The Twins Product Has Saved the Brand in Recent Weeks

...and then the Yankees come to town.

Twins pitchers live in the middle of the plate..and get hammered by good teams like the Yankees ..be smarter boys. You DO NOT give Judge the chance to beat you. Yes, you give him the unintentional walk..every time!!!!! High and tight and low and away on him and Stanton all game long. Twins hitters made Marcus Stroman look like an All Star..and yesterday was no better. 

This piece was probably written to generate clicks, but anyway ...........…

Haha ... I'll take a few grams of what you're smokin', because this is complete tunnel vision perspective.

The brand is being destroyed right now, and there's nothing that a sausage or any of these potential star players can do about it.

Casual fans aren't going to make an effort to consume a "great product", if it isn't convenient to consume.

1 hour ago, whitsbrain said:

...and then the Yankees come to town.

And then they left. And three months from now it will look like a speed bump.

It's all about product &  brand for mid market teams like the Twins and the Polads are failing miserably at that.

They need to find a way to void their contract with Bally Sports since they lost half or their distribution network and are already bankrupt. The Twins will never see a dime from Bally.

Then put all away games on local TV in their extended multi state fan base area in order to build fan support (brand).

Then spend a few $$ and sign a healthy needed pitcher/OF. (Product)

Wasting windows of opportunity by not supporting the product is killing the brand!! Simple as that.

To me the brand is about the club overall not about short term wins and losses. I’m a huge Twins fan and always will be but my respect and love for the club is at an all time low right now. 

Not much to say about an article so biased and filled with holes it looks like a huge piece of Swiss cheese.  This is still just an average team, with a less than average manager, playing in still a very weak division.  They can't beat the big boys regularly, or much at all.  They thrive on beating the also rans just enough to stay competitive in a non competitive division.  What we saw against the Yankees was an overall putrid display.  The Twins are now 5-6 since winning 12 in a row.  That's probably more realistic of this team.

Well, until they had to start playing actual major league teams again...

Cleveland series will tell the tale - contenders or pretenders.

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

The Twins ownership has invested in the product. People around here are quick to forget about the late offseason (and stunning to the entire MLB) signings of Correa multiple times. Buxton's extension. Josh Donaldson. A big money extension of Pablo Lopez. The kind of contracts the ownership has been green lighting would have been totally unbelievable 10 years ago. The Twins, again, have been running payrolls ranking higher than the lousy fan attendance for years as well. Ownership invested, but the fans didn't show up. Even this year, the Twins are running a payroll ranked well higher than attendance, and at $130MM, which is good for 19th in MLB. Right in that middle 3rd, but fans on this site act like the Pohlad's cut payroll down to $60MM.

Fans aren't showing up again this year. Average attendance is 20,125 right now. After this many home games last year, it was 20,469. The opener this year wasn't a sell out. The weather has been quite a bit better this year as well. Going head to head, 2023 had more attendance in 15 of their first 22 home games. The Yankees day game Thursday (yesterday) was the second highest attendance game of the year. You can bet it was 75% Yankees fans in the seats. 

It's on Dave St. Peter, IMHO. Ownership invested, now it's time to take a look at the results of their investment, and the leadership in charge of marketing and developing the product. I'd fire St. Peter now. I wouldn't wait until the end of the season. There's nothing he can do to make up for his colossal failures by the end of the season.

When you sit on your hands all winter, add "quality" the caliber of Margot, Santana, DeSclafani and Jackson, and continue to reek of flopsweat and fear when the yanks come to town, it should be expected.

Having ownership come right out and say, "We're cutting back, and not getting anyone good, so expect to suck," that doesn't help much, either.

And it's about time to lose the freakin sausage.

6 hours ago, whitsbrain said:

...and then the Yankees come to town.

Nothing is more "on-brand" for the Twins than getting swept by the Yankees at home

Attendance is down because baseball, like all major league sports, is just getting too expensive for the average fan to afford. To bring a family to a game on the weekend after tickets, food, parking, etc costs more than most are willing to spend. Especially with inflation raising the cost of everything else in life. You have to choose where to spend your money. Yes, owners have to pay player's huge salaries. Yes, there are other team expenses. And yes, I do believe even though owners are millionaires, baseball is a business and it should be profitable. It helps to put people in the seats even with expense if your team is winning all the time. But the Twins are not. You can argue they should spend to get better talent and therefore attract more fans. That is a gamble. As I said, it is still expensive to go to a game. You can make the game more "fun" for a fan. Make it more of a family fun day. Not everyone loves baseball but giveaways, gimmicks of some kind, kind of along the lines of what a lot of minor league teams do to draw fans would help. Broadcast the games themselves as a marketing tool. There are a number of things that can and should be done. Carrying on with the status quo will get the "contraction" word started up again. While I don't think anyone really wants to see the Twins disappear, something needs to change so that the average fan can come and see them and support them and feel like it is "their" team.

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

Ownership did not sign those guys. The Twins have been losing money and investing in higher and higher payrolls. 

Margot $4MM
Desclafani $4MM
Santana $5.25MM
Farmer $6MM
$19.25MM in redundant players.

The front office had plenty of free cash to work with. If they needed to dig deeper, Kepler and Vazquez could have been moved and that would have saved another $20MM.

Gleeman tweeted about a month ago that Forbes is reporting the Twins made $19 million last year. 

20 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

That's interesting news. I wish the article Gleeman linked as a source actually had mentioned the Twins. Statista has been updated with Twins revenue for 2023 and it's identical to 2022, but it's showing a dramatically higher number for 2024 (not sure how it got there.)
https://www.forbes.com/teams/minnesota-twins/?sh=46b664683bae

Athlon sports added some information. 
https://athlonsports.com/mlb/minnesota-twins/inside-twins/news/how-profitable-the-twins-were-in-2023-compared-to-other-teams#:~:text=Perhaps the more notable figure,the Twins did last year.

I'm not sure if the revenue sharing or playoff revenue pushed the Twins over the top. If true, the Pohlad's really do share a larger portion of the blame. Certainly won't help optics at all with a rightly enraged fanbase.

I haven’t gotten into discussions about profit and loss because the only way to know is to have access to audited financial statements of Twins baseball LLC and related subsidiaries. I will say that I find it implausible that the Pohlads are losing money or even accepting a poor return on their investment which has to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

9 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

Because I am blacked out from watching the team. The product can't save the brand at the moment. 

As far as I'm concerned... The Twins are currently in a sealed box with Schrodinger's cat. 

 

This...this....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand..... THIS!

If there’s anything I hate more then twins losing it’s fair weather fans🤮💩👎 you need and must support the twins as well Vikings/gophers/twolves/wild win or lose. Asides from last nights robbery from 💩umpires(which will be gone after mlb goes robotic next year or 2) going to games are awesome!!! It’s not about entertainment!!! It’s about the teams winning!!! Winning is fun losing sucks!!! Support your teams win or lose no matter what!!! They need our support!!!!

Attendance will only get worse as the Twins become more “out of sight, out of mind” due to lack of distribution. I haven’t been able to see more than a handful of games on tv in 2 years. My young kids have very little awareness of the Twins or baseball. Am I expected to spend $200 to take the family to the park so my kids can watch players they don’t know or care about?

Attendance is also tamped down by 20 years of mediocre teams that just skate along in a bad division most years. Last year was finally a breakthrough and ownership crapped all over it with their attitude towards payroll and bungling of the TV deal.