{"id":655751,"date":"2026-04-01T03:26:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/655751\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T03:26:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:26:31","slug":"the-athletic-poll-delivers-expected-results-from-twins-fans-due-to-pohlad-created-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/655751\/","title":{"rendered":"The Athletic poll delivers expected results from Twins fans due to Pohlad-created mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7153999\/2026\/03\/30\/mlb-hope-o-meter-results-ranking\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:The Athletic polled over 11,000 MLB fans regarding the level of optimism;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;The Athletic polled over 11,000 MLB fans regarding the level of optimism&quot;}\" class=\"link \">The Athletic polled over 11,000 MLB fans regarding the level of optimism<\/a> they have in their favorite team this season. The publication then ranked all 30 teams by optimism percentage. It&#8217;s not hard to guess where our beloved Twins landed in the rankings.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota Twins rank last The Athletic&#8217;s MLB fan optimism poll<\/p>\n<p>Yep. The Twins ranked dead last in the poll with 4.3% optimism, just behind the Los Angeles Angels (5.7%). Keep in mind that this means fans of the Colorado Rockies, the Washington Nationals and the Chicago White Sox are more optimistic about their favorite team than Twins fans are.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve said many times before that <a href=\"https:\/\/puckettspond.com\/twins-path-to-2026-playoff-berth-remains-obstructed-despite-bullpen-improvements-01khhgfrj9q8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:the Twins have the talent to make a surprise playoff run;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;the Twins have the talent to make a surprise playoff run&quot;}\" class=\"link \">the Twins have the talent to make a surprise playoff run<\/a>. I&#8217;ve also said that it&#8217;s unlikely that the Twins make the postseason, as it would require a lot of things to go right that could easily go wrong. And after a 1-3 start, it&#8217;s difficult not to lean toward feeling pessimistic, even though it&#8217;s very early in the season.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>People can&#8217;t blame Twins fans for their lack of optimism this season, even though primary owner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/twins\/onsi\/minnesota-twins-news\/twins-owner-tom-pohlad-declares-we-will-be-competitive-in-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Tom Pohlad declared &quot;we will be competitive in 2026.&quot;;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Tom Pohlad declared &amp;quot&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Tom Pohlad declared &#8220;we will be competitive in 2026.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If the Twins had made some big moves during the offseason, such as signing left-handed starting pitcher Framber Valdez, then it&#8217;d be a lot easier to be optimistic about the team. It&#8217;d show that Pohlad really intends to do whatever he can to make the team competitive. <a href=\"https:\/\/puckettspond.com\/twins-can-prove-they-care-about-2026-by-signing-former-all-star-to-replace-pablo-lopez-01khrqb8vm7t\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Even signing right-handed starting pitcher Lucas Giolito;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Even signing right-handed starting pitcher Lucas Giolito&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Even signing right-handed starting pitcher Lucas Giolito<\/a>, who is somehow still a free agent, would show fans that he is serious about his bold offseason statement.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the biggest move the Twins made this offseason was signing catcher\/first baseman Victor Caratini to a two-year, $14 million contract. It wasn&#8217;t a bad move, but it shouldn&#8217;t be the biggest move for a team aiming to be competitive after trading nearly 40% of its roster at last summer&#8217;s Trade Deadline.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that the team mutually parted ways with president Derek Falvey just less than a month before spring training doesn&#8217;t help fans&#8217; optimism level, either. While it may have been the right decision to move on from Falvey, it could&#8217;ve mostly been Falvey&#8217;s decision to move on from the Twins for all we know. Regardless of whose idea it was to part ways, the timing of the decision indicated instability within the organization.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully the Twins will surprise everybody and rank near the top in fan optimism next year. But it&#8217;s hard to imagine that happening.<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on www.puckettspond.com as <a href=\"https:\/\/puckettspond.com\/the-athletic-poll-delivers-expected-results-from-twins-fans-due-to-pohlad-created-mess?utm_source=RSS\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:The Athletic poll delivers expected results from Twins fans due to Pohlad-created mess;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;The Athletic poll delivers expected results from Twins fans due to Pohlad-created mess&quot;}\" class=\"link \">The Athletic poll delivers expected results from Twins fans due to Pohlad-created mess<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic polled over 11,000 MLB fans regarding the level of optimism they have in their favorite team&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,63299,49,52,26542,79,56,585,822,60,3190,4,68,148,3614,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-655751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bruce-kluckhohn-imagn","10":"tag-chicago-white-sox","11":"tag-colorado-rockies","12":"tag-favorite-team","13":"tag-framber-valdez","14":"tag-los-angeles-angels","15":"tag-lucas-giolito","16":"tag-minnesota","17":"tag-minnesota-twins","18":"tag-minnesotatwins","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","21":"tag-twins","22":"tag-victor-caratini","23":"tag-washington-nationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116327322902591816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655751","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=655751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}