It is OK to enjoy the 2026 Minnesota Twins

 It's hard to convince Minnesotans and people that have watched the Twins for any length of time that clutch hitting and momentum aren't real things in baseball. Against all odds, the team has regularly played below their projections for the last couple of years, all while falling well below the expected "clutch" metric for years. These are both things that should even out, that haven't. The Twins are historically unfortunate, or bad vibes are a tangible thing that can be applied specifically to the Minnesota Twins. 

It's undoubtedly the reason that you see a consistent drumbeat of negative perception from fans, both local and national, as well as the human writers behind it. There is Aaron Gleeman at the Athletic, Twins Daily, even Twinkie Town locally, and I recently saw a MLB Trade Rumors poll that had the Twins as the least likely team to with the AL Central. That's rough. 

Meanwhile, Fangraphs has the Twins finishing nearly .500, and ahead of the Guardians and White Sox. 

I know I've mentioned this a few times in the past, but, let's summarize my general opinion of the offseason and the state of the team before we look ahead to the start of the season: The problem with the Twins is the owners, and their unsettled winter only made things worse. The bullpen sell off was not as great an issue for me as it was for others, as bullpens are a luxury for good teams. If the Twins are good in other areas this season, then we can grouse about the lack of arms to close out games. Of course, if the Twins ARE good this year, it will likely be on the backs of some players that came to the team at the deadline last year. And that goes to my final point: the Twins would be widely viewed as an up and coming break out candidate, thanks to their young MLB talent and high minors prospects, if it weren't for the fact that they were in the postseason just a couple of years ago. 

I think the utter lack of expectations is going to be a gift for the Twins this year. Derek Shelton is coming to an organization that is older and more professional than the Pirates team he managed for the last few years. For all the lack of payroll, there are still anchors like Joe Ryan and Byron Buxton, and players that have a great pedigree on the cusp of breaking out, like Brooks Lee, Matt Wallner, Royce Lewis and Luke Keaschall. There are top prospects in the rotation, like newly acquired Taj Bradley and Mick Abel. When things start to derail, as they always do, there are plenty of players that project to be more than just warm bodies that will take roster spots. 

James Outman made the team after a good spring and a lack of player options, but Alan Roden was better, but was sent to St. Paul because he still had an option. He'll be up sooner or later. Emmanuel Rodriguez, Gabriel Gonzalez and Walker Jenkins will also find their way into the lineup this season as well, and each time one of those guys appear, it will be exciting. 

Baseball is at it's best when it is quirky, and you get to know the personalities of the players involved. Over the last couple of years, the sheer star power and corporate polish of Carlos Correa were dominant elements of the public facing side of the team. Byron Buxton is the shining star of the team, and he has a pretty decent sense of humor. I'm looking forward to seeing more from the players on the roster. I mean, Brooks Lee's got to be at least a little bit goofy, right? He looks too much like Nick Punto not to be. 

If we can get out of our own way for a bit, if we can look past our anger and frustration about the way the Pohlads have run the team, from their botched sale and front office mismanagement, and instead appreciate the players, the coaches, and importantly, the people working hard in the stadium to make the game experience as enjoyable as they can, this can be a fun team. I think they will be looser than the past couple of years have seen, and that might even help them overcome their projections. 

I'm looking forward to the season, like I do every year, even after offseasons when, once again, I swear off the organization. This season is going to be weightless, and I intend to enjoy it. 

Avoiding the annual pessimism trap

Every year during Spring Training, we look ahead to next season, and we get a full buffet of sites and notoriously smart people discussing their projections. Projections in baseball have a reputation for being more reliable, because statistics are so good, monitoring is so thorough, and there are so few variables during individual at bats. The Twins have failed to match their projections for the last couple of years, and now, projections and sentiment are very down on the Twins. 

I understand how sentiment has come to the spot it is in. I've made it clear that I think the poor business skills of the Pohlads has led the offseason not proceeding the way anyone wanted it to. That said, given the current roster, and despite a pretty awful spring, I think the Twins and fans do have reason to hope in 2026. I say this knowing, again, that the more hope we have, the swifter the kick to the nuts comes from Fate. 

Functionally, how is the Twins team different in 2026 from the one in 2025? Obviously, the bullpen was obliterated. Carlos Correa isn't there, and Pablo Lopez will miss the season. "Carlos Correa isn't there" is a statement you could have said at many points during the last couple of years as well. He was either hurt or a shadow of himself. Pablo Lopez also missed a great deal of the past couple of seasons. This year, the Twins will be able to plan around it. A good bullpen is a luxury that good teams have. If we are talking about the bullpen this season, that is a reflection on how well things are going elsewhere. 

The Twins problem last year was an inability to score runs. They couldn't put together good at bats consecutively. This is a problem known as poor sequencing, and most statisticians will tell you that this is something that will work itself out with enough samples. It hasn't for most of the last decade. The Twins are significantly worse at the plate in late and close situations, or with runners in scoring position. I'm all for dingers, and I don't mind the three true outcome players, however the Twins haven't been getting two of the outcomes, and striking out too often when it matters. One way to ward that scenario off is adding more complete hitters to the lineup.

And they did. The Twins will have Josh Bell and Victor Caratini taking regular at bats, and we should see a full season of Luke Keaschall and Austin Martin. The Twins have been boring on offense, and Jhoan Duran's entrance was even more exciting, because it meant the Twins actually scored some runs in that game. 

There is also the prospect of full seasons of Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner and Brooks Lee, all former top prospects who have seen their shine come off. Part of it is injuries, part of it is pitchers adapting to their abilities. All three still have natural talents, and none are older than 28 - the year that Michael Cuddyer finally broke out. With the pedigree those three have, and a chance to make their mark, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss all three players. The projections have always overestimated their production. Why can't they, for once, underestimate it?

And if they don't, Walker Jenkins, Emmannuel Rodriguez, Gabriel Gonzalez, Kaelen Culpepper and Alan Roden are waiting in the wings. 

Those are all hopeful thoughts that I don't believe are outlandish. But let's talk about a couple things that are firmer truths. First, the rotation, even without Pablo Lopez is just fine. Joe Ryan is good. Bailey Ober is healthy, and before last year, you could say that Ober and Ryan were on par. If Ober is healthy, in the AL Central he is a good #2 pitcher. I'm not sure what else Simeon Woods-Richardson needs to do to get taken off the wishy-washy is he/is he not in the rotation. Lopez getting hurt seemed to have done it this year, however two years pitching to an ERA just a skosh above 4.00 is a perfectly reliable mid to back of the rotation pitcher. He has been good for over 20 starts a year for the last two years. Just pencil him in.

The Twins have a bumper crop of pitching prospects. Mick Abel, Andrew Morris, Connor Prielipp and Kendry Rojas are the top names that won't make the roster. Taj Bradley and Zebby Matthews will make the roster. Their numbers haven't been as good as SWRs, but their metrics are better than the actual numbers. That's not a bad rotation. It's at least middle of the pack for Twins rotations this century.

Most importantly, the Twins play in the AL Central. The Tigers are the top dog in the division, but the rest of the division is surmountable. That means that if things go a bit awry for the Tigers, it could be anyone. Even the Twins, with their modest roster.

If all those things come together, then we will be able to fret over the bullpen.  It's not crazy to think that they could. 

Business is hard.

 Last week, I noted that there was probably one more shoe to drop. Unfortunately, that shoe was actually rushing towards us to kick Twins fans collectively right in the gut. First, Pablo Lopez went down with a UCL injury, because of course he did, but now Joe Ryan is also getting checked out for a back issue that will probably be serious because: Curse. 

There is also something else going on here, and it's something that so many Twins fans have been saying for such a long time: The Pohlads. 

It's not entirely what you think, though. The ongoing conversation is that Pohlads are miserly, unwilling to pay the necessary salaries to field a competitive baseball team and generally hostile to the Twins. I am hear to offer a different opinion. The Pohlads don't understand baseball and are bad at the business therein. 

Just a couple highlights before our recent circumstances. The Twins signed the last small (relative) TV deal before the Dodgers signed a huge deal, and other teams had a blueprint for making money from local TV. The Twins were at least able to secure a new stadium, and had a good season before all of their stars got injured, and took very few actions to replenish the roster and were bad for most of the 2010s. Then, again when TV deals were coming due and the team ramped up to position themselves as an attractive piece of media, only to see the entire regional sports carrier market collapse. Instead of then pivoting, they throttled their payroll and destroyed fan loyalty, which was the only reliable source of income they could count on.

Now, obviously bad luck played a role in those various disasters, but it is important to acknowledge that bad decisions led the team to be vulnerable when there were headwinds. Their TV situation over the past 25 years has been the number one overarching factor in keeping the Twins as a small market team, as the Pohlads saw the organization as a traditional business, rather than the investment smarter owners see it as. Payroll goes up only as profits due, so with a fixed television income below what other markets were offering, the Twins were always going to be handicapped. 

Now, according to the comments that Tom Pohlad has made (and maybe this is thanks to the new investors in the organization), he seems to appreciate that the way to drive up interest is by winning, and that winning takes some monetary investment. He also, quite rightly, sees the Twins as a viable contender in the AL Central. If your team has a pulse, you are a contender in the AL Central. I'm on board there too. 

Now here's the problem. A fundamental difference in the world of business and the world of sports is that your operational "year" starts at the trade deadline, with an opportunity to reset at the end of the season. January 1st is just a holiday, and not an opportunity to make changes to your front office or direction of the organization. If they wanted to reevaluate at the beginning of the offseason, that would have been fine, they could have been aggressive and rounded out the current roster. They would have been justified in continuing the tear down and creating a super-farm. 

But they didn't. The business minded Pohlads got their new investors, and after the new year shook the organization up. Unfortunately, this is like Target firing the store manager during Christmas season. The desire to be more aggressive came too late to do anything. The Twins held the Falvey led organization from continuing their aggressive reset for the future. Now, Lopez and maybe Ryan will not be able to provide any return for the Twins, either on the field or as a trade option. This wouldn't have been a problem if the Pohlads knew what they were doing, and just made their decision a couple of months earlier.

But they don't. Ownership incompetence is its own curse. 

One more shoe to drop

 It seems as though everyone is predicting the Twins to make one more move soon. There isn't much left on the free agency market, though I could foresee the team adding Michael Kopech (and Liam Hendriks, apparently) on a deal to work out of the back of their bullpen. More likely, the Twins are going to shake things up with a trade. How big a trade remains to be seen. I, for one, think there is a big trade coming, and I don't think it is one that many people see coming. 

There is no shortage of people that are looking at the Twins roster, realizing that there are extra left handed corner outfielders, and a dearth of qualified bullpen arms. Both of those situations are likely to be addressed in whatever deal comes down in the next couple of weeks. 

The big question early in the offseason surrounded outfielder Trevor Larnach. Why was he tendered a contract for this cash strapped organization, especially on a team with no shortage of similarly skilled players? Naturally, Larnach is the name that most fans expect to be dealt.

Hear me out, though. If people outside the front office questioned whether Larnach was even worth being tendered a contract, but the Twins chose to tender him anyway, that suggests they value him more highly than the market likely does. If that’s the case, it seems unlikely another team would suddenly step in and value Larnach more than Minnesota does. Tendering him despite those doubts doesn’t exactly position the Twins to maximize a return on investment in a trade. For that reason, Larnach probably isn’t as firmly on the trade block as some assume.

If the team does make a deal, they will need to find an asset that another team will value, that the Twins would be able to backfill internally. With Larnach, he is one year of depth until Walker Jenkins joins the team full time, which also allows the team to move on from a different player with more years of control, potentially garner a better return package. 

That leaves three prominent possibilities: Matt Wallner, Alan Roden and Austin Martin. Wallner may command the greatest return, but the Twins may be loathe to trade away another native Minnesotan after the Louis Varland debacle, and the team labored with a poor on base percentage last year, making Austin Martin more valuable.

The Twins have a more significant move still awaiting us this spring. Don't be surprised if it' Alan Roden on the move again.

What in the actual f***

 As a society generally, and in Minnesota specifically, we have developed this sort of, I don't know if it's resilience, but perhaps maybe it is persistence? We keep getting our kids to the bus stop in the morning, going to work, letting the dog out, all that stuff, but now we do it with this thought noodling around in the back of our mind: "What in the actual fuck is going on right now? 

In that regard, the Twins are a microcosm of Minnesota. A lower consequence version, certainly, and also something that makes it a bit harder to view them as the escape I usually want them to be. The parallels are too on the nose. Right now, the main headline is about stories to watch as Spring Training gets underway. Of course, the first couple of spots are dedicated to the rotation and the bullpen, and there is later a discussion about the prospects and the corner outfielders. Generic Spring Training stuff. 

And then the next article notes that the president of the team, who was hired to be GM 9 years ago, abruptly left the team with 2 weeks left until Spring Training starts. What in the actual fuck is going on right now? 

One of the 5 things that we are watching is whether or not the Twins will be making a move in the final weeks of the offseason, even as the players are in camp for Spring Training. the Twins have a history of doing just that, after all. "But the old guy is gone!" you and I shriek into the void. How does past history have anything to do with right now, now that everything has changed?

And something has definitely changed, to the best of our outside knowledge. Based on comments from Tom Pohlad, Derek Falvey and some writers more in touch with the organization, it appears as though Falvey and Pohlad had different visions for what the Twins would be in the near future, and how to run the organization. Part of the problem was the Falvey was in charge of the baseball AND the business, and may have been slightly overmatched.

On the baseball side, he was confronted with a mandated payroll reduction for two consecutive years, which cratered fan interest, which obliterated the business side of the operation. However, confronted with those realities, Falvey and the organization pivoted to the best way to be competitive on a budget: Prospects. I don't believe Falvey nor other members of the organization thought that the team last year was in need of a tear down, but they also saw it as the most realistic way to achieve long term success. Agree or not, it was a plan.

Then, there was a shuffle at the top, and Tom Pohlad, a business minded member of the Pohlad family, took over. With new investors, and a struggling bottom line, he wanted to show that the team would be profitable, and he wanted that right now. 

Rightfully, he saw that the path to success was through victory. Incorrectly, he has continued to insist that we shouldn't fixate on the payroll. Unfortunately, that seems to be because there just aren't that many people left to sign. Maybe Falvey was pushed out the door because he wasn't active enough in free agency, because the Twins have apparently been interested in Freddy Peralta and Framber Valdez since Falvey was escorted out the door. 

Maybe Falvey wanted out because those expectations, of taking a big swing (while keeping salary modest) and winning right away is such an abrupt change from what they had geared up for. Either way, there was a difference in strategy. Falvey wants long term team success. Pohlad wants immediate success. It was far too deep into the offseason to make the change, however, and now the Twins are an even greater mess than they were before. 

The top job in this cycle

 There were a whopping 10 NFL head coaching vacancies this year, and while I don't want to say too much (the Raiders and Cardinals are still looking and I have my fingers crossed!) I do think it is interesting looking at who ended up where. John Harbaugh went to New York, Kevin Stefanski went to Atlanta, and perhaps most curiously, at least in my book, Robert Saleh left San Francisco to go to the Titans. 

I'd heard more than one person, certainly someone more in tune with football than me, say that the Titans' job was the top opening out there. The logic made sense. They had last year's number 1 pick Cam Ward ready to make a jump next season, there were limited payroll obligations, especially as their quarterback is not on a typical "quarterback" salary, and the organization, frankly, doesn't have the long term dysfunction some of the other openings have had.

If the Titans were the best landing spot, why didn't the two top names on the market end up there? Each coach had a reason, and the Titans liked did as well. Harbaugh was the biggest name out there after leaving the Baltimore Ravens after a multi-decade, multi-Super Bowl career. After that success, and paying those dues, Harbaugh is significantly more likely to be capable of handling the bright lights of New York. The Giants are similar to Tennessee in that they have a young, talented quarterback to mold, but they are different in that they are not in Nashville. 

Stefanski likely had a different consideration. He came initially from Minnesota and went to the Browns, where he did the almost unthinkable - brought Cleveland to the postseason. Stefanski, as I noted, started in Minnesota, and now goes to the Falcons, where Kurt Cousins remains on the payroll. Maybe Cousins will be jettisoned this offseason, but also, maybe not. Cousins and Stefanski would start with a baseline of understanding that could get the ball rolling before Michael Penix takes the role back over. 

For their part, the Titans have ever only really had success when they have focused on rounding out their defense. Jeff Fisher brought them to the Super Bowl. Mike Vrabel made them relevant with Ryan Tannehill leading the way. Stefanski has an offensive background, while Harbaugh, as noted, was not likely interested in starting at ground level in Nashville. Robert Saleh is renowned for his expertise on the defensive side of the ball. Saleh fits the mold of "good Tennessee Titans head coach."

Saleh also has "head coach" on his prior resume. It speaks to his abilities as a defensive coordinator that after coaching the Jets, he was able to secure another head coaching role. It's been proven time and again that the second run for head coaches in all sports are better in their second spot. Saleh has experience leading an entire roster, and at building out talented defenses, even if those defenses are fraught with injuries, as the one in San Francisco was.

The Titans did have the top job on the market this cycle, and they got exactly the coach they wanted. 

Are the White Sox close?

 If you have been like me and needed to bury your head in the sand for just a couple of goddamned minutes, you have turned back to the Twins offseason. It's not uplifting, but it's also not life or death. One thing that hasn't changed in these miserable times in Minneapolis is that online Twins Territory is very down on their chances. A refrain I've heard is "forget trying to win the division, they need to worry about staying ahead of the White Sox".

I'm not sure how serious it was when it was said, but frankly, it's a little bit ludicrous. The White Sox aren't necessarily the bottom feeders they were two years ago, but in 2026, they still aren't very good. Importantly, they don't look anywhere near the Twins.

The White Sox do have some players to build around, certainly. Colson Montgomery and Kyle Teel stand out as the best positional carryovers, with Seth Smith likely to start the season as their top starter. I would be remiss if I didn't also note their splash signing of Japanese slugger Muneteka Murakami. 

Byron Buxton was worth more wins by himself than Montgomery and Teel combined. Neither played a full season, but even prorated, well, the numbers look worse for Buxton. And speaking of prorated, Luke Keaschall and Austin Martin were better than Teel by a WAR metric. Seth Smith would start perhaps third or 4th in the Twins rotation, and given, again, the prorated WAR, might end up as the 6th man in the rotation. The only starter he was easily better than was Bailey Ober, and Ober has a good history.

Yes, the Twins bullpen isn't very good. But if the metric we are working off is "are the White Sox any better," then you can say, sure, the White Sox have Grant Taylor, who is better than anyone the Twins have to offer, but otherwise, they are similar groups. The Twins should see fewer innings out of their pen, though, which should go a long way.

Both teams expect to see help from their prospect pool. The Twins happened to have the 2nd rated farm in baseball mid-season last year, while the White Sox sat at 17th. There is another ranking coming out soon, and the Twins will move down because Keaschall graduated off the list. Next year, top ten prospect Walker Jenkins will be off the list too, with Emmanuel Rodriguez potentially following him. 

I'm not comparing the Twins to the top of the division. I am saying they are significantly better than the White Sox.