Former Twins player calls team out after 'one of the biggest choke-jobs of all time'

While the Minnesota Twins' season isn't quite over yet, the writing is on the wall.

It's been there since mid-August when one of the worst collapses in team history began. Minnesota was just 3.5 games out of potentially controlling a first-round bye, but proceeded to not only lose sight of that over the next 40 days, but fell out of the playoff picture entirely.

The Twins have a near-90 percent chance of making the postseason in August but are instead going to come under their projected win total for the year. Back in March the team was expected to win 85 games, but not even analytical science could prepare us for just how awful the Twins would be.

While it's one of the most stunning collapses we've ever witnessed, fans in Minnesota have seen this coming since the winter. That's when ownership sliced $30 million out of the payroll and chased one of the most exciting seasons in recent memory by doing absolutely nothing to improve the team.

The result of that half-baked effort is being seen now. Part of the onus falls on the clubhouse, but former player A.J. Pierzynski is placing blame from the top down for what has happened to the Twins.

A.J. Pierzynski goes scorched earth on Twins for epic collapse

On the latest episode of Foul Territory, Pierzynski cooked his former team for what he sees as an "orginzational failure". He's not wrong, and while some fans aren't exactly the biggest supporters of Pierzynski it's hard to not see his comments as representing the center of the worst Venn diagram imaginable.

"This is one of the biggest choke-jobs of all-time. You can put it on the players, you can put it on the owners, you can put it on Rocco [Baldelli], it's an organizational failure," Pierzynski said. "They didn't sign anyone in the offseason, they didn't go trade for anybody at the trade deadline; they thought they could do what they did last year."

This isn't the first time Pierzynski has gone after the Twins, or more specifically the Pohlads, for being cheap. He blasted the organization after the Jorge Polanco trade back in January, flaming ownership for being cheap rather than trying to invest meaningfully in the team.

That ended up being prophetic, if not entirely surprising. Fans were bracing for a total nightmare scenario to develop where the team chose money over winning and things played out exactly as everyone feared.

Rather than spend meaningfully in free agency, the Twins checked the lowest possible boxes while still making additions. Some have pointed out that Minnesota has one of the biggest payrolls in the AL Central, but it's not how much you spend it's how you spend it that counts.

For the Twins, the $6 million to Kyle Farmer was a total waste, Manuel Margot became one of the biggest liabilities on the roster, and Anthony DeSclafani never pitched a single inning for the Twins. Carlos Santana might win a Gold Glove at first base but collectively the near $20 million the team spent on those guys would have been more useful being lit on fire for heat in the winter.

What makes it worse is that ownership is likely going to learn all the wrong lessons from this as well as the way the Detroit Tigers surged into the postseason. Joe Pohlad admitted that the team won't spend money to win a World Series and prefers to take the small ball Tampa Bay Rays approach instead. It's an infuriating situation, one that will no doubt result in lower attendance next season which will, in the eyes of ownership, justify even more cuts to the payroll. ,

It's insane to think how far the Twins have fallen. Their collapse over the last month of the season is one thing, but it extends much further than that. We're less than a calendar year removed from the team's future looking so bright, yet things are impossibly grim and showing no signs of getting better.

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