionate fan base and expectations,  and he would rightly be raked over the coals

[JADBP]

6 hours ago, Andy MacPhail said:

Hopefully there will be a somewhat full & normal offseason so we can see what Zoll & Shelton can do on their own. The team did give their all & came up short. Can management learn from what was done wrong & put us in a better position to compete? I'm optimistic that they can, but we'll see.

Andy, I am so sorry, but Zoll is simply Falvery #2.  Born and bred.  He has to go.  The sooner the ownership understands this, the sooner the Twins can start forming into a winning organization, top to bottom.  Can anyone name one thing that Zoll has really done differently than Falvey?

He's on a one year contract for a reason.  Pohlad had little choice when he fired Falvey.  So, he gave Zoll the rope to try.  It hasn't been pretty.  As I said many times, it will take years to fix the mess that Falvey gave us.  But Zoll does not have the experience, the knowledge nor the respect to pull it off.  Sorry, we need someone far better than Zoll.  Do you know anyone who is interested???

[jkcarew]

Look around and you can see the signs of a team, manager and front office that are trying their best to push all chips into the middle of the table. It started, of course, with the trade deadline, which was one of Minnesota's most aggressive in memory.
 

My, god. Honestly…that’s laughable. A rental Loogy, a decent setup guy and a depth starter, who you MIGHT use as a reliever in the post season, if you used him at all…this is the DEFINITION of doing as little as possible in the hope you hang around in a very poor league. The fact that it’s more than they’ve done in the past doesn’t make it even close to aggressive. Now, we’re giving credit for very little, because it’s better than nothing.

Committing to a rebuild and completing a fire sale would be aggressive. Trading top MLB-ready prospects, rather than 19-20 year old lottery tickets, in exchange for actual needle-moving controllable (or even not controllable) talent would be aggressive. They carefully, willfully, managed to do the opposite of both those things. They took a group with a low ceiling, and raised the floor two inches.

Look, I’m optimistic on a lot of the young talent and near-ready prospects. I think Shelton has the group in the right spot in terms of their effort. But, for anyone that pays attention, to look at the org management decisions in the past 12 months and say they like what they see…or that they’ve “pushed all their chips onto the table”??…mind boggling.

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, Hunter4848 said:

Of course he's happy to be here. He has zero expectations here, he can sit out half a season and no one cares. Do that in an organization that has a passionate fan base and expectations,  and he would rightly be raked over the coals

This is a little harsh ... but it might not be totally inaccurate.

I don't think Buxton ever "sits out" of anything. But I do think he realizes that expectations for him would be much higher on more functional, competitive teams.

Buxton's injuries aren't moral failings and his contract hasn't been wasted spending. But he can't be counted on as the team's starting CF, and the organization is going to have to clarify this sooner or later, one way or another.

[D.C Twins]

"Has it paid off? Not really, the Twins are 23rd in relief pitching ERA since the deadline. But the effort matters."

Nope... effort does not inherently matter. There has to be a plan and intent behind the effort. If someone runs a sub 5 minute mile in the wrong direction, it does not help their marathon performance. 

Buying and not selling at the deadline was misplaced effort. 2026 was never the year. They abruptly half arsed the rebuild that they started. Half arse-ing a rebuild is the worst of all worlds.... Less prospects, worst draft position, less experience for the rising core, less information about the players on the cusp of being lost from the system due to expiring control for a variety of reasons.... all to 'elevate' a roster that was nowhere near playoff competitive. 

This is not little league. Effort without a plan is not to be lauded or rewarded. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

7 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

The only thing that this team is consistently going "all out" for is the franchise valuation in a sale.  Everything they do is driven by optics and balance sheets and not by smart baseball people making smart baseball decisions.

I don't understand why we want to keep handing out participation trophies and warm hugs for this leadership group slapping two relievers on a team that couldn't play .500 ball and had every alarm blinking "code red" about their likely regression.

Our desperation is showing when we keep emphasizing our feels in place of emphasizing sound planning and systems.

Wait til next year, Levi. We're all discouraged about not making the playoffs this year. However when the snow starts melting in March or April, the Twins will reel us all in again. We are, after all, Twins fans. We love Twins baseball. otherwise we would not be cooing or complaining on TD night after night and spending hours trying to  fix something over which we have absolutely no control.  We are poor little lambs who have lost our way. Baa, baa, baa.

[Riverbrian]

15 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

had every alarm blinking "code red" about their likely regression.

Regression is a roller coaster.

But Yeah... we seem to be in the midst of a market correction. 

The lineup is locked in. We've chosen 9 and Shelton is rolling with those 9. Since August 13 (The Return of Buxton to Iowa). The lineup has been pretty locked in. Buxton replaced by Jenkins has been the only change.

Since August 24... Jeffers has been in the lineup 12 out of 13 times. Shelton is going with his horses and has locked in for the stretch drive. Caratini has joined Jackson, Kreidler, Gonzales and now Ross as permanent residents on the bench. 

The locked in lineup failed. Regression to the mean? Quite Possibly or just a bad dip. The numbers they relied upon have gone topsy turvy for a bit. 

Against Right Handed Pitching our Right handed hitting lineup was carrying the club. That went away. We have been locked in and we have gone 5 wins 12 losses against right handed starters since Field of Dreams.

We had a couple of monster games scoring 11 and 15 runs in back to back contests against the Tigers during that 5-12 stretch. Take those two games out and the team has averaged 3.4 Runs per game against Right Handed pitching during a 3-12 stretch. We locked in to a static lineup and the run scoring dried up in a small sample during a time when small sample stretches are critical. 

Our performance against right handed starters was paying the bills. The bank account seems to be a little drained at the moment. 

[TNtwins85]

15 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Why do TD writers make stuff up?

There was no second half collapse. The Twins had a .495 winning percentage at the half. They own a .476 winning percentage now. They went 20-26 (.435), which isn't a collapse, but substantially off their previous (non-competitive pace).

In order to be in a position of BARELY hanging on to a final wild card spot right now, the Twins would have needed to play 25-21 after the half (.543). Major improvement. That would put them at 73-70 or .510.

I was thinking that the whole time I was reading this. A collapse is what happened 2 years ago. This is simply a team that was surprising( as well as a league being surprising in the wrong reasons) and then simply coming back down to earth. This offense without a healthy Buxton was never gonna keep doing the things they were doing. They needed 3 red hot hitters to scrape .500 in June and July. They had zero in August and they played to the expected record. No collapse.

[LastOnePicked]

8 hours ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

We are, after all, Twins fans.

True. But at some point, we may have to stop letting the Pohlads weaponize this against us.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, Riverbrian said:

 

Our performance against right handed starters was paying the bills. The bank account seems to be a little drained at the moment. 

What paid the bills was a preposterous performance with runners in scoring position that even the '27 Yankees wasn't going to maintain.  

That, coupled with a bad AL, convinced us to pull the rip chord on a rebuild that really just needed one more offseason (deal Ryan and Lopez) and one more deadline (deal Larnach and Jeffers) to put us in the best position possible with the next young core.  Then we see if they have the right stuff to contend over the next few years.

Instead....we believed in a lie.  It's not a random dip or a roller coaster, it was a perfectly predictable slide back to reality.

[TheLeviathan]

Just now, LastOnePicked said:

True. But at some point, we may have to stop letting the Pohlads weaponize this against us.

This.

[rv78]

The collapse did happen. Not this year or last year, but after 2019. The Twins just haven't done anything since then, outside of 2023 when they finished first in the easiest division in baseball. That alone should tell you, 2023 wasn't that impressive. And even in 2019 they got wiped out in the 1st round of the playoffs. Falvey's build a perennial contender or Tom's go big or go home are lies. They are/were incompetant. Owners like the Pohlads are interested in one thing, make money. Sell the hype. Winning comes second. Unless the club ever gets sold to someone who WANTS to win, I have convinced myself I will never experience the thrill of 1987 or 1991 again. My grandkids are not Twins fans. Not because of me not trying, but because there is nothing exciting or interesting about a team that doesn't really try. 

[Woof Bronzer]

What's the definition of "giving their all"?  Is there data to support this?  Which MLB teams are not giving their all and how do the Twins compare?

I'm getting no signals of apathy this year.

They've been worse post-deadline this year than last year.  Were they giving more of their all last year?  Also, how does a $110m payroll signal anything except apathy?

Has it paid off? Not really, the Twins are 23rd in relief pitching ERA since the deadline. But the effort matters.

This frankly is a loser attitude.  Performance doesn't matter, we just have to try.  

Isn't "effort" and "giving their all" the baseline expectation for every single professional athlete?  

It started, of course, with the trade deadline, which was one of Minnesota's most aggressive in memory.

I'm convinced the TD staff witnessed a different deadline than the rest of us.  This deadline wasn't as aggressive as last years.  Go back all to 2022 for a more aggressive deadline.  I just do not understand a world in which 2 middling relievers and a #6 starter is "aggressive".  Why are TD writers so invested in lathering praise on this latest exercise in non-committed nibbling?

[terrydactyls]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

That, coupled with a bad AL, convinced us to pull the rip chord on a rebuild that really just needed one more offseason (deal Ryan and Lopez) and one more deadline (deal Larnach and Jeffers) to put us in the best position possible with the next young core.  Then we see if they have the right stuff to contend over the next few years.

Don't lump me into this.  I began advocating for another (but much smaller) sell-off around the first of July (as did many others).

[terrydactyls]

Several people have disagreed with the comment that the team was "giving its all".  And then they go on to explain how the front office screwed up.  The "team" refers to the players and I do agree that they are trying hard to win.  They just don't have the tools with which to do it.  If you want to complain about ownership/front office, go for it and few will disagree.  But don't blame the "team" for not trying.

[Andy MacPhail]

14 hours ago, JADBP said:

Andy, I am so sorry, but Zoll is simply Falvery #2.  Born and bred.  He has to go.  The sooner the ownership understands this, the sooner the Twins can start forming into a winning organization, top to bottom.  Can anyone name one thing that Zoll has really done differently than Falvey?

He's on a one year contract for a reason.  Pohlad had little choice when he fired Falvey.  So, he gave Zoll the rope to try.  It hasn't been pretty.  As I said many times, it will take years to fix the mess that Falvey gave us.  But Zoll does not have the experience, the knowledge nor the respect to pull it off.  Sorry, we need someone far better than Zoll.  Do you know anyone who is interested???

I know where you are coming from JADBP. I usually like to give grace, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if he doesn't return as GM. 

Speaking in the 3rd person, IMO, Andy MacPhail would be a great interim option & have Drew as a mentee. :)  

[AKTwinsFan]

Honestly, when we were at our best was when Buck and Jeffers were sidelined with injuries. Vic and Kriedler helped us win games. As soon as Buck and Jeffers came back we started losing. Ultimately by keeping Jeffers, Ryan and Larnach on the team we lost out on hauls of prospects in return. Instead our gamble of keeping them has flopped.