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For the second time in 2024, a Major League Baseball organization is up for sale. You might remember that the Baltimore Orioles sold earlier this year, in what was just the “fifth time since 2013 that a control ownership stake in an MLB team was sold”, according to Sportico. The previous four sales were the New York Mets in 2020, the Kansas City Royals in 2019, the Florida Marlins in 2017, and the Seattle Mariners in 2016. All that said, there were also recent instances of organizations exploring selling that never actually came to fruition.
In April of 2022, the Washington Nationals were the 12th-most valuable team in baseball, at $2 billion, and the organization was put up for sale by the Lerner family. According to Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post, the Lerners were unable to find an offer at the price they wanted, and they pointed to the uncertainty surrounding the “most important revenue stream”: television. Sound familiar? Just a couple months earlier in 2022, Arte Moreno announced he was exploring selling the Angels ($2.2-billion valuation, 9th in MLB) before pulling them off the market less than a year later and even more recently reiterating his intention to keep the team. Similarly to the Lerners, his comments at the end-of-season media scrum seem to indicate that he hadn’t received an offer that met his asking price. That’s all to say, just because the Twins are for sale, doesn’t mean they’ll find someone willing to pay the Pohlads' asking price. Forbes valued the Twins at "only" (relatively speaking) $1.46 billion back in March, good for 21st in all of baseball, but they also have uncertainty surrounding the long-term solution of their revenue from TV.
But, what if they successfully sell the team? That automatically means a bigger payroll in 2026 and beyond, and World Series rings, right? Right?! Well, to the second part of that question, have you seen the Orioles, Mets, Royals, Marlins, or Mariners win a World Series since their respective sales? In fact, the Mets are the only team to make any semblance of a postseason run, and that’s happening as I write this, four years later. Now, have those sales led to a bigger payroll and more wins?
Before diving in, let’s talk about the Orioles. Their sale was too recent to make any definitive statements on the question above. What I will point out is, they were one of the best teams in baseball with a very, very promising homegrown and young (read: cheap) core, and did attempt to bolster their roster by completing seven trades ahead of the trade deadline. While the moves didn’t pan out, new ownership allowed the front office to be aggressive at the deadline and add payroll, which didn’t really happen in 2023. Okay, let's dig in.
The data above shows the wins and payroll from the year prior to the organization’s sale through two years after the organization’s sale. Due to the Mets and Royals being impacted by the 2020 COVID year, I extrapolated their wins over 162 games using their 60-game winning percentage. I also added where each team's payroll ranked for that particular season.
The Mets are a bit of an outlier, here because their owner, Steve Cohen, invests in his team like almost any fan would, with a staggering payroll increase in a short timeframe. That said, it took until this season for the investment to pay off in the form of a playoff run. The Royals are a decent comparison to the Twins in terms of the size of the market and, to a lesser extent, their payroll. You’ll notice that things got worse shortly after the sale, before they got better--as the Royals are now in the midst of their first postseason since new ownership took over. Kansas City wasn't in quite the same situation as the Twins are, though, in that they were less competitive before the sale than the Twins have been recently and in that they knew they would be pursuing a new ballpark. The Twins, on the other hand, come with Target Field, a young, state-of-the-art facility.
The Marlins and Mariners are good comparisons to the Twins in terms of the size of the market and the competitiveness of the teams at the time of the sale. Similarly to the Royals, neither team's win total or payroll ranking changed dramatically in the years following the sale. Moreover, both team have just a single postseason series victory since the sale of their teams.
I’m not making any definitive statements here; that’s kind of the point. While you may be excited with the Pohlad’s intentions, there is no guarantee a sale will be finalized and, if it does, there is no guarantee more payroll, wins, and World Series rings will follow. In fact, recent history suggests you should expect more of the same--unless, a cohort of Twins Daily content creators scrape up enough cash to buy the team, that is.
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