Welcome to our second decade of Twins Turkey of the year awards. I sure hope you are all enjoying the snow that we were blessed with over the last few days as you made your way to enjoy Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Let’s get right down to business of naming this years Twins Turkey of the Year.

Our fourth and final runner-up is RHP Kohl Stewart. Stewart makes this list because the Twins had a pretty good season in 2019 and the pickings for the Twins Turkey of the Year were not as plentiful as they have been in the past. Stewart earns his spot for his entire body of work in a Twins uniform which amounted to just 17 games and 62 inning pitched. Stewart was the Twins first round pick (fourth overall) in 2013 and made his big league debut in 2018. To be honest it wasn’t Stewart’s fault the Twins chose him that high when players like Aaron Judge, Tim Anderson, Sean Manaea, Hunter Renfroe, Michael Lorenzen, Marco Gonzales and a slew of other big leaguers were chosen in the first round after Stewart. But as Wayne Hattaway used to say, we don’t blame you Kohl, we blame the scout that signed you. Stewart became a free agent after the season ended.

We have to give the third runner-up spot to relief pitcher Sam Dyson who was acquired from the San Francisco Giants on July 31 for minor league players Prelander Berroa, Kai-Wei Teng and Jaylin Davis. Dyson was expected to play a key part in the Twins bullpen during the second half of the season and any post season play but as it turned out he appeared in just two games for Minnesota before going on the IL and then appeared in ten games before being shut down for the season with arm problems. Did the Twins get taken by the San Francisco Giants or did Sam Dyson not tell the Giants he was hurt prior to the trade? We might never know the answer to that one. UPDATE on November 26 – Numerous sites including theathletic.com are reporting that free agent pitcher Sam Dyson has been accused of domestic violence and is being investigated by Major League Baseball.

The second runner-up this year is Michael Pineda. Pineda earns this spot for his 60-game suspension after he tested positive for Hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic that is outlawed under Major League Baseball’s Drug and Prevention Program. Although Pineda pitched well when he pitched, starting 26 games, there is no excuse for this suspension. MLB players have all the tools they need to avoid finding themselves in this situation. The bottom line here is that the Twins paid Pineda $2 million in 2018 to rehab from TJ surgery and $8 million (minus about $1.086 million lost due to suspension) to pitch in 2019 and he let the team down. Two trips to the IL missing 20 more games didn’t help his cause any either.

Byron Buxton is this years runner-up Twins Turkey of the year. Buxton, the Minnesota Twins first round pick in 2012 (second overall) debuted in the big leagues on June 14, 2015 at the age of 21. Buxton has now been in the big leagues for all or parts of five seasons and has appeared in a total of 393 games, just 48.6% of the games he could have played in. With his three trips to the Injured List this season in which he missed 42 games Buxton has now seen his name on the Twins IL seven times while playing in just a total of 393 games. The only Twins players that have appeared on the IL more frequently since 1982 are Joe Mauer with 10 IL trips (1,858 games played) and Nick Punto with 9 IL trips (747 games played). Buxton might be a good player but he doesn’t help the Twins one bit when he is not on the field. As a well known football coach here in Minnesota used to say, ability is nice but durability is just as important. Buxton has to learn how to play the game in a fashion that allows him to play and not spend all his time in rehab.

Now finally we are off to see the Grand Turkey. To help propel the Minnesota Twins into the 2018 season with a killer roster and sky-high expectations, the team and their brand new marketing company launched a new look and feel and fully-integrated campaign titled, “This Is How We Baseball.” The campaign turned out to be a total joke and laughingstock of baseball as the Twins played horribly, finishing with a 78-84 record and firing their manager Paul Molitor who had just been named as Manager of the Year just a year earlier.

To make sure that didn’t happen again the Twins went into the 2019 season with no marketing campaign to speak of other than to showcase their June 14-16 games against the Kansas City Royals when they would retire Joe Mauer’s number 7 after Joe had announced his retirement from baseball after the 2018 season. But sometimes lady luck shines on you even if you have your umbrella overhead and the 2019 Minnesota Twins got off to a fast start and started hitting home runs at a record pace. The team was hitting so many home runs that all of a sudden the players started called them “Bombas”. I am not positive, but I think that Eddie Rosario might have come up with the nickname but as the season progressed the Twins jumped on the nickname and soon you were seeing Bomba SZN and Bomba Squad shirts on the Minnesota Twins web site. As the home run race tightened the Twins brought out a Bomba Counter at Target Field. When all was said and done the Twins did set a new MLB home run record with 307, they won the division and played the New York Yankees in the ALCS and their balloon burst when they were swept by those damn Yankees once again in three games.

The Twins play on the field in 2019 was historic but as the off-season work started for 2020 and Thanksgiving drew near, the Twins front office organization kicked into high gear. On November 6 the Twins announced that “Twins Announce 2020 Spring Training Promotional Dates; Season and Group Tickets on Sale Now”. I saw the Press Release and saw no mention of a ticket price increase for Spring Training games but low-and-behold that very same day the StarTrib publishes a story “Twins add $1 to price of ‘vast majority’ of spring training tickets”. It goes on to say:

An increase of $1 now puts home-plate-view tickets at Hammond Stadium at $28, with diamond box now $29, first and third base terraces $30, home plate box $31 and dugout box $46.

Team spokesman Matt Hodson said the increases cover “the vast majority of actual seats.”

Grandstand seats will remain unchanged at $9. Also priced the same as 2019 are lawn seating ($12 and $14) and drink rail seats (ranging from $15 to $25).

Historically the Twins don’t let the grass grow for long under their feet as far as raising ticket prices after most winning seasons but raising Spring Training ticket prices which are already too high for watching minor leaguers play ball in the spring seems a little over the top.

So I decided to check out the Twins 2020 Full Season ticket prices as posted on their site, assuming that the Full Season ticket package is the cheapest Twins ticket price you can get. Here is what I found.

The Twins have 34 different full season ticket categories you can buy ranging from a low of $1,053 for a Field View ticket to a high of $26,406 for a Thomson Reuters Champions Club A ticket.

Comparing the Twins 2020 season ticket prices to 2019 I found that the Twins have raised their ticket prices in 14 categories, lowered them in 4 categories, and left them unchanged in 16 categories.

The biggest increases on a percentage basis for a season ticket are 14.29% for Left Field Bleacher tickets which jumped from $21 per game to $24 per game and Treasure Island Cove tickets which jumped 12.5% from $24 to $27 per game. It seems the Twins are figuring that their fans will want a chance to catch one of the many home runs that they hope the Twins hit in the upcoming season. If you are one of this lucky people that have Champion Club seats that set you back from $17,496 to $26,406 a ticket, the Twins want you to dig a bit deeper in your pocket and hope that the $10 per game increase won’t bother you that much. The biggest decrease was a 8.16% decrease in ticket price for Home Plate Box High tickets dropping the price from $49 to $45 per game.

Bottom line, if you bought one season ticket in each of the 34 categories, it would set you back a total of $167,265 which comes out to an increase of 2.1% over last season.

Yes, the Twins have raised their ticket prices for 2020 and yes they will tell you it costs money to win. According to Statista.com

the estimated revenue from regular season ticketing as percentage of total revenue of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 2009 to 2017 has dropped from 38.2% to 28.84 in 2017 and continues to drop. Television and media rights constitute another important stream of revenue. In November 2018, the league and Fox Sports announced an extension of their national television rights agreement. This deal was worth 5.1 billion U.S. dollars and extends the relationship through the 2028 season.

The Minnesota Twins and their greedy ownership continue to squeeze every dollar they can out of Twins fans. If the Twins are going to keep raising their ticket prices every time they have a winning team, it also would seem fair that they should lower their ticket prices when they field a losing team. The buck always stops at the top and in this case it stops on the desk of Minnesota Twins President and CEO Dave St. Peter who becomes our first two-time winner of the Twins Turkey of the Year. Dave St. Peter was named the president of the Minnesota Twins on November 26, 2002 and that is a long time to be president of a MLB baseball organization. The man has to know what he is doing to remain the president for so long and he has to be one heck of a politician to keep the people above him and the people below him happy.