It’s been back-to-back seasons of lackluster starts for the Minnesota Twins.
A 4-8 start following a brutal stretch last season that took them from a 90-plus win pace to missing the postseason a year ago won’t help fan morale. They also cut payroll last season, and the potential ownership sale already had one setback before the season started.
The Twins have dealt with ownership woes, low payrolls, and disappointing finishes, which are mainly macro-level issues. Minnesota’s micro issue is the product they have on the field. Fair or not, the Twins have been unable to build a brand of baseball recently that large portions of the fanbase can get behind. They aren’t the hard-nosed, title-winning teams of the Tom Kelly era or the scrappy, small-ball club from the early 2000s.
The 2025 Twins feel like a team without an identity.
Part of that stems from the team’s compounding injury issues. It’s not unique to the Twins, but injuries have taken their toll in some significant ways. Their three star hitters, Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Royce Lewis, have all missed time with injuries over the last three seasons. In 2024, the trio played only 22 games in the same lineup.
Buxton, Correa, and Lewis are among baseball’s most exciting players. The only problem is, we haven’t seen them enough. Since 2022, Lewis has a 128 wRC+ in 152 games, Buxton has a 125 wRC+ in 279 games, and Correa logged a 127 wRC+ over 357 games played in that span.
Aside from the top three players having trouble being in the lineup together, it’s been harder to watch Twins games recently. Access has improved with MLB taking over the production of Minnesota’s games. Still, it’s a long road ahead for fans who haven’t had a chance with recent players to “get to know ‘em” when it’s been hard to see their games consistently.
When fans have been able to see Twins games over the last two seasons, the team has highlighted its flaws more than its features.
Minnesota’s talent has been there, especially at the plate. The Twins have scored 4,191 runs since Rocco Baldelli became manager in 2019. That’s top-six in baseball over that period. Their 1,226 home runs are also top-4 in the majors. Good teams hit homers, but they also do the small things right. The Twins have fallen flat in those areas over the last six-plus seasons.
Minnesota is a poor baserunning team. Since Baldelli took over, the team ranks dead last with 290 stolen bases. That’s 44 away from the 29th-ranked San Francisco Giants. FanGraphs’ composite base running score places them dead last with a -52.7 rating. Compare that to some of the memorable past Twins teams. Fundamental and aggressive base running were core marks of those groups when their 791 stolen bases from 2002 to 2009 were top 10 in the majors.
The Twins are also capable of better defense. Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton are two of the elite fielders at their positions in baseball. However, Minnesota’s play around the rest of the diamond is a different story. The Twins have only committed 464 errors since 2019, which is 11th-best in MLB over that time. Their pitch framing from catchers has improved to a +9 FanGraphs score, placing them in the top 11 over that span.
But the Twins’ underlying defensive numbers expose their lack of range and how it’s impacted their defense. Minnesota’s -37 outs above average clip from 2019 to now is 20th in the league. Meanwhile, their -3 defensive runs saved is 16th.
Minnesota’s catchers have only thrown out 133 runners over the last six-plus years, and only four teams have thrown out fewer base stealers. Twins defenders aren’t typically sloppy, but they are limited in their abilities, and that can be just as costly as making a mistake with the leather.
Are fans’ perceptions of the team anecdotal and unfair? Probably. Still, the Twins haven’t done enough in these areas to show they are well-rounded. Multiple games this season have already been lost due to poor fielding. On Tuesday, the Kansas City Royals scored both runs off infield errors in their 2-1 win over the Twins. Fans focus more on power numbers than small ball. Still, watching a team commit base running mistakes or misplaying a defensive situation also upsets fans.
Baldelli alone isn’t culpable for Minnesota’s blunders. He’s responsible for leading the players and coaches, but his main job is to maximize the talent he has on the roster.
It’s still fair to criticize Baldelli. However, he can only manage the talent he has every day. He hasn’t had many rosters built on speed and defense. The Twins built their roster to hit the ball hard and score runs. FanGraphs gave the Twins a 3.9 speed score, explaining why the Twins haven’t stolen many bases.
That’s not to say a team must have those components to be compelling. Winning games often glosses over issues. The 2019 Twins were one of the most fun squads to watch in recent memory, and it’s not because they mastered baseball’s minutiae. They hit dingers. The Bomba Squad had a league-record 318 home runs and filled Target Field nightly. The team had an identity, and people fell in love with players like Nelson Cruz.
Even with a slow start, the Twins have a pathway to form a strong identity again.
In 2023, the Twins built their identity from the mound. Their starting rotation had a 3.82 ERA, the top two in baseball that season. Pablo López and Sonny Gray were a 1-2 punch that rivaled any in the league. Couple that with the emergence and Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober and it was a unit almost every night Twins fans could count on for quality starts.
After a rocky 2024, where the starting rotation finished 22nd with a 4.36 starter ERA, the Twins have the makings of another excellent unit. López landed on the injured list after his last start, but Ober, Ryan, and Simeon Woods Richardson provide experienced depth to keep the rotation in check.
Zebby Matthews, David Festa, Cory Lewis, Andrew Morris, and Marco Raya are the depth behind them. Each has had outings to begin the year and provide the Twins with high-end depth if another starting pitcher gets injured. A “pitching pipeline” is an overused buzzword, but Minnesota’s excess of high-end arms should sustain them throughout the year.
Why should pitching depth be an important part of Minnesota’s identity? Mainly because, outside of Johan Santana’s prime, Twins fans have always pleaded with the organization to assemble a consistently good pitching staff. If the Twins can dominate in one of the two main areas of pitching and hitting, like the team did in 2023 and 2019, it invigorates the fanbase. Especially if it’s something most of the fanbase has never seen.
A slow start to the 2025 season and the collapse at the end of last year have made it hard for the Minnesota Twins faithful to be optimistic about their team’s chances this summer. A collapse, ownership drama, and lack of clean baseball have made it tough to get behind a Twins team with the talent to make noise in the AL Central.
Minnesota must master those little things down the stretch. The best way to discover their identity would be to fully market the team’s deep pitching arsenal to recapture the fan base again.
