{"id":527587,"date":"2026-01-19T13:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T13:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/527587\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T13:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T13:18:13","slug":"is-tom-pohlads-plan-to-save-the-twins-a-matter-of-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/527587\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Tom Pohlad’s Plan To Save the Twins A Matter Of Timing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Major League Baseball took another gut punch over the weekend when outfielder Kyle Tucker<\/a> agreed<\/a> to a four-year, $240 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers spend so hard it would make the early 2000s New York Yankees blush, and they are overwhelming favorites<\/a> to win their third straight World Series. The New York Mets, whose owner Steve Cohen also spends<\/a> with reckless abandon, responded with a three-year, $126 million deal<\/a> for Bo Bichette<\/a>. Both moves made fans of small-market teams feel like their stadiums just turned into outdoor bars for the 2026 season, especially Target Field.<\/p>\n

Minnesota Twins fans are more disconnected than ever, as the team and ownership have used<\/a> their feelings as a speed bag since the 2023 season ended. It\u2019s hard to see the Twins signing a player like Tucker or Bichette. Or, in Carlos Correa<\/a>\u2018s case, they dumped him<\/a> at the earliest convenience. Therefore, it\u2019s hard to find optimism for the direction of the franchise, especially after the Pohlad family retained ownership of the team.<\/p>\n

The biggest development came when Tom Pohlad took over as the new Executive Chair and Control Person for Joe Pohlad in December, and Twins fans may have rolled their eyes at his comments that he was a \u201cgo big or go home<\/a>\u201d guy. But after the Twins spent the winter hiding in their basement following those comments, spending may be more of a timing issue than a way to buy back the trust of Twins fans.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not defending the Pohlads. Two years ago, the Twins were starting to grab the attention of a dormant fan base. They won<\/a> their first playoff game in nearly two decades. They also had a solid nucleus that people could latch onto, including Royce Lewis<\/a>, Carlos Correa, and Byron Buxton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, instead of riding the wave of momentum and eating a short-term loss, the Pohlads pulled the plug and have been cutting payroll, irking players<\/a>, and alienating fans ever since.<\/p>\n

That backdrop meant there was nothing that Tom Pohlad could say at last month\u2019s press conference that could instantly win fans back. While he did some things, like\u00a0admitting<\/a> the payroll cut following the 2023 season was a mistake, he also said<\/a>\u00a0now is not the time to throw money around to fix the team.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the landscape, what I see right now, that we should put a significant investment into the team of [adding] $50-60 million [to the payroll], but I don\u2019t think we\u2019re far off from that.<\/p>\n

There was probably an argument to tear the whole thing down, get as much value as you can for our players, and really put an emphasis on two years from now or three years from now. On paper, yeah, maybe that makes sense. But you can\u2019t just look at things on paper. We owe the fanbase something. We owe our veteran and star players something. We owe this organization something. And that something is hope.<\/p>\n

Twins fans will be the first to tell you there\u2019s not a lot of hope with this franchise after the Pohlads pulled the team off the market last August. Pohlad\u2019s comments could also elicit another sarcastic expression of Twins fans who want to see them put a winning team on the field. But looking at the current state of baseball, Pohlad\u2019s comments make some sense.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers have walked a fine line under baseball\u2019s current structure. In a league without a salary cap, big-market teams have consistently used their larger revenue streams to field larger payrolls. But there\u2019s a difference between that and taking advantage of the system.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles won\u2019t just have the largest payroll in baseball next season, which FanGraphs estimated<\/a> to be at $429 million. They have over $1 billion in deferred money, most notably the $680 million owed<\/a> to Shohei Ohtani<\/a>. Part of the reason they can do this is a settlement<\/a> from Frank McCourt\u2019s 2011 bankruptcy that limits the amount of TV revenue shared with the rest of MLB. Still, it also created a financial juggernaut that few teams in baseball can compete with.<\/p>\n

The Mets are one of those teams. So are traditional powers such as the Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Philadelphia Phillies, among others, who will have the highest payrolls<\/a> each year. Other teams, like the San Diego Padres, have spent to keep up with them. However, that has put San Diego around<\/a> $300 million in debt, and ownership has put them on the market.<\/p>\n

While the\u00a0revenue generated by the Twins\u2019 current TV deal with MLB isn\u2019t publicly disclosed, it\u2019s less than\u00a0the $54.8 million they reported<\/a> from\u00a0their previous deal with Bally\/FanDuel Sports Network. That\u2019s not something unique to Minnesota. Other teams have been caught in the RSN\u2019s bankruptcy battle in recent years. Still, it\u2019s a big reason why the spending gap has widened to a critical level.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty around TV revenue is why there could be another lockout. The debate over a salary cap is a touchy subject, both for owners like the Dodgers and for players who\u00a0don\u2019t want<\/a> to limit their earning power\u00a0when $700 million contracts are being thrown around. But if there\u2019s a shortened season in 2027, or MLB completely loses it, that\u2019s another year of lost revenue that teams like the Twins will have to endure.<\/p>\n

Of course, no Twins fan cares about the Pohlads\u2019 pocketbooks, especially after decades of frugal spending. But it also matters when considering the team\u2019s current state.<\/p>\n

The Twins can compete in an AL Central that has also tightened the collective pursestrings. Still, it\u2019s hard to see them leapfrog other teams with the questions they have at first base<\/a>, the back end of the starting rotation, and the bullpen roughly one month before the start of Spring Training.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also facing uncertain futures<\/a> with star pitchers Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a> and Joe Ryan<\/a>. If they deal one or both of those players ahead of this summer\u2019s deadline, it would likely be a result of the moves the Twins made this offseason, angering the fan base even more.<\/p>\n

That could be why the Twins have signed just two major league free agents (Josh Bell<\/a>, Victor Caratini<\/a>) for a grand total of $14 million this winter and have a bullpen that would make Lou Brown<\/a> proud. It could also have the Twins part of a public relations recovery period if baseball locks out in 2027, when teams will have to try to win back their fans.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no guarantee that this is what they\u2019re thinking, and with the Pohlads\u2019 past, it\u2019s hard to trust that this is the plan. But looking around the sport, it makes sense that the Twins are saving their bullets for when they know what the post-lockout MLB structure will look like.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a mess that has been created by frugal ownerships across the sport and a commissioner who is more concerned with tackling problems that don\u2019t exist.<\/a> But it\u2019s also a condemnation of a sport that has gone entirely off the rails, that may have reached its breaking point with another big Dodgers signing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major League Baseball took another gut punch over the weekend when outfielder Kyle Tucker agreed to a four-year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,57,822,60,3190,4,64508,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-527587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-twins","12":"tag-minnesotatwins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tom-pohlad","15":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115921964465694159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}