Credit: Mike Watters-Imagn Images
Last week, the Minnesota Twins announced their new minority owners, clarified the organization’s debt situation, and officially pushed Joe Pohlad out of the spotlight. Tom Pohlad is now the front man for the franchise and is attempting to change the narrative surrounding ownership.
Unfortunately for the Twins, fans aren’t interested in lip service. Joe Pohlad said all the right things when he was introduced as executive chair in November 2022. What followed, however, was a “right-sized” payroll and attendance sinking to record lows.
For the fanbase, it’s very much a wait-and-see approach. At the moment, though, there’s no denying that Minnesota Twins fans are the most beleaguered in all of baseball.
Fans Need Better From the Minnesota Twins
Ownership has shown little care for the Minnesota Twins fanbase for years. Regardless of what is said publicly, the organization’s actions have consistently sent the opposite message. ESPN’s David Schoenfield recently ranked MLB’s 10 most frustrated fanbases, and the Twins took the top spot.
Then came the 2025 trade deadline, when the Twins had a historic sell-off, dealing away 11 players in a series of moves that stunned the baseball industry.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow, but maybe a reset was needed,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said at the time. “We were curious to see how far the front office would go, and they decided to go really far.”
The Twins went 19-35 the final two months and attendance fell to 1.77 million, the lowest full-season figure for the franchise since 2000. In the midst of this, the Pohlad family, which has owned the Twins since 1984 and had been exploring a sale, took the team off the market in August — crushing the hopes of Twins fans everywhere.
If there’s a glimmer of good news for a franchise that has just one playoff series win since 2002 (a wild-card series win in 2023) and last appeared in the World Series in 1991, it’s that the Twins will apparently hold on to Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez and Byron Buxton, despite trade rumors at the beginning of the offseason.
Hey, in the AL Central, anything is possible. Maybe the Twins find a way to get off this list next year.
As Schoenfield points out, Minnesota has been tumbling down the relevance rankings for years. Last season, the Twins ranked fourth on his list. This time around, they finished ahead of even a 102-loss Chicago White Sox team and the perpetually inept Colorado Rockies.
The AL Central is hardly a gauntlet, which means there is almost always an opportunity to compete. With even a modest effort, there’s at least a glimmer of hope. The addition of Josh Bell is a step in the right direction, but the bullpen still needs a complete rebuild, and Dan Altavilla isn’t the piece that gets it done.
Even with a new influx of cash, it would be unrealistic to expect the Twins’ payroll to rise significantly by 2026. That means Derek Shelton and the front office must squeeze more out of the talent already in place.
If the Pohlads truly want fans back at Target Field, it won’t be about what they say, it will be about what they do.
Mentioned in this article: Derek Shelton joe pohlad Tom Pohlad
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