Last year, the Minnesota Twins were limping toward the finish line. Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton were on the injured list. Carlos Correa would join them as part of a painful battle with plantar fasciitis. They had built a lead in the American League Central division, and fortunately, it was enough to get into the playoffs.
One year later, the Twins are in a similar situation. They’re running on fumes and trying to hang onto the final Wild Card spot in the American League. Baseball has become more like hockey, where teams can make the finals no matter where they finish the regular season. Three Wild Card teams have made the World Series in two seasons of the expanded playoffs.
But this team feels different because there’s more on the line than just a playoff spot.
Let’s go back to where the Twins were one year ago. Minnesota made the playoffs, but fans were still nervous about them. Over the past two decades, people have treated Minnesota like the little engine that could. They would get to the playoffs, only to have the opposing team promptly derail them.
Young Twins fans remember the New York Yankees sweeping the 2019 Bomba Squad, but older fans’ scars ran much deeper. The Oakland Athletics swept the 2006 team. Phil Cuzzi called a Joe Mauer double a foul ball in 2009. The Twins coughed up a three-run lead to the Yankees in a 2017 Wild Card game. All they know is pain.
The 18-game postseason losing streak – the longest in the history of men’s professional sports in North America – made many Twins fans apathetic. Yeah, Minnesota could make the playoffs, but the playoffs were like the Red Rider BB gun. You’ll shoot your eye out. Or, in this case, “They’ll just get swept.”
That’s why the 2023 Twins were a shot of adrenaline. Lewis hobbled to the plate and smashed home runs in his first two plate appearances. Correa overcame his injury to look like the franchise cornerstone the Twins expected when he arrived in 2022. They didn’t just win a playoff game; they won a playoff series.
The rest of the run continued to pull fans in. For the first time in ages, fans had likable players to invest in. Pablo López felt like a blossoming ace. Lewis had a swagger that hasn’t been seen since the 2002 Twins fought off contraction. Jhoan Duran pumped 100 mph fastballs, and Correa was the gritty leader fighting through injury.
Most importantly, they were a team that didn’t feel that far off from competing for a World Series. With a few tweaks, fans felt like a championship – or at least a push for one – wasn’t out of reach, and it generated excitement Twins fans haven’t felt in a long time.
Then came the winter. The Twins led off the offseason by announcing they were reducing payroll. After rumblings of a more accessible television deal, they re-upped with Diamond Sports Group to have their games broadcast on the fledgling Bally Sports North channel.
The offseason’s biggest moves were trading a fan favorite, Jorge Polanco, and replacing him with Anthony DeSclafani. AL Cy Young runner-up Sonny Gray left in free agency, and the Twins didn’t do much to replace him other than hope that Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, and Chris Paddack would step up.
Despite all the grumblings and a slow start, there was still a reason to be optimistic. When the Twins got hot in the summer, Lewis returned from a quad injury and wouldn’t stop hitting home runs. Correa was having his best season since arriving in Minnesota. Young players like Jose Miranda and Brooks Lee were breaking out, and Ryan and Ober fulfilled the front office’s vision when they let Gray walk.
However, things changed around the time the calendar flipped to July. Correa’s initial trip to the injured list turned out to be a two-month absence. Lewis hit the injured list and has been in a slump since returning to the field. Even Buxton, who was having the best season of his career in terms of availability landed on the injured list with a hip injury.
The punches kept coming when a Bob Nightengale report suggested that the Twins were “hamstrung” into making “dollar-for-dollar” trades due to the team’s payroll issues. The lone move at the deadline was acquiring reliever Trevor Richards, who lasted less than a month before being designated for assignment.
Ryan threw his shoulder out in Chicago, and Paddack’s forearm didn’t hold up to the rigors of a full season. The rookies at the back end of the rotation started to feel fatigued, and so did the bullpen. That leaves the Twins 1.5 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers and the Seattle Mariners entering Wednesday.
Some fans may believe that Derek Falvey and Rocco Baldelli‘s jobs should be on the line. Others think the Pohlad Family should sell the team to an owner willing to spend. While both would relieve some of their frustration, the play on the field has resulted in a more dangerous situation — apathy.
A summer of miscues has potentially left the Twins where they were two offseasons ago. As a battered Twins team faded out of contention in September, Twins president and CEO Dave St. Peter criticized fans for not attending a late-season series against the Chicago White Sox.
“I’m surprised and kind of bordering on disappointed that we haven’t drawn better, the second half of the season,” St. Peter told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “The way we played coming out of the gate, we got off to a good start, and I fully expected our attendance to jump more than it did.”
The Twins did get off to a similar start to the 2022 season, but they’re fading just as badly. Lewis is one of many young players who are fatigued after a long year. Correa and Buxton returned to the lineup but needed a full day off after playing just four innings in Saturday’s loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
The bullpen is a disaster capped off by Kyle Manzardo’s go-ahead moon shot off Griffin Jax on Monday night, and the Tigers and Mariners are closing in on the third wild-card spot at Noah Lyles’s speed.
Like in 2022, Twins fans have spoken about not showing up at Target Field. The Twins rank 10th in the American League in attendance, and that comes in a year when most of the Twin Cities couldn’t watch due to a battle between Diamond Sports Group and Comcast.
It leaves the Twins fans with a similar feeling of apathy, as if they’ll just get swept again if they make the playoffs.
Even worse? It’s unlikely that ownership or the front office will have an “A Christmas Carol” moment and start correcting their ways. The apathetic Twins fan believes they’ll make more cost-effective moves that will rid the team of the depth it had one year ago. They’ll sign another one-year pact with Diamond and watch their games taken off TV again. The star players will get hurt, and the Twins will tell everyone how long they’ve retooled to compete and fade from contention by the deadline.
The Twins would argue that a playoff appearance is a playoff appearance. However, it’s not good enough for fans who want to see this team become a serious competitor. Last year raised the bar for the organization, and with their Wild Card lead dwindling, they’ve reverted to where they were two years ago.
