Key Target Field detail might protect Twins from a worst-case scenario with new owners

Minnesota Twins fans are still hanging onto the sides of their proverbial boats after one of the biggest waves we've seen in a long time rippled across the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Just days after the regular season ended, the Pohlad family announced that the team was up for sale. It's not the first time ownership could change hands, but unlike what happened in 1997 a deal will likely happen. The Pohalds no longer want to own the team and hte fans they so transparently loathe want them gone.

It's a situation that is both exhilarating but also terrifying as the Twins are truly staring down the abyss of the unknown. As much as new owners present a potentially brighter future than what fans had with the Pohlads, there's no guarantee whoever takes over will be any better.

The bar has been set so incredibly low, though, that it will be hard to go anywhere other than up.

One fear that always comes with new ownership is that a team could end up relocating. That's a natural anxiety to have, but it seems Twins fans won't have to worry about at least one thing as the sale of the team goes through.

Twins lease for Target field will prevent new owners from relocating, at least for now

While there's no guarantee the new owners will be any better than the Pohalds, the worst-case scenario is the team being moved.

Betsy Helfand from the Pioneer Press dove into the team's lease agreement with the Minnesota Ballpark Authority and pointed out a pretty ironclad protection against possible relocation. The Twins are only halfway through a 30-year lease on Target Field which means a move wouldn't be able to happen for at least another decade.

That doesn't mean it won't happen after that, but this won't be a potential situation like what's unfolding with the White Sox where new owners have a pretty clear path to moving the team.

While the Pohlads stated in their annoucement about selling the team that they wanted to keep the team in Minnesota, it wouldn't shock anyone if their final middle finger to fans was taking away the team. Fans old enough to remember will remember the trauma of the North Stars moving to Dallas in the early-90s.

Those were vastly different circumstances, but even with Rob Manfred's bloodthirsty removal of the A's from Oakland fresh in everyone's mind, there's not a big enough loophole for a similar thing to happen here. If the Twins do move it won't be until enough time has passed to have proven that the market can't sustain an MLB team.

We've seen over the course of the Twins' time in Minnesota that such a thing simply isn't the case. Twins fans love their team, and hopefully so will whoever takes over for the Pohlads. There's a ton of uncertainty about what the future holds but one thing we won't have to worry about is the team playing somewhere other than downtown Minneapolis for a very long time.

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