During his opening press conference, Tom Pohlad explained over and over that he understood that part of his job was to be pummeled: by the media, by fans, and by curious onlookers to baseball.
“The Twins community has lost trust in us as owners,” the new boss admitted.
So begins the transition, then, with older brother Tom taking over from younger brother Joe. Tom will be the fourth Pohlad to run the Minnesota Twins, but it seems worthwhile to take stock of what happened with Joe, whose tenure was cut short after just over three years.
While the team’s recent stumbles will color any memory, when he first got started, the younger brother was an emblem of hope. Joe Pohlad clearly wanted to change the ownership style of the team. But something happened along the way that put a quick end to those hopes and set the franchise on a pathway to disaster.
Joe Pohlad leaves the position, perhaps, even more hated than Carl was. How?
Compared to some owners, Joe provided a somewhat fresh look for the Twins in November 2022, taking over control and operation of the team at the age of 40. While his father discussed his plan for the team as remaining outside the spotlight, Joe seemed to initially relish it. He wore nice suits and had a million-dollar smile. He was the first Pohlad to take an office in Target Field, where he said his plan was to collaborate more than enforce.
But Pohlad didn’t waste time in trying to make a statement about how he expected the team to operate. He immediately authorized a pursuit of Carlos Correa, and eventually, the front office converted the one-year pit stop into a monster contract. The Twins’ initial pursuit of Correa fell short, but their final offer at $285 million over 10 years far eclipsed the $92-million signing of Josh Donaldson and the extensions for Joe Mauer and Byron Buxton. You can say the Twins still underbid for the highest-priced item on the market, but it suggested they wanted to shop at the Dior Store. So when luck and bad medicals put Correa back on the menu, Pohlad still pulled the trigger to bring him into a long-term relationship.
Pohlad beamed during the press conference as Correa put on his new uniform (which had debuted a few months prior), declaring “Fashion Show 2.0.”
It was one of many offseason investments in the team blessed by Pohlad. The Luis Arráez-Pablo López trade was certainly controversial, but few would take it back now—and the team eventually offered a substantial extension to make López a franchise face. The rest of the offseason included notable (if unglamorous) free agents, including Joey Gallo, Christian Vázquez, Donovan Solano. They traded for Michael A. Taylor. In total, the payroll jumped over $40 million from the 2021 season. Rocco Baldelli also received an extension through the 2025 season.
Pohlad pushed the product to bring it up to the rising big-league standards. That included changes at Target Field that totaled around $30 million, including the new scoreboard and the diamond ball. Pohlad also expanded the “Family Value” section, where the price of a hot dog remained $3.99. In fact, going into 2023, Twins Daily’s Theodore Tollefson took an optimistic view of ownership.
“In an era of Major League Baseball where the reputations of team owners usually bring negative connotations to their franchises, Joe Pohlad may be the outlier,” Tollefson wrote. At that moment, that didn’t seem crazy.
All of that change paid off. The gate receipts for Target Field jumped to (an estimated) $92 million, the highest since 2011, alongside $19 million in profit and a $70-million jump in valuation, at least according to Forbes. The curse was broken, leaving fans hungry for more.
There were high expectations that Pohlad set for 2024. Though the sudden removal of Dick Bremer may have shocked some fans, the promotion of Cory Provus felt like the right move. More importantly, Pohlad and Dave St. Peter gave Provus the green light to announce that blackouts would end in 2024 and that a streaming product was on its way.
But by the Winter Meetings, a new narrative emerged. Payrolls had gotten too high, and required cutting. For most of the offseason, Joe remained quiet on exactly what was going on. Then, an unfortunate WCCO interview officially ended the honeymoon. Business was the key word. Those $30-million players were luxuries they could not afford. There was a reasonable case for why the Twins felt no need to replace Sonny Gray, but Pohlad failed to articulate it.
The team also backtracked on those blackouts, taking a one-year deal with Bally Sports. One could have expected that the reunion might mean more money to put toward payroll, but that never did come. The decision backfired when Bally’s parent company began a three-month dispute with Comcast and kept the Twins off most televisions for almost half the season. Twins.TV would debut in 2025, but too little, too late.
Even when it was clear the Twins needed to add at the deadline, it became apparent from reporting from Jeff Passan that “if the opportunity to acquire a higher-salary player presents itself, they would need to offload salary from their major-league roster in that deal or another to cancel out the expense.” Never mind that at most, this would cost a low seven-figure sum to play out the rest of the season. It will be up to history whether the implosion that followed was a result, but fans knew exactly how to draw the line.
Pohlad finally stepped up to the mic once more at the end of the season. Defending his decision, he explained himself.
“We were headed down a great direction and I had to make a very difficult business decision, but that’s just the reality of my work,” he said. “I have a business to run, and it comes with tough decisions, and that’s what I had to do. I wouldn’t make any other decision.”
No one wanted to hear it. Only a few weeks later, the family announced the sale.
It will never be clear if Joe was fighting a battle with one arm tied behind his back. He probably expected a longer tenure than under two years before he announced the intention to sell. There are seven other Pohlads in his generation (who likely saw things differently all along), though, and he couldn’t hold onto control.
Even the sale effort, which was Tom’s job, didn’t work. The only major buyer eventually locked up a shinier object. No other full-scale suitor emerged. At a time when the team was at its worst, Joe had to announce a new plan to bring on limited partners instead. As Tom suggested, only in the last month was it clear that he would take the reins. As Dan Hayes reported, the sale may just be pushed down the road, as owners hope for a salary cap in order to increase their valuations. Whatever conversation that ends up being, Joe will remain on the advisory board, rather than in the driver seat.
In the meeting Wednesday, Tom described an employee town hall wherein Joe announced the end of his tenure through tears, clearly a bittersweet moment for someone who expected any other outcome than this. The younger brother skipped the press conference. His story—as far as the Twins are concerned—ends here.