In the summer of 2002, when magazines were still a thing, one of the best covers featuring the Minnesota Twins was printed for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo credit: ESPN the Magazine Gallery

The Twins were in the middle of a shocking season, staving off contraction to lead the AL Central. They were on their way to the playoffs with a core featuring Jacque Jones, A.J. Pierzynski, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Torii Hunter, who awakened a dormant fan base that had been sleeping since winning the World Series in 1991. In giant blue and green letters, the headline dubbed them “The Team That Saved Baseball.”

It’s a team that you reminisce about when times are rough.

It’s a team you think about right now.

Nearly 22 months after winning their first playoff series since that team did it in 2002, Twins ownership delivered one of the darkest days in franchise history. What was once the team that saved baseball is now destroying it for many of its loyal fans.

I hate the Twins right now, and you don’t know how hard that is for me to write. The year before the Twins graced that cover, I fully invested in a team that finished 85-77 and just shy of a division title. I’ve traveled across the country to watch the Twins play baseball and had discussions with countless strangers about our love for this team.

I’ve been mad at teams before, but I’ve never hated them. And I’ve never felt as hopeless when the Pohlad family put out a statement on Wednesday morning.

A letter from the Pohlad family: pic.twitter.com/s6ff66W5DU

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) August 13, 2025

In the statement above, the Pohlads said that they were pulling the team off the market and would remain the principal owners after a failed attempt to sell the franchise. They said their focus was “on what’s best for the long-term future of the Twins.” They also used words like “robust” and other terms typically associated with Silicon Valley or a ChatGPT summary.

It was a 247-word punch to the gut that not only should register disappointment, but it should trigger rage.

Remember that team 22 months ago? The one that ended an 18-game postseason losing streak? The Pohlads saw that sold-out crowd that was losing its mind and decided to slash payroll by roughly 20%. The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman highlighted that the Twins’ spending over the past two years has been comparable to the Metrodome era, which is coincidentally where 90-to-100-loss seasons were an annual occurrence before the 2002 team arrived.

Things haven’t been as bad since the turn of this decade as the Pohlads greenlit free agent contracts for Josh Donaldson and Carlos Correa. However, they quickly got them off the books when they either lit the clubhouse on fire or didn’t “right-size their business.”

They signed the current face of the franchise, Byron Buxton, to a $100 million contract in 2021. Still, it came at a discount because his injury luck feels as fatalistic as Final Destination.

The hits kept coming when the Twins traded 10 players off the active roster two weeks ago. Some of the moves may look wise in the long term. Still others, like trading Louie Varland, don’t make sense even as the Pohlads try to right-size the payroll.

The Twins will probably win again, and fans will likely flock back to Target Field when that happens. However, those same fans are likely to question how loyal they want to be to a franchise that has taken more than it has given since the new stadium opened in 2010.

Ask any Twins fan who has had Jhoan Duran’s entrance shoved in their face on social media over the past two weeks. Or any Twins fan in a Joe Ryan jersey, knowing that even if he signs an extension, they could trade him again in two or three years if he’s deemed too expensive.

How about a player like Royce Lewis, who could easily become the next David Ortiz if the franchise doesn’t want to pay him? Or maybe Walker Jenkins, Kaelen Culpepper, and Luke Keaschall wind up making pit stops in the same way that Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto, and others did with their small-market teams.

I tried to find a way to write that everything could wind up fine. But it just doesn’t feel that way. With the same ownership in place, the regime led by Derek Falvey and Rocco Baldelli will remain, and they may continue to trade players who question them, like Griffin Jax.

The Pohlads can say how much their passion matches that of the fan base. Still, it feels like their championship is getting back to the black rather than hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy.

To be fair, the Pohlads aren’t the only owners who are caught in baseball’s financial problem. It’s also why things could get worse if MLB locks out after the 2026 season. But for a team that needed a facelift so badly, hearing that things will stay the same is another disheartening development.

This led many fans to abandon the team after the initial payroll slash and the subsequent late-season collapse in 2024. But this leads to a feeling worse than apathy. It feels like they’ve destroyed the team that so many, like myself, fell in love with over two decades ago.