Ah 2016. The year of Pokémon Go, Snapchat filters, and everyone pausing every time “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd came on because of the Mannequin Challenge.
Ten years later, people are reminiscing about 2016. There’s a new “2016 Challenge” going around TikTok and Instagram, where people are recognizing and showing off their good, bad, and sometimes-ugly moments from that year.
Even though this trend is mostly visual, given the platforms they are on, it might be therapeutic for Minnesota Twins fans to look back amid so much uncertainty heading into the 2026 season.
Let’s put the Twins through this challenge and see the good, bad, and extremely ugly of 2016.
The Good
Unlike this year’s team, the 2016 Twins offered promise entering the season.
Paul Molitor was entering his second season as manager, and the team played well in 2015. The Twins went 83-79 and finished second in the division, but they missed the playoffs by three games.
Miguel Sanó, Eddie Rosario, and Byron Buxton showed promise as rookies. Meanwhile, young players like Jose Berríos and Max Kepler were expected to make their major-league debuts, which helped generate hype entering the season.
While the 2016 season didn’t ultimately go the way the team expected, Eduardo Nuñez made his lone All-Star Game appearance. Brian Dozier also hit a career-high 42 home runs, entrenching himself in Twins lore.
On the mound, Ervin Santana threw two complete games, including one that was a shutout over the future Twins pitcher Sonny Gray and the Oakland Athletics.
Other than 15-11 in July and the final two games of the season, the team had little to celebrate.
The Bad
Twins fans had renewed expectations after the 2015 season.
What started as so much promise with such a young core turned into a mess. The 2015 rookie class that dazzled the season prior fizzled in 2016. Minnesota’s pitching staff perplexed and overwhelmed the young squad.
No starter had more than nine wins, and all had losing records by season’s end. Santana led the starters with a respectable 3.38 ERA. Lefty Fernando Abad led the bullpen with a 2.65 ERA before they traded him to the Boston Red Sox halfway through the season. Abad was the lone pitcher with a sub-3.00 ERA.
After only his second season taking over from Ron Gardenhire, Paul Molitor was on the hot seat for the poor season the team had, especially when one man had already lost his job – more on that in a second.
The beginning of the season should have foreshadowed Minnesota’s fate. The Twins had losses in their first nine games and 14 of their first 20.
Even with their slow start, many didn’t expect how bad the season would get.
The Extremely Ugly
In a few words, the entire season was extremely ugly.
It was the worst season since before the turn of the century and their first 100-loss season since 1982, when Frank Viola was a rookie, and Kent Hrbek made his lone All-Star appearance in his first full season with the team.
Minnesota’s 103 losses didn’t just make this team the worst in the league that season. The next-best team was 12 games ahead of the Twins. The Tampa Bay Rays, Cincinnati Reds, and San Diego Padres all finished 68-94.
The fall began in Game 1, and the team never recovered from the bottom half of the league. They didn’t reach ten wins until June. The Twins relieved GM Terry Ryan of his duties by July, leaving Rob Antony as his replacement for the remainder of the season.
No position player on the 2016 team hit above .300. However, Tommy Milone went 2-2 at the plate, and Jose Berrios went 1-1. Still, the pitching staff finished with an abysmal 5.08 ERA.
Everything that could go wrong did, forcing the Twins to make significant organizational changes.
What We Learned
The 2016 Challenge for many Twins fans may provide some much-needed hope in what could be an underwhelming season.
As in 2016, the team will rely on its young core of players and potential up-and-comers like Walker Jenkins and Kaelen Culpepper. However, unlike in 2016, the 2026 team is not expected to make the playoffs. So, if they “underperform,” it won’t be considered a total system failure leading to job losses.
2016 was a necessary evil. Without it, the Twins wouldn’t have truly realized how broken they were.
The 2026 team has been looking internally, addressing everything from the front office to the product put on the field. That’s not to say that 2026 will be a success, but maybe this viral challenge was meant to give people perspective.
For Twins fans, this means that although this year’s team may be bad, it can’t get much worse than 2016.