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The Minnesota Twins still belong to the Pohlad family, but things are about to be very different than they've been in the past. It's much too soon to guess whether the changes will be for good or ill, but the fact that something big has changed was clear Wednesday afternoon at Target Field. Henceforth, the day-to-day operations of the team will pass from Joe Pohlad to his brother Tom, and once he's approved by MLB (likely to happen in February, Pohlad said), he will also become the official control person for the team, taking over from the brothers' uncle, Jim.
This is a major consolidation of power. As Tom outlined on Wednesday, for much of the last few years, there have been three Pohlads with major roles within the team: Joe, Jim, and himself. (Tom entered the picture mostly as the person in charge of the hoped-for transaction, when the family decided to sell the team 14 months ago.) Going forward, there will be just one.
"Yes," Pohlad said, when asked if he would be the only family member involved with the club. "I mean other than the advisory board, the family members that will sit on that, yes."
In other words, Joe Pohlad is entirely moving out of the picture. Tom set the tone of the press conference held in the home clubhouse Wednesday with his opening statement, by characterizing the occasion as “in many ways an exciting day for this organization and for myself and for my family, and in many ways, an emotionally difficult day". Tom's control of the team comes after a month-long, family-wide deliberation the new owner repeatedly described as "difficult" and even painful. Was Joe on board with the transition, when the subject was first broached?
"Joe was not on board with this at first. And he’s on board now," Tom said, when directly asked as much. "He understands. But, listen, I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning. He was the leader of this organization, he’s been here for 19 years. And as difficult as this is for me to say, all he’s ever wanted was to be a part of this organization and to lead it and to help this franchise win a world championship. Things change. We had to make a decision as a family. He understands."
In short, the Pohlads felt they were failing in their stewardship of the franchise, and Joe Pohlad was identified as at least part of the reason. As Tom spoke, it became clear that the timing of this ownership transition being finalized and the leadership of the franchise passing from one brother to the other was not a coincidence.
"This decision to make a transition within our family has been extremely difficult. It’s been hard on the relationship between Joe and myself," he said. "It’s been especially hard on my dad and my two uncles, and this is not the type of thing that we envisioned as we started to go from one generation to the next and continue on our family business and continue on the stewardship of the Twins. But ultimately it was what we think was in the best interest of this organization, of our fan base, and of our new partners."
We've seen recent cases of other MLB clubs erupting into internecine warfare during transitions like these. The Padres are mired in a squabble between family members right now. The Dodgers went through an even uglier version of that under their previous owners, Frank and Jamie McCourt. Smaller but more public and more obviously raw rows have broken out in several ownership suites throughout the league, where family and generational ownership is common but family members with diverging interests is equally so. The family has successfully presented a quiet, fairly stoic picture of this change in direction, but Pohlad's words and tone Wednesday gave away the game: he is the winner of a Minnesota Nice spin on 'Succession'. Though the same surname is on the ownership group, this is not a cash transaction just to bail the family out of trouble. It's a wholesale change of organizational control. And there are hurt feelings behind it.
The family's control of the ownership advisory board will be diluted, as new partners Craig Leipold, George Hicks and the Glick family each gain representation there. That doesn't mean that those parties will take any meaningful measure of control over the team, and Tom Pohlad said Wednesday that none of those involved were interested in a controlling stake. Clearly, though, their investments were contingent on some changes that would help the team do what they believe it can do in the future: make more money.
"They believe there is an opportunity to improve the business of the Minnesota Twins," Pohlad said, in characterizing the interest each of their new partners had. "That there is revenue opportunities to grow revenue here, and that comes from reengaging our fans and winning more baseball games."
It's clear that some members of the family felt Joe and the rest of the leadership group then in place squandered opportunities for the club to be healthier and more profitable. Tom intends an activist and much more change-oriented approach to his new role than what the family has traditionally taken.
"My role, I think I'm going to play, if the question is, 'Are you going to be a passive owner or an active owner?' I'd say that I'm going to be an active owner," he said. "I'd say that's what this organization needs right now."
Now, get ready for something you've really never heard from the Pohlads before.
"We’ve got to figure out what’s keeping us from having more consistent success than we’ve had in the past," Tom said, "and I think the rub, if you will, on the organization, historically speaking, is there’s a feeling which I might share that we continue to run the same playbook over and over, thinking for a different result. The accountability factor is saying, if something doesn’t go right, if we don’t meet expectations, what are we going to do differently and then go out and do something differently.”
The nephew of Jim and grandson of Carl pretty plainly disagrees with the way they've run the franchise for almost half a century. No team in baseball undertakes leadership transitions less often than the Twins. Even mid-level jobs there have traditionally had far, far more security than anywhere else in baseball. By the sound of things, that era is over.
"Half-measures are not good, and you’ll probably get to know me over time: I’m not a half-measure guy," Pohlad said. "I’m a ‘go big or go home’ guy."
Having elbowed his own brother out of the way in a fairly muscular takeover of his own family's flagship business, Pohlad might now find it harder to go home. He's stepping away from all other roles within the family business to focus on this one. He's going big. That might not translate into enough spending for many fans' taste, and it might backfire on Tom Pohlad and all his relations. For those who feared that the would-be sale of the team had come to nothing but a procedural move and some debt relief, though, Wednesday sent a clear message: This is something bigger.
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