The Minnesota Twins came into last weekend needing to win a series with the Cleveland Guardians to keep their playoff hopes alive. But the results were predictable of a team that shouldn’t have been in a playoff race. After dropping a 5-2 game on Friday night and getting demolished 9-2 on Sunday, the Twins dropped two of three games, effectively eliminating themselves from contention.
On one hand, Twins fans can look at the roster and the fact they hung in there until mid-September and believe that another move or two could get this team over the hump. But a more sobering reality is that this team was in the middle of a pillow fight in the American League and no other team got hot enough to take it away from them until they took themselves out.
The truth should set the tone for an important offseason and it may be time for the front office to embrace the rebuild they seemed to have started back at last year’s trade deadline.
The Twins got the answer they needed from their current core this season
There are few ways to start a rebuild more emphatically than what the Twins did one year ago. 11 players from the team’s 40-man roster were traded in the lead up to the deadline, but it felt like there were enough pieces to keep them from officially hitting rock bottom.
A veteran group that included Byron Buxton, Ryan Jeffers and Pablo Lopez provided enough leadership. A young core featuring Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner and Brooks Lee provided upside. There was even a new manager in charge and a stable of young prospects that could be reinforcements that could help last year’s purge be more of a retooling than an end of the line.
But that’s overlooking who the Twins are. They’re a team stuck in an identity crisis. One that is at the fork in the road with two dark castles in front of them. They were right to push ahead and see what they had this season, but the answers they got were not the ones they were looking for.
It starts with their collection of post-hype hitters. Wallner and Lewis both had to be sent to the minors after tough starts. While Lewis returned after a couple of weeks, he’s nowhere near the star he appeared to be in the summer of 2023, hitting just .252/.309/.428 with 11 homers, 40 RBI and 11 stolen bases in 83 games. Those numbers include a .654 OPS in the month of September in the kind of slump that he swore he didn’t go through in the early stages of his career.
Lee is the one player who has shined through in that group, setting a career-high with 23 homers. But he also has an OPS+ of 101 (100 is average) and will be 26 on Opening Day.
The other factor is the post-hype pitchers. The Twins have enjoyed Taj Bradley’s emergence but Bailey Ober looks like a back-end pitcher on a good team while Joe Ryan has belly-flopped in the second half for the third straight season. The depth gets even worse on the back end where Zebby Matthews is trying to avoid another 5.00-ERA campaign and top prospects including Mick Abel and David Festa have succumbed to injury.
Then, there are the veterans. It would be tough to see Jeffers walk out the door for nothing in free agency, but he disappeared when the Twins needed him the most, hitting .238/.347/.393 with two homers and 10 RBI in the month of August. Buxton is also the star on this team, but can’t be trusted to play 100 games in a season.
Lopez’s torn UCL in Spring Training was also disappointing, but it’s part of a leadership group that is known for late-season collapses more than a winning culture. It’s why Derek Shelton replaced Rocco Baldelli to give the Twins a new voice, but after another disappointing season, other changes need to be made.
The Twins need to finally embrace a youth movement
Twins fans won’t like the idea of another fire sale, but they’re already worn down by the cloud the Pohlad family has cast over the team as owners. Even with the Pohlad’s tight pursestrings, other small-market teams including the Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays and the Guardians are playoff-bound, mainly because they’ve made the smart moves the Twins haven’t made over the past few years.
While last year’s fire sale was likely induced by the Pohlads’ payroll restrictions, it also made sense from a baseball standpoint because the current group wasn’t working. Keeping the core of that group for another year also made sense, but it also could be time to get some new blood in there as the Twins continue to spin their wheels.
It could mean shifting Buxton to a corner outfield spot to preserve his health and letting Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez man the other outfield positions instead of Trevor Larnach and Austin Martin. It also means leaning deeper into their pipeline and perhaps getting another wave of prospects to fill those roles with recent first-round picks Marek Houston and Vahn Lackey making their way through the organization.
Of course, Twins fans have been scarred by prospects before. But this current team has nothing for fans to really get behind. Instead, they look like a franchise that just exists and has $2 beers as the main reason to go see a game at Target Field.
The current formula is not working and last weekend’s series shows that it’s time for the Twins and their fans to embrace a youth movement.
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