With the extraordinarily warm weather we are having in Minnesota where the grass is still green, the water in the lakes is still liquid and Thanksgiving is just around the corner it is hard to believe we are well into the fall/winter sports season. The Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Timberwolves all doing better than expected, pushing the Minnesota Twins off sports fans radar screens.
That is in spite of the fact that the Twins have announced that MLB will produce and distribute Twins games in 2025 but no specifics pertaining to cost were provided, the Pohlad family announced their intent to explore a sale of the Minnesota Twins, the team fired all three hitting coaches as well as its assistant bench coach, GM Thad Levine decided to pursue other interests and was replaced by Jeremy Zoll, Alex Kirilloff announced he was retiring at the age of 26, the team announced an executive leadership succession plan, to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025 whereas club President & CEO Dave St. Peter will transition to the role of Strategic Advisor; and President, Baseball Operations Derek Falvey will be elevated to President, Baseball & Business Operations. My favorite announcement so far though is the Twins also announcing in a very low-key manner a new (and I think complicated) ticket plan that includes the sale of MYTWINS Memberships and Reward Plans ranging from $600 to $7500. Just another method of of reaching into Twins fans pockets.
All of this with the Twins season ending less than a month ago and the MLB Winter Meetings (December 8-12) in Dallas still two weeks off. We have been very busy here at the home of Twinstrivia.com as we sold our home in Plymouth, MN in mid-October and are preparing to move to Corcoran, MN around Thanksgiving. When you live some place for 38+ years you tend to accumulate way too much stuff including in my case Twins memorabilia and other stuff. I first thought about skipping a Twins Turkey of the Year award this year but that just wouldn’t fair when the Minnesota Twins had an epic collapse that saw them drop from second place all the way to fourth. A 9-18 September had the Twins players calling their travel agents and making new travel plans that included more golf and no baseball. A season like the Twins just had in 2024 requires that a Twins Turkey of the Year winner be named yet again.
Let’s look at the Twins turkeys that were left in the pen, there were a rafter of them that didn’t make the finals and some of them will be listed here in no particular order. There are probably numerous other Twins turkeys I could have put on this list but it would take too long.
Free agent outfielder Manuel Margot hit .238, played mediocre outfield and had a -0.4 WAR. But Margot left his mark in Twins/MLB history when he broke an MLB record by going 0-for-30 as a pinch-hitter this season. I guess $10 million doesn’t have the return it once did, luckily the Tampa Bay Rays paid most of that including his $2 million buyout.
Royce Lewis was expected to do big things for Minnesota at third base but he hit the IL almost from the get-go with a quad strain that cost him 71 games and then an abductor strain that cost him 24 more games. Foolishly he made a comment that he didn’t do those “slump things” and next thing you know he was in a slump both with his bat and his glove at third base. The super-star in waiting has a lot to prove to Twins fans.
Louie Varland who was handed a spot in the starting rotation but instead put up a -1.4 WAR with an 0-6 record in 7 starts with a 7.61 ERA.
Max Kepler‘s name showed up on the IL twice and he seemed to be just a shell of his old self and has probably played his last game in a Twins uni. I like Max a lot but it just seemed to me like he had no interest in playing baseball in 2024, maybe he was hurt more than he said or his mind was some where else.
Edouard Julien was a huge disappointment, a sophomore slump or something but he had a terrible year hitting under .200 with 102 strikeouts in 266 at bats. He has a lot to prove in 2025 if he wants to call Target Field home.
Third base coach Tommy Watkins had a bad season navigating runners around the bases towards home plate. I thought he deserved to be let go just the the hitting coaches were. But like in the business world it is not always about what you know, many times it is about who you know.
No Twins turkey list is complete without including manager Rocco Baldelli who managed a team that was almost guaranteed to make the playoffs but yet found a way to crash and burn and finish in fourth place in the American League Central Division. The way he managed his bullpen and starters was questionable and his numerous line-ups and various batting orders forced the players to check the line-up daily to see if they were playing and when they would be hitting. There is something to be said for consistency and playing your best players the majority of the time versus management by analytics which seems to be the Minnesota Twins preference. I believe that the Twins have proven over the few years that the constant resting of players and numerous position changes is not a recipe for success. That said, let’s take a look at the headliners in today’s program.
The second runner-up this year is Twins President and CEO Dave St. Peter. The Teflon man has held the title of President for 22 years and has been with the organization for 35 years. Recently the Twins announced that he would be transitioning to an advisor role in the near future. I don’t think there is any President/CEO of and professional sports organization that has been as accessible to fans as Dave St. Peter has been over the years. He may not have agreed with you but he usually listened and took the time to respond and if he didn’t agree he would tell you he appreciated your loyalty and your passion for Twins baseball. But over the years it seems like St. Peter has become more aloof and less prone to just talk baseball with the average fan and he like the rest of the organization has become far more secretive. This all began when Terry Ryan was let go and the Derek Falvey/Thad Levine regime took over in 2019. The front office staff has grown from 30 to 40 people to several hundred in about five years, has Twins baseball improved because of it? Or is it still the same and costs the fans more to watch their team? Sometimes you can be in a job too long, you become too comfortable, set in your ways and you become less willing to listen to new ideas. Dave St. Peter was a good leader for a long time but it is time for him to move on. I think his role in the whole Twins TV fiasco was a very bad decision and will haunt the Twins for years to come because the Twins lost fans over this that they will not get back, at least in the short term. Bottom line, the issue I have with Dave St. Peter is that he was not a believer in President Harry Truman’s no-nonsense approach to decision-making. The sign “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk reflected his belief that he was ultimately responsible for the actions of his administration. St. Peter never stood up and said, this is my responsibility.
The runner-up this year is the dynamic duo of Derek Falvey and Thad Levine. Levine has moved on but he earned the right to be included here for his work this past season and will get it in absentia. Falvey and Levine either didn’t do their homework when they made trades or they had an enormous amount of bad luck because many of the pitchers that they traded for came up with injuries that kept them out of action for long periods of time and in some cases the player never pitched for the Twins at all. The Twins came off a very good season in 2023 and needed some help in the bullpen and other spots and Falvey and Levine did not fill these holes. These gents are paid big bucks and have a staff of hundreds to find creative ways to solve these issues, they simply did not get the job done. At the All-Star break they did nothing to help the team in the push to make the playoffs, they went with “when we get our guys healthy we will be better off than acquiring help”. This is strange coming from Falvey when I heard him say that you always need to make moves at the break and after the season to help your team either by acquiring more players that help you now or by trading players for future help down the line if you are rebuilding. In this case, the message from the front office was we will stay where we are because we are confident in our team, that was a huge mistake and the team dropped out of the playoffs and finished fourth in a five team division. Then there is their fixation for analytics. Believe me, I am fine with analytics, it has it place and its time. But there is also room for decisions to be made on the fly, gut feel, call it what you want but you still have to keep in mind that baseball is played on the field by humans not by computers. I think that Mr. Falvey and Mr. Levine forgot that and not only are they not winning, but they are squeezing the fun out of the game. Oh and one more thing Mr. Falvey, don’t forget Truman’s saying of the “Buck Stops Here”. Saying “I screwed up is not a bad thing to say” we all know that no one is perfect.
That of course brings us to this years Twins Turkey of the Year winner. The winner as you might have guessed is the man that provides day-to-day leadership, oversight and strategic guidance for the Twins’ baseball and business operations and has since he, Joe Pohlad took over that role in November of 2022. Coming off the first ever playoff victory at Target Field in 2023 one could assume that Twins Territory was buzzing in a way it hadn’t since that park’s 2010 opening and that fans were ready for more. The perfect time for the Twins to take that next step. But what we got instead was, that they were “right-sizing” the payroll and mostly blamed it on the lack of Bally Sports North TV money. Money of course that they took later albeit a smaller amount only to have Bally pull the plug on the broadcasts from May through mid-August and leave most Twins fans with no games to watch unless they switched to streaming FUBO.
The Twins went 82-80 this past season, missing the playoffs after a late-season collapse, which only enhanced the disappointment. “Everybody owns this a little bit, and I played a role in that,” Joe Pohlad said. “We were at an all-time high last year, right? Fans were all in. Players were all in. We were headed down a great direction, and I had to make a very difficult business decision, but that’s just the reality of my world. I have a business to run, and it comes with tough decisions.”
On October 10, 2024, the Pohlad family announced that they are exploring selling the Twins after 40 years of ownership. The team is estimated to be worth between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. Why are the Twins on the market? We may never know the answer to that. Decisions like this are not made over night, the Pohlad clan must have been considering this for some time before going public. Is it because it was not making enough money? I doubt it, theses kinds of investments are long term and they will need a Brinks truck to rake in the haul from the sale of the team. Maybe the family is doing estate planning and some family members want their money now versus ownership in a baseball team that at times can bring you more grief then pleasure? Maybe the family has another purchase in mind that requires more funding than is currently available? There are only 30 MLB teams and they don’t go on the market often so they must have a good reason. That said, it seems to me that you would like to see your team playing at its best when it is on the market and and dropping payroll $30 million when you are talking a couple of billion dollars doesn’t make sense. Then again, maybe this is just another Pohlad ploy like they have pulled in the past to get something they want and the team is not going to be sold?
All that said, Joe Pohlad represents the family so he gets the glory when the team does well and he has to take crap when things go in the other direction. Joe Pohlad screwed up when they said they were cutting payroll due to TV revenue losses and made a bad situation worse. The Twins tanked in 2024 versus getting better and that is on ownership because they did not step up and spend the money the team needed to take the next step. I don’t know what the future holds for the Minnesota Twins but I can tell you this for sure, it will be an interesting off-season. Congratulations on your 2024 Twins Turkey of the Year award Joe Pohlad!
Previous Twins Turkey of Year award winners
2021 – Derek Falvey & Thad Levine
2018 – Third Baseman Miguel Sano
2017 – Derek Falvey & Thad Levine
2016 – The entire 2016 Minnesota Twins team
2013 – President Dave St. Peter
2010 – Third Baseman Brendan Harris (can’t seem to find this one)