The 2023 Minnesota Twins team of destiny has met its end. A season with multiple stretches of peaks and valleys ended on a cold night at Target Field, losing the American League Division Series 3-1 to the Houston Astros. Despite the dud of an ending where the Twins scored 3 runs in their final two games, there is plenty to be optimistic about. Minnesota broke the two losing streaks that have cursed the franchise for two decades by winning their first playoff game since 2004 and their first playoff series since 2002.
There is also a firm foundation in place with key veterans. They have Pablo López, Byron Buxton, and Carlos Correa locked in Minnesota for the next three-plus seasons. Minnesota brought Correa in to help break the curse and enter a new era of Twins baseball. Despite Correa’s 1.1 fWAR being the least productive of his career, he still came through with a 1.004 OPS in the postseason.
Last season was a good start for a team that has some key young players to pair with the veterans. Their taste of postseason success is uncharted territory for a large group of Twins fans. But it’s deja vu all over again for Correa’s decorated career. He has repeatedly compared this team to the 2015 Astros, which featured an impressive core of young players, including George Springer, Alex Bregman, and Correa.
“The reason why I say that is because in 2015 nobody gave us a chance,” said Correa before Game 1 of the ALDS. “We got to the playoffs, we had a great Wild Card Game and then we went on and had a great series against the team that won the championship. And from then on, everybody started believing that we belonged.”
It is a simple yet bold statement to make. The Astros have become baseball’s latest dynasty. Another talented Houston team will play in their seventh straight ALCS this season. Nobody is predicting that Minnesota will become exactly like the Astros, instead more of being in position to kick off a run of sustained success. Correa may be biased, but his study of baseball is among the best in the league. So do the numbers or even the vibes match his claim?
Since 2004, the bar for Twins Territory has been winning a playoff game that hung over the franchise. A Twins team with 87 wins broke the streak by advancing through the Wild Card Series. Much like the Twins, Astros fans hadn’t seen a playoff win in a decade before they made the playoffs in 2015.
That year the Astros squeaked into the playoffs as a Wild Card with only 86 wins. But they beat the New York Yankees to advance in the playoffs for the first time since they reached the World Series in 2005. The Yankees beat Houston in the ALDS that postseason and the Astros missed the playoffs the following year. But Houston began its current streak of seven consecutive ALCS appearances in 2017, and it started with that small taste of postseason success from their young players.
Springer was in his second year, and Correa was a rookie on that 2015 Astros team. Correa was the first overall pick in 2012 and had an instant impact with a .857 OPS his rookie year with 22 home runs despite suffering injuries as a minor leaguer. Royce Lewis has had a similarly impactful start to Correa as a top draft choice who battled injuries early in his pro career. Lewis channeled his inner Correa by posting a .913 OPS with 17 home runs in his first 70 career regular season games. Matt Wallner (139 OPS+) and Eduoard Julien (130 OPS+) also posted good numbers as rookies to give fans a similar sense of optimism.
José Altuve has been Housotn’s leader through all of the winning and losing since he debuted in 2011. Correa and Byron Buxton headline the leadership in Minnesota. Still, long-tenured Twins like Jorge Polanco and Max Kepler are impactful veterans who were with the team through the good and bad seasons, similar to Marwin Gonzalez and Altuve.
Statistically, the 2015 Astros and 2023 Twins are more similar than we remember. The 2015 Astros posted an AL-worst 22.9 percent strikeout rate. But that Astros team and the 2023 Twins were top-three in the league in home runs. Houston hit 230 home runs that year, while Minnesota hit 233 this season. Houston’s 2015 pitching staff’s 3.57 team ERA was the best in baseball, much like the current Twins.
The important part of Correa’s comparison to the 2015 Astros wasn’t so much the season they had but what they were able to do after. Adding some right-handed power hitting, solidifying first base, and adding some more impact arms will help that cause. Keep in mind that the Astros added some help along the way. A farm system with talent. Top prospects Walker Jenkins, Brooks Lee, and Emmanuel Rodriguez all headline a farm system that can add to the big-league team. Kyle Tucker, Jeremy Peña, and Yordan Alvarez each have been crucial to Houston’s continued dominance.
After all, the Astros used their organizational depth to add their two best pitchers to their run after the 2015 season. The Astros traded for Justin Verlander in August 2017, and he turned his 3.82 ERA with the Detroit Tigers into a 1.06 ERA for the rest of the regular season in Houston. Then, they traded for Gerrit Cole before the 2018 season and transformed him into the top arm he is today, dropping his 3.50 ERA with the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 2.60 ERA during his two-year stint with the Astros.
The Twins did something similar with Pablo López this season, and he became one of baseball’s fastest-rising pitchers. López had a career year as he took his 3.94 career ERA and dropped it to a 3.66 ERA in 2023 with a career-high 234 strikeouts, the second-best in the AL, in a career-high 194 innings. Houston built their pitching not just through drafting but also by finding some talented players on other teams who they could enhance by refining their stuff.
The Minnesota Twins need to have higher aspirations than only winning one game in the second round of the playoffs. However, the team is in a great position to jump into one of the league’s consistent winners again, even if it isn’t on the level of Houston’s historic run. Correa and López are veteran leaders, and Lewis and other young impact players should give the team a chance to build on their postseason success this year.
“We have something special we’re building,” said Correa in that same presser. “We’re trying to build on that.”
