Tom Pohlad’s first year as owner and chairman of the Minnesota Twins was a mixed bag. On the plus side, the Twins hung around in the American League playoff race longer than most expected. On the other hand, the landscape of the American League had more to do with it than the actual team and fans noticed, giving them their lowest attendance figure since the 2000 season.
Like many in his situation, Pohlad has to be trying to find a way to build on the positives and with a roster featuring young talent, he wisely claimed that he would build around it to turn the Twins into a championship contender and win back the fans.
“We have a young, exciting core in place and now it’s ownership’s responsibility to support them,” Pohlad said via Dan Hayes of The Athletic. “I understand [fans’] patience in this market has run out, and I can assure you we have a sense of urgency. The work to build on the foundation we laid this year began [when the season ended.]”
While those words are promising, they’re not the first to come from Pohlad. And if the Twins really want to win the fans back, Pohlad must show that he’s willing to do what it takes to get the franchise on a winning trajectory.
The Twins have a payroll problem, but it may not be their biggest issue
When thinking about this, the thoughts of most fans go straight to payroll. The Twins were seemingly on their way to regaining the trust of the fan base after winning their first playoff game and first playoff series in nearly two decades back in 2023. Per the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Bobby Nightengale, the Twins have shed approximately $58 million in payroll since that happened and this year’s Opening Day payroll was $109 million, ranking 22nd out of 30 teams in MLB spending.
Pohlad went on to green-light multiple additions ahead of the trade deadline, but between Dean Kremer, Jeff Hoffman and A.J. Minter, those additions amounted to $8 million. Pohlad also said that a sub-$100 million payroll is “not sufficient” to compete for a championship, but he declined to put an actual number to any increase when asked by Aaron Gleeman of AaronGleeman.com.
“In a vacuum, I’d love to level-set, and set expectations, for the fan base,” Pohlad said. “But I think it does this organization, and particular [general manager Jeremy Zoll], a disservice to pigeonhole ourselves in that way. We’ve talked about a range. We’re not going to be an organization going forward that says, ‘This is the number and you’re going to have to stick to that.’ I don’t think that’s realistic if you want to be flexible and adapt to the opportunities that present themselves.”
There are a few reasons why Pohlad wouldn’t list a number. First, after all of the turmoil that has surrounded the franchise in the past year, free agents may not see Minnesota as a destination even with young talent such as Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez and Kaelen Culpepper. If the Twins make a legitimate offer, they may get turned down by a better spot and this is the team that has been known for “being in on” players only to have them sign somewhere else.
The other is the pending negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. If Pohlad said that he was only going to spend $130 million on payroll, it could be used against the owners in those negotiations as players try to keep raking in massive contracts.
With that in mind, it’s more likely that any increase would be more like 2018 where the Twins signed Lance Lynn, Logan Morrison and Addison Reed to short-term contracts with a high-dollar amount than 2022 when they signed Carlos Correa in the middle of the night. But it’s not the only thing that Pohlad has to do to turn the Twins into a contender.
The Twins’ current core has run its course
To put it mildly, what the Twins have been doing over the past few years hasn’t been working. Part of that is on the Pohlads for tightening the pursestrings when they were just starting to build momentum, but the current core of veterans hasn’t gotten the job done dating back to the beginning of the decade.
While the Twins won the American League Central during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, they were trending in the wrong direction before they were swept by the Houston Astros during the Wild Card round. A 73-89 season followed in 2021 and the Twins endured a second-half collapse to miss the playoffs in four of the past five seasons including this year’s team which hung in the AL Wild Card race only to go 21-30 over the final two months.
A lot of players that could have helped the cause were cast aside during the 2025 fire sale at the trade deadline. But the Twins have also held onto players who have been here throughout these meltdowns. It’s why there was a compelling case to sell Ryan Jeffers and Joe Ryan at the deadline, but the Twins held on sensing a dark horse playoff run that could have brought fans back to the ballpark.
That didn’t happen and while trading Ryan or letting Jeffers walk in free agency wouldn’t deny the “Cheap Pohlads” allegations, it also falls under the category of “spend smarter, not harder” as they look to build around their upcoming core of young talent.
If the Twins didn’t sell aggressively at the 2025 deadline, there’s a chance both players could continue to fit in that timeline. But they’re among several others including Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach and Bailey Ober who should probably be on the way out.
Tom Pohlad may have to do something drastic to win back Twins fans
Putting everything together, it’s a delicate balance that Pohlad has to solve. Getting rid of more players would be a bad look. If the MLB’s salary floor is higher than what the Twins are projecting, they would have to spend money to find those replacements.
They also must find a way to improve the team to take a step forward and do so in a way that will win back fans who have been alienated since the success in 2023 or going back decades to when Tom’s grandfather, Carl Pohlad threatened to move the team to North Carolina, put it up for contraction and had similar spending restrictions.
Those tasks aren’t going to be solved by $2 beers, rally dancers or loyalty programs. They must be done with actions and it’s something that Tom Pohlad must show as the Twins head into what could be an interesting offseason.
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