Will Lower-Than-Anticipated Attendance and Payroll Limitations Impact Twins Trade Deadline?

Life is a series of decisions.  Those decisions have consequences.  Ownership appreciates value in the team every year.  Fans think operating budgets are meaningless to the owners.  Fans are wrong. 

It's an entertainment business.  The Twins have operated this way forever.  What makes you think they will change?

I remain hopeful that they will have a playoff appearance, but the odds that a move or 2 would push them over the "haves" is unlikely. It would take an incredible run by their core and its more likely key members of their core will be injured than performing at an elite level.

This is a Twins fan reality.  Enjoy watching good baseball instead of some of the garbage baseball we have endured.

A positive feedback loop of apathy and lowered interest.

They could use a LH pen arm, and for the right price an upgrade at top end of rotation.  I am sure the team can make the money work for rental guys, but it is unlikely they would agree to take on much future payroll.  They may still look for controllable guys on arb year, where you have a pretty good idea what that budgets to be.  

I think there is little out there for high end arms though that are clear upgrade over Ober.  As an article pointed out, you need to be at his level or better to be an upgrade for playoffs. 

I do think the uncertainty for long term financial could play into taking on future money, but not rental guys.  It is not just the Twins own TV deal, but as other teams TV deals are up in air it affects the revenue sharing from those as well.  Teams split local TV deals about 50%, which makes sense as they are the other team playing, but as other teams contracts get cut or dropped that is less money to share as well. 

I do feel like the slow start and lack of TV for most people, I have Spectrum so get to see them, but my sisters do not. have affected interest in the team.  I think also the long run of Wolves affected early season too as many local sports fans that like both were more engaged in Wolves, I was for sure, than what was going on with Twins at the time. 

From an ownership perspective, this is the bed they've made, now they've got to sleep in it.  From a fan perspective, every event after the end of the final playoff game has been a disappointment, except the actual performance of the team.  12 games over at the break is meeting expectations on a team-wide level.

I, for one, am not expecting any movement at the deadline except for psaossibly a minor piece here or there.  

Finally, the sadder perspective is the overall trajectory and health of the game itself.  Mostly, from polarization of competitiveness, but that's a discussion for another day.

The Twins' current level of play will result in greater ticket sales in September as playoff anticipation will prove alluring. Also, many other clubs are seeing similar per-game attendance declines compared to 2023, so the emerging economic slowdown is likely a factor in this.

9 minutes ago, silverslugger said:

Finally, the sadder perspective is the overall trajectory and health of the game itself.  Mostly, from polarization of competitiveness, but that's a discussion for another day.

Yeah, it's terrible when small market teams like the Royals, Guardians and Orioles have no chance because the large market Cubs, Angels and Mets buy all the good players.

I wouldn't advocate this every year, but this year I think they need to roll with the players they have.  The busted TV deal and poor start (at least relative to Cleveland) led to lower attendance which leads to even lower revenue which means they can't even afford the players they have next year.

Can't/shouldn't be sellers with a playoff contending team.

Can't/shouldn't trade low-cost youngsters for a high quality rental when you need those youngsters next year after the Twins shed payroll yet again.

Beyond the can'ts/shouldn'ts above, the FO doesn't have a great track record exchanging prospects for rentals... and that is putting it kindly.

Grit your teeth, hope the existing players get/stay healthy, hope the youngsters and a few underperforming vets improve, and hope you somehow catch fire in October.  That's a lot of hope, and hope really shouldn't be a plan, but I don't see a lot of good alternatives unless you want to mortgage the future for a shot this year with a somewhat flawed team and very flawed organizational approach to increasing revenue (i.e., the broken tv deal).

1 hour ago, Cody Christie said:

St. Peter is hopeful that games will be back on TV “soon,” with Comcast and Diamond Sports feuding since May 1.

"Soon" was about 2 months ago. After today we will be closer to the end of the season than we are to May 1.

I'm a high school teacher.  I run into very few young people that care about Twins baseball at all.  It is mind-blowing the Twins and baseball would deny in market people the opportunity to watch and connect with the athletes.  

I'm guessing the Twins do very little at the deadline. I don't think they're a good enough team to warrant trading away top prospects for rentals players when a first round sweep looks likely. Now if we could find a way to get a starter with another year or two of control they should jump on it. I'm not getting my hopes up though. They are going with the plan of" we don't need to catch Cleveland, we can get in with a wildcard spot. And we don't need to make any outside additions because of all the talent we have that will be coming off the IL in the second half."

6 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

As to the OP, the play is to go get Blake Snell.

But they won't. They'll add a reliever of modest value at modest cost.

I mean, if cost doesn't matter, sure, I'd love Snell.

But if they get him on August 1 he is still owed $10 million for the duration of the year, which the Twins claim they won't/can't spend.  And then there is next year's $30 million if he doesn't opt out.

The Giants are only 3 games out of the NL Wildcard so they aren't exactly in sell mode yet.  To talk them into it they will want....idk, 2 of the top 5 prospects in the system, plus a major league ready player like SWR?  Snell is great when healthy, but he's caviar for a family on a meatloaf budget.

6 minutes ago, LA VIkes Fan said:

I don't live in MN any more and this struck a chord with me. Why is attendance down?

I think it is more due to big picture trends than it is with the baseball team. Interest in baseball is declining among younger people (more interest in basketball and soccer as well as esports/video games). Older people who are interested in baseball are afraid of Minneapolis. Economic pressures may be keeping fans with fewer resources at home but that doesn't explain a decline in season ticket sales. TV does matter; the best advertisement for having fun at a Twins game is watching a game on television.

Another straw on the camel's back IMO, is not only did they cut payroll, they didn't sell upper deck seats (you know, the cheaper ones) for the 1st two months of the season. Did they think people would just willingly pay more? How many people saw that and said, 'OK, we'll look again after school's out'? How many tickets did that move cost them?

16 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I think it is more due to big picture trends than it is with the baseball team. Interest in baseball is declining among younger people (more interest in basketball and soccer as well as esports/video games). Older people who are interested in baseball are afraid of Minneapolis. Economic pressures may be keeping fans with fewer resources at home but that doesn't explain a decline in season ticket sales. TV does matter; the best advertisement for having fun at a Twins game is watching a game on television.

Are season ticket sales down? I know overall sales are.

If they do anything at all, it won't be much. They certainly won't go out and trade for a big name pitcher/player, it's just not going to happen with this ownership and FO. At best, they'll pull off a very minor deal or two, just to try and convince fans that they're making the effort.