The Minnesota Twins had a story to tell in October 2023.

After sweeping the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL Wild Card, they won their first playoff series since beating the Moneyball A’s in 2002. They had Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Ryan Jeffers up the middle. Sonny Gray, Pablo López, and Joe Ryan solidified Minnesota’s playoff rotation. Royce Lewis, Edouard Julien, and Matt Wallner had simultaneously broken out as rookies.

“We’re going to be in this spot once again for a long time,” Correa said after the Houston Astros eliminated Minnesota from the playoffs. “If you look at the group of players that we have here, they’re young. They’re going to be here for a while. We can build something special.”

Even then, you could poke holes in their narrative.

Minnesota’s playoff curse wasn’t really a curse. The Twins lost 18 straight playoff games because Correa was their first legitimate shortstop since Cristian Guzmán. Contending teams need a viable centerfielder, shortstop, and catcher to complement the pitching staff.

The Twins also let Gray sign with the St. Louis Cardinals in the offseason, and Lewis’ magic was unsustainable. They only won 87 games in 2023, and they had carried a losing record into the All-Star Break. Minnesota still had work to do in the offseason.

However, you could see the vision. López, Ryan, and Bailey Ober would anchor the rotation, and the pitching pipeline would fill in behind them. Jhoan Durán and Griffin Jax had established themselves in the bullpen. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s young hitters were starting to reach the majors and were immediately productive.

Minnesota appeared to have a sustainable model for winning until that fateful August 18 game in Arlington. The Twins were 70-54 and had a 90% chance of making the playoffs, and were on the verge of a four-game sweep over the defending champion Texas Rangers.

López had pitched six scoreless innings, and the Twins were leading 4-0 when Rocco Baldelli deployed Jorge Alcala in the seventh inning. According to ESPN’s metrics, Minnesota had a 94% chance of winning when Alcala entered the game. Texas exited the inning leading 5-4 with a 70% chance of winning. They won the game 6-5 in the 10th inning.

That was the beginning of the fall. Despite taking three of four from the defending champs on the road, the Twins went 12-27 down the stretch and missed the playoffs.

A year after they had $156 million payroll and bolstered their roster for the 162-game grind, they slashed payroll by $35 million and didn’t have the depth they needed at the end of the year.

It felt like the 2022 collapse again, only this was coming off the excitement of a playoff series win at Target Field. Still, it also felt a little fluky. In 2024, they lost Ryan to a shoulder injury in mid-August and Correa to a second bout of plantar fasciitis after his All-Star first half. Byron Buxton only played 85 games as a DH and hit .207/.294/.438.

Therefore, it seemed reasonable that the Twins expected a better result this year when they ran things back. Ownership approved late spending on Harrison Bader and Danny Coulombe to add depth, and Buxton, Correa, and Ryan were healthy. As long as the stars produced and they received production from some of their top prospects, they could have a bounce-back season.

We all know what happened. Minnesota started 7-15, won 13 straight, then lost series to the Miami Marlins, Colorado Rockies, and Washington Nationals near the deadline. Until the fire sale, where the Twins traded nearly 40% of their roster, this year’s team wasn’t that different from the 2023 club in the regular season.

However, the core difference is that they collapsed like the 2022 and 2024 teams, and now the Twins have missed the playoffs in four of the past five seasons.

“There are a lot of similarities” between this year’s team and last year’s club, Baldelli admitted in mid-August, reflecting on the 2024 collapse. “Hard to separate, right?”

Still, he highlighted a crucial difference. The Twins lost Buxton, Correa, and Ryan in 2024. Buxton and Ryan were All-Stars this year, and Correa had been an All-Star until he suffered from plantar fasciitis again.

“That’s a very hard thing to recover from,” Baldelli avers, “and that probably played a huge role in us missing the playoffs.”

Buxton had a career year this season, making his third All-Star team and playing as well as he did in 2017 and 2021. However, López suffered from the same injury Ryan had last year and only made 14 starts. Correa hit .267/.319/.386 before the Twins traded him to Houston at the deadline. Like last year, it’s hard to win when only one star is performing and a star pitcher gets injured.

However, that’s only scratching the surface of Minnesota’s decline since 2023.

Ober finished the season with a 5.10 ERA. Meanwhile, many of Minnesota’s top pitching prospects have reached the majors but have uncertain futures. Simeon Woods Richardson (4.27 ERA), David Festa (5.40), and Zebby Matthews (5.56) have shown promise but can’t anchor a rotation if the Twins trade López and Ryan in the offseason. Taj Bradley (6.61) and Mick Abel (8.36) showed promise late in the season but probably can’t, either.

Minnesota’s hitting situation might be more alarming.

Lewis hit five grand slams in his first two seasons, but has hit only one since. He had a .921 OPS in 2023 and a .667 OPS this year.
It’s a similar story for Julien, who had an .839 OPS in 2023 and a .633 OPS this year.
Brooks Lee had a .654 OPS in his second season. José Miranda made the opening day roster but had a .417 OPS and, like Julien, spent most of the season in the minors.
Wallner finished the season with a .776 OPS but hit .202 and only had 40 RBI on a career-high 22 home runs.
Luke Keaschall (.827 OPS) and Austin Martin (.744) were bright spots, but they alone can’t carry Minnesota’s young hitting core.

Alcala had an 8.88 ERA when they traded him to the Boston Red Sox, who later released him. He finished the season in St. Louis.

Two years ago, the Twins were coming off a playoff series win with a young core and a group of proven superstars. However, they enter the offseason with Buxton as their only established star and Keaschall as their lone breakout hitting prospect. Even if they retain López and Ryan, the pitching staff probably can’t carry the post-firesale roster.

Minnesota’s narrative has shifted from an up-and-coming team coming off a playoff breakthrough to an ownership group that reportedly is bringing on limited partners to stave off over $400 million in debt. Instead of selling the team, they’ve cut costs as television revenue has declined. It’s unlikely that they will come close to the $156 million payroll they had two years ago anytime soon.

It’s natural to view August 18, 2024, as the start of Minnesota’s fall. However, it accelerated in the cost-cutting offseason that preceded the collapse. The Twins failed to capitalize on their momentum after sweeping Toronto and declined rapidly over the past calendar year.

They had a story to tell two years ago. Now, that narrative is long gone.