One has to marvel at the persistence of our national pastime, an antebellum start-up that has grown into a business so lucrative, and so engrained in the culture, that those trying to kill it from the inside just cash bigger and bigger paychecks.
To wit: At the tail end of spring training last week, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred — the man in charge of protecting the ostensibly sacred integrity of the game — steered baseball into a partnership with Polymarket, which facilitates wagering on just about anything.
If you’re not familiar with prediction markets, good for you. But just know, for the purposes of this conversation, they give people the chance to not simply bet whether the Yankees will beat the A’s, but on whether the starter’s first pitch will be a fastball.
If the prediction markets had been in place 15 years ago, you could literally have bet on whether Nick Punto would dive into first base on a particular day, and if it were in place 40 years ago, you could have cashed in on Jim Frey being caught by WGN cameras picking his nose.
Now, we live in the best times.
Anyway, Manfred and his phalanx of suits see no potential issues related to the competitive integrity of the grand old game because MLB was able to slap together a deal with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to “further protect the integrity of baseball by ensuring swift response to incidents and anticipating emerging trends more strongly.”
The use of “further” here is an all-timer, yet is somehow eclipsed by “swift response to incidents.”
Have fun with that.
But we, already, digress. The point here is that MLB leadership will disgrace baseball to make money — one assumes Juan Soto is fine with this — and that is a proper segue to the Minnesota Twins, a team grounded by ownership last summer because the most conspicuous business operation in its portfolio was losing money.
Minnesota’s major league baseball team begins its 2026 season on Thursday at Baltimore, and if there has ever been milder anticipation for a Twins season, it happened in a time out of mind. This is partly because a large subset of Twins fans couldn’t pick half the current roster out of a lineup, partly because fans feel betrayed by ownership, and partly because Major League Baseball is headed for a lockout over a potential salary cap in 2027.
Look, ripping Twins ownership is played out, especially in this space. The Pohlad Family pulled the plug on 2026 last July by trading nine of the team’s best players for unproven, but definitely cheaper, ones. It happened and it has been vetted. New baseball czar Tom Pohlad was brought in to improve efficiencies, and team president Derek Falvey didn’t want to start over.
Jeremy Zoll, promoted to the Twins’ chief personnel voice, was given 200 bucks to embellish the roster and, well, not even the most myopic numbers cruncher could argue the Twins made a single substantive move this winter. But here is a certain harmony in the fact that the 2026 Twins are a lame duck team for a lame duck season, almost certain to be the last before baseball’s ugliest work stoppage yet.
The Twins have some young talent on the roster, but none of these players has fans buying the idea that the current group includes the players who will become the core of a World Series team. There is a lot of work to be done, a lot of growing and improvement required, and it seems unlikely that two million fans will pour into Target Field this season to watch that work.
If the Twins weren’t already going to trade Pablo López and Joe Ryan at the deadline — they were — they’re almost certain to sell Ryan to the highest bidder now that López has been lost to elbow surgery. It’s the smart move.
And don’t be surprised if Byron Buxton, royalty in exile on this roster, is ready to waive his no-trade clause and move on, as well. He’s the longest-tenured Twins player, and overwhelming fan favorite. But this team has got long, rocky road ahead of it. By late July, the Buck Truck might find himself looking for a clear and reasonable path to a World Series while he’s still an everyday player.
It’s impossible to envision that here.
Minnesota Twins vice president and assistant general manager Jeremy Zoll talks as new manager Derek Shelton is introduced during a baseball news conference, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)