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.