Tin Foil Hat: What If the Pohlads Don’t Actually Intend to Sell the Twins?

18 hours ago, Parfigliano said:

Isn't Boars Head the deli meat company that killed 10 people via listeria tainted product.

Indeed they are. They are having an intrafamily fight over ownership and direction of the company. This has lead to less concentration on operations and innovation as management gets drawn into that fight and/or gets conflicting policy direction. An intrafamily ownership squabble can then lead to a loss of focus on the business leading to some significant operational issues, including the listeria issues. That's why I think the two situations may be parallel. For example, for all we know Joe Pohlad wanted to pay to add Kikuchi at the deadline and was overruled by other family members who wanted to maximize annual operating profit. 

20 hours ago, Gamblerssoftball said:

Does anyone know if there's an actual person or group with an interest in buying the team. This may be just speculation, but I'm sure the current owners have someone in mind already that they are courting. Otherwise, a deal will be a long way off.

There is absolutely someone or several someones in mind.  MLB has a list, they know all the potential owners and who is actually shopping.  They know who wants the Twins, who wants the A's, who wants the Yankees etc.  For this to go public, MLB and Manfred have to be on board.

For all we know, the public announcement may just be a negotiation tactic if they aren't getting what they want privately from the list of approved buyers.  Much better to negotiate with many if you are a seller, much better to negotiate with only one as a buyer.

20 hours ago, LA VIkes Fan said:

This makes a lot of sense to me. Moving a family business through multiple generations is incredibly hard to do and usually breaks down over time. Boars Head is a great example. The problem is that there may be internal agreement on what to do amongst an older generation and then you have some people in subsequent generations who have different viewpoints. Here, I could easily see that some of the family wants to treat the team as a business and maximize profit, while some see it more as a hobby and value winning over profit, and some don't care about the business and may want to cash out their their share. The only way to solve that is to either have one person or a small group buy out everyone else's shares or to sell the asset. 

Agreed.  Each generation adds another cook or cooks in the kitchen.  When you break it down to 10 multi-millionaires vs 1 billionaire, absent a strong matriarch/patriarch, nobody is in charge. 

It feels like Carl and his wife were the only decision makers for a long time and for the last few years we aren't sure who is actually in charge.  Joe has never been the sole decision maker.

3 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

Short term cuts that will cut into the viability of the Team’s competitiveness is not a carrot for a buyer.

The Team has appreciated over 40 years and the payroll for ‘25 and the $$ to be paid out to players, whether it be $100M or $150M, has no bearing on what a buyer group would be willing to pay.

Santana - Farmer - Kepler - Margot are all gone as free agents.

Paddack may be dangled to evade his health risk, combined with $7.5M salary. Tough to get value back but maybe that’s not the goal.

Vazquez has a contract that is impossible to trade without carrying a bunch of the $$ or adding other prospect value from the Twins …..for essentially zero return. Not happening.

Buxton - Correa - Lopez are the attractive assets for a buyer wanting to take over with marketable star power.

Companies buy assets and then strip the staff to make money in short-term. The Twins ownership doing a strip, months after they said they were selling, would be an obvious and desperate move that would only devalue the asset they are trying to sell

However, looking at this from the bigger picture I think they will trade about any assets they can because the new owner(s) understand:

• MLB revenues are not coming back to what they were anytime soon, as in years away.
• Twins are in a bind with how much they committed to injured players.  The only way out is to shed those payroll dollars.  Yes, they could trade some talent from the farm but that particular move is the one thing I think new owners are not gonna want to happen before they take over.
• The Twins will be competitive to some extent with those star players but it's also not gonna be enough to get them more than a wild card at best and three other teams in our division are setup significantly better for success.

As a new owner I can work the marketing angle to get people in the seats and blame the MLB revenue crisis for all manner of issues with the team talent.  A whole bunch of other teams are going to use the revenue crisis to justify all kinds of cuts and no spending on free agents.  

12 minutes ago, lake_guy said:

However, looking at this from the bigger picture I think they will trade about any assets they can because the new owner(s) understand:

• MLB revenues are not coming back to what they were anytime soon, as in years away.
• Twins are in a bind with how much they committed to injured players.  The only way out is to shed those payroll dollars.  Yes, they could trade some talent from the farm but that particular move is the one thing I think new owners are not gonna want to happen before they take over.
• The Twins will be competitive to some extent with those star players but it's also not gonna be enough to get them more than a wild card at best and three other teams in our division are setup significantly better for success.

As a new owner I can work the marketing angle to get people in the seats and blame the MLB revenue crisis for all manner of issues with the team talent.  A whole bunch of other teams are going to use the revenue crisis to justify all kinds of cuts and no spending on free agents.  

 

New owner understands the cost of the game.  If they intend to do this with less payroll than current, its the wrong game for them.  Shedding current payroll to make the purchase attractive just isn't a thing.  People who buy baseball teams aren't fooled by short term relatively small financial adjustments.  If they are, its the wrong person and the other owners won't approve.

I can't think of a worse way for a new owner to introduce themselves.  That's the careful what you wish for situation.

Yes, the current roster and pipeline are a factor.  No, it doesn't really matter much in the purchase unless there are insane outliers.  It will all be different in 5 years anyway.  It's like not buying a house over a paint color.