Carlos Correa was enjoying a beautiful day on the water. He was sitting in his beloved boat, waiting for the fish to bite and knowing he was going to be the shortstop of the Minnesota Twins for the next few seasons. Everything was going great, except for the guests he invited for the ride.
Correa turned around to see how the Pohlad brothers were doing. When he saw Jim, Bill, and Joe shooting holes into the bottom of the boat, he frantically begged them to stop. Just as things looked dim, Carl Pohlad showed up in the sky, waving to his boys and giving them a big thumbs up.
As his boat sank to the bottom of Lake Minnetonka, Correa looked into the distance like Wile E. Coyote breaking the fourth wall as he fell off a cliff. If he had a sign handy, it would say “What exactly am I supposed to do here?” Instead, he grabbed the life preserver that said “NO TRADE CLAUSE.”
Stars like Correa should fit in a mid-market team like the Twins’ budget. Instead, they’re paying over $30 million not to play for them. It’s a disappointing ending to a relationship that was too good to be true. But ownership failed it from the beginning.
You could argue that Correa never really fit in Minnesota. To borrow a phrase, he was like a Dior belt in the middle of a Fleet Farm. The second contract felt like the popular girl in school going to prom with the kid with braces because all the football players were already booked.
When a player waives his no-trade clause, it’s usually cause for a fan base to be angry. However, a glance at Matt Mikulski’s 6.46 ERA suggests this was a mutual parting. The Twins just dumped his salary.
Players like A.J. Pierzynski have been booed for less after leaving Minnesota. But Correa should have fit like a glove.
The Twins were 31 years removed from their last World Series championship when he initially signed in 2022. They hadn’t won a playoff game in almost 20 years. He’s a three-time All-Star, a former World Series champion, and probably the greatest defensive shortstop in franchise history. Even with a couple of disappointing seasons, he’s the type of player you build a franchise around.
Instead, the Twins tore it all away.
Less than a month after the Twins ended their 18-game postseason losing streak, the Pohlad family decided to strip payroll. It would be one thing if they had allocated $5 or $10 million to compensate for the losses during the COVID pandemic. Instead, they dropped it by $35 million or roughly 21% of the 2023 payroll.
These decisions prevented the Twins from keeping Sonny Gray, who finished second in Cy Young Award voting in 2023. It left them relying on players like Anthony DeSclafani and Manuel Margot, whose payoff was akin to hitting a jackpot on a $1 lottery ticket.
There were some shrewd moves, like claiming Willi Castro. Their young trio of Royce Lewis, Edouard Julien, and Matt Wallner offered some hope. However, the depth caught up to them when Joe Ryan was lost for the season, and Zebby Matthews and David Festa had to make major league starts too early. The Twins blew a double-digit lead in the American League wild card race and missed the playoffs.
That led to an uneasy feeling over the winter. The Twins made better moves, including signing reliever Danny Coulombe and Harrison Bader. However, the restrictions led them to hope that Ty France would have a revelation at first base or that some of their young players would take a significant leap.
The front office also created instability. The Pohlads announced they were selling the team last October to a collective cheer as loud as Kirby Puckett’s home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. A few weeks later, Justin Ishbia emerged as a potential buyer, giving Correa a vision of an owner who would invest in making the team better.
It turns out that Ishbia’s interest was a power play to gain more control as a minority owner of the Chicago White Sox. The Twins added President of Business Operations to Derek Falvey’s title after Dave St. Peter retired, even though his teams have combined for a .515 winning percentage since he took over in 2017. The team then ran it back this season amidst the ownership transition.
Outside of a 13-game winning streak in May, Minnesota’s efforts proved fruitless. You could make a strong case for the Twins to overhaul their roster at the deadline. However, few thought it would reach the level of 10 players getting traded, as it did on Thursday.
Even a little bit of money could have helped a core that the rest of MLB valued have more success than it did. But ownership cared more about “right-sizing its business” than winning a championship. Even their two World Series victories in 1987 and 1991 are too old for most fans to recall, leaving their favorite memory as the wild card series victory from two years ago.
That’s something that will stick with the players who are left behind.
While Byron Buxton proudly declared that he was “a Twin for life” during the All-Star Break, will he have the same mindset after Thursday’s fire sale?
Will Royce Lewis, who butted heads with management over a midseason move to second base last September and a benching in Colorado last month, want to stick around after going after a bunch of “cheap guys?”
And will Joe Ryan, the closest thing the Twins have produced to a homegrown ace since Johan Santana was winning Cy Young Awards in the 2000s, re-up for a team that now looks like the baseball adaptation of “28 Days Later?”
That was enough for Correa to abandon ship. And more could be on the way if the Pohlads don’t sell the team soon.
