The Twins are, once again, off to a miserable start. They have won one series, on the road against the White Sox, and lost every other one, including a 4 game set against the Royals. Everyone has played poorly, save perhaps for the starting pitching. They have barely hit, and even when the bullpen has struggled, it's truly only cost the team a couple of games. It was time to shake things up, and mercifully, over the weekend, the Twins did just that.
The Twins sent Jose Miranda down to St. Paul after a base running blunder against the Tigers on Saturday that stood out even on a team that has produced an unseemly number of problematic moments through the first couple of months of the year. It helped ease the decision to demote Miranda that Brooks Lee was ready to come off of the Injured List. Causation vs Correlation, but the Twins won the first game after the swap.
The Twins have been expressly terrible since about mid-August last year. One can complain about injuries, but then you must also acknowledge that this season, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton have played every game, they have had decent starting pitching, even with Pablo Lopez picking up a knock. The malaise has gone on long enough that it can't be written off to sample sizes. There is something deeply wrong with the team.
It goes beyond the product on the field. At the end of the 2023 season, it was clear that the ownership group saw the writing on the wall. They weren't going t get a significant TV deal, despite all the preparation they had done to set themselves up for such an arrangement. They then cut salary, and saw their TV situation get more and more tenuous, including issues with Comcast taking the team off the air for many fans through much of the season.
The real problem was that they announced that they were cutting the salary, and really disrupted the momentum the team had built with their first post season win in more than a decade. Even when the team played well last year attendance was down. Then, the bottom fell out and attendance is even worse this year.
So the on field product has been a mess, and after 15 games of this season, the team has made the first move that was in direct response to poor performance. The cyclical nation of baseball says that the Twins will eventually shake out of their funk, and a third base upgrade will help get us there a little sooner, I imagine. Will it bring fans back? Will it get people to watch? Will the season be worthwhile?
The biggest question of all is: will the Pohlads still find a buyer? The Twins are not a draw right now, and after last season, may not be for a while. If the team can't be marketed to fans, can it be marketed to investors? There appears to be no incoming TV revenue, and the stadium is locked in for another decade, and those are the two biggest revenue generators around. There is always value for buying into the exclusive club of team owners, but perhaps not at the number the Pohlads were hoping for.
It seems a vicious cycle. The Twins don't get enough support from ownership, and interest wanes. As interest wanes, the revenue for ownership also decreases, and the support and interest keep feeding back. There was a blip ahead of the team being placed for sale that the owners were convinced to invest, and the on field product and the fan investment increased, but then the regional sports network system collapsed, and so too did the Pohlads commitment, followed swiftly by fan interest. Sometimes the cycle we are stuck in is actually a downward spiral.
But hey, maybe sending Jose Miranda to St. Paul will pull the team out of it.
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