The Minnesota Twins have had another quiet offseason, but it’s not just fans who are fed up with ownership’s frugal ways.
Former Twins catcher A.J. Pierzynski sounded off again on the team’s reluctance to spend money during Wednesday’s episode of the “Foul Territory” podcast and while he said the Pohlads have “all the money in the world,” he remains miffed as to why they don’t choose to use it on payroll.
“Why are they hamstrung? Is it because of the imminent sale of the team?” Pierzynski asked Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic. “Is that why? Because the Pohlads have plenty of money. The Pohlads have…all the money in the world. They’re not tight on money.”
Pierzynski also pushed back on the idea that the Twins television deal is also a factor in the Pohlad’s frugalness citing the support of the fan base in Minnesota.
“They’ve had larger payrolls before and don’t use the TV deal, because I’m tired of hearing about the TV deal,” Pierzynski said. “The Twins have a huge fan base. They get big numbers. People watch them. People go to the games. People buy Twins jerseys. I’ve walked around Minneapolis before. There are Twins jerseys everywhere, right? What’s the reason behind them not spending? I don’t understand.”
A.J. Pierzynski blasts Twins for not spending the past two offseasons
Pierzynski’s frustration comes from the same place where many fans are upset. The Twins fielded a record payroll of $158 million on the way to winning the American League Central and ending an MLB-record 18-game postseason losing streak in 2023 but cut payroll by $30 million in 2024.
The payroll slash deprived the Twins of the depth they had in 2023 and Minnesota missed the playoffs for the third time in the past four seasons despite holding a double-digit lead in the American League wild card standings in August. But Pierzynski has long been a whistle-blower on the Pohlad’s cheap ways, blasting the ownership group dating back to last April.
Although the Pohlad family announced their intentions to sell the team in October, it hasn’t translated into more spending. Gleeman pointed out on the podcast the Twins have not signed a major league free agent over $5 million since signing Carlos Santana to a one-year, $5.25 million contract last February and Pierzynski said he felt bad for Twins President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey for dealing with the payroll restrictions while the rest of the American League Central has been dormant this offseason.
“He’s out there, he puts a team on the field that wins their first postseason series in 20 years. And then they’re like ‘Oh, you’ve got to cut payroll,’” Pierzynski said of Falvey. “The fans are going crazy. Then they look at the division and say ‘No one in our division is really doing anything. We could win it again in 2025.’ But we haven’t signed a – not a bunch – a single major league free agent this offseason.”
Pierzynski later compared current situation to his playing career when the Twins played under similar spending constraints at the Metrodome from 1998 to 2003.
“This sounds awfully familiar when I was playing for the Twins,” Pierzynski said. “Oh, we’ve got to cut payroll, and then we get a new stadium [and] we can have all the payroll we want. Except now we’ve got to cut it again. …We can move on. You can talk about something else. But for me, as someone that came up in the organization, and someone that actually cares about the Twins because there’s still a lot of people that I know – Mike Harmon, Dustin Morris, a lot of the people behind the scenes that nobody knows. They want to win. And so for me, it’s just like they can take this division.”
The Twins ownership drama could be solved as soon as Opening Day. While there’s a chance the Pohlads could sell to someone who is just as frugal as they’ve been, there’s also a chance they could find someone to invest money into the team at the level that Pierzynski suggests.