Apr. 1—CHICAGO — Was Monday's 9-0 loss to the lowly Chicago White Sox the lowest point in the history of Twins baseball?
No, probably not. But at the moment it does kinda feel like it, and that's bad enough when fans are bailing before April Fool's Day.
Seriously, this team looks awful, and it's like nobody even cares.
The Twins have a pretty talented roster and were the choice among many preseason simulations to win the American League Central this season. That could still happen.
But the first four games have been next-level dreadful, and worse, the ambivalence of the fan base is creating a deafening silence.
I'm not going to compare this 0-4 start (in which the Twins have been outscored 28-6) to those late 90s Metrodome teams that were barely even pretending to try to contend, but it's been 15 years since the Twins moved into Target Field, and in that time I don't ever remember sensing fans jumping off the bandwagon and giving up hope as quickly as they have this year.
Twins fans just seem so....over their team. Done with them. Not interested.
That, of course, is because it's about much more than these ugly first four games.
The 2023 Twins finally snapped the franchise's playoff losing streak, winning a series for the first time since 2002 and bringing a much-needed spark back to the organization. They had bona fide stars in Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis, a young ace in Pablo Lopez, an electric closer in Jhoan Duran, talent up-and-down the roster and a loaded farm system.
It felt like maybe, just maybe, the 2023 season was just the beginning.
And then a couple months later, owner Joe Pohlad announced the team needed to 'rightsize the business' and demanded a slash in payroll. The timing of this buzzkill announcement could not have been worse. It made at least a little sense, what with the team losing its TV deal, but in hindsight I'm not sure anyone realized what a mortal wound Pohlad's decision would be to the franchise.
The Twins have always been frugal, to put it kindly, and while cutting payroll after a successful season was a bad look, you could at least squint and see a plan. Paying Sonny Gray $75 million for three years (which the Cardinals ultimately did) didn't seem like a great idea. Carlos Santana was a nice addition.
The Twins still had the pieces to win the Central, and they could always add a starter or a bat at the trade deadline to strengthen their chances for October. For most of the summer, it all went fine. The playoffs looked like a certainty.
Then the trade deadline came, and the Twins did essentially nothing. The front office sat on its hands and watched as the Twins gave away the division, going 12-27 to finish the year, dropping from a sure playoff spot to fourth place, barely above .500.
It was a stunning collapse, and it felt utterly preventable.
For years, even going back to the Metrodome days, I always felt that blaming the Twins' lack of postseason success on the Pohlads' ownership was overly simplistic. Were they great owners? No, it sure didn't seem like it. But from Terry Ryan to Bill Smith back to Ryan to Derek Falvey, the team's baseball chief always insisted that when they went to the owners and said 'here's a move I want to make that will improve the team', the answer was always 'yes'. That was good enough for me as an interested lifelong fan. I think it was good enough for the manager and the players.
But seeing a first-place team slash payroll ahead of what could've been a World Series contending season, then refusing to let them make moves to improve the team at the deadline? That makes it pretty hard to argue with anyone making the case that the owners don't consider winning ...
