The title and the image here are AI generated. I wrote a piece about my thoughts on the Twins and then I gave an out line to AI to write a similar article and I am publishing both of them here and I am very curious what your thoughts are on the two articles, which would you prefer to read and why. So if you have a few minutes to spare please leave me a comment or two. The first article is the one I wrote, the second is the AI version.
Article 1
After 83 games the Minnesota Twins find themselves with a 40-43 record and in third place in the American League Central division trailing the league leading Detroit Tigers by 11.5 games and the second place Cleveland Guardians by one game and just one game ahead of the fourth place Kansas City Royals. There are four teams in the AL East and four teams in the AL West that have more wins than Minnesota does. Yet, the Twins and all the local Twins scribes seem to think the Twins are still in the running for a play-off spot.
Let’s get real folks, the 2025 Twins team has about as much of a chance of playing in post season as the Chicago White Sox and the Colorado Rockies do. The trade deadline is coming up and it will be interesting to see if Twins President Derek Falvey makes any moves. When he first started working for the Twins he stated that regardless of a teams standing at the deadline, moves should be made to improve the team and you do this by either being a buyer or a seller but you have nothing to gain by standing pat.
The 2025 Twins team does find itself in a unique situation in the fact that the Pohlad family that owns the team announced in October 2024 that the team is for sale putting the team between a rock and hard spot. Ownership doesn’t want to spend money on a team they want to sell not do they want to burden future buyers with long term deals.
Twins attendance this season is down almost 6% from last season and 2024 attendance was a low-water mark for the Twins at Target Field with the exception of 2020 when COVID kept fans from attending MLB games and 2021 when attendance was limited by MLB and ratcheted up slowly as the year progressed. July is almost here and that means the NFL teams including the Minnesota Vikings are getting ready to report to camps and start getting ready for their 2025 season. Once the Vikings start, interest in the Twins wanes, particularly when the team is playing poorly.
The 2025 Twins are a strange bunch. They started the season with four straight losses and it took them 26 games before they notched their tenth win of the season. Then in early May they go on a 13 game winning streak and go 18-8 in the month of May. June rolls around and with 2 games left in the month to play, they are 9-17.
As I said earlier, it is a strange team and you don’t know from day-to-day what you will see when you watch them play. So far in 2025 they have been out-scored 367 to 356. They had top notch pitching in May and just the opposite in June. The team has found itself seven games over .500 and eight games under .500. It has 21 come from behind wins and 18 blown leads. They have allowed 10 or more runs on seven occasions and scored 10 or more runs the same number of times.
The 2025 Twins payroll is about $149 million which put them about the middle of the MLB pack according to Spotrac. That said, only two teams with higher payroll, the Atlanta Braves with a payroll of just under $220 million and the Baltimore Orioles at $185.5 million have fewer wins than Minnesota.
The team has only four players making $10 million or more, Carlos Correa at $36 million, Pablo Lopez at $21.5 million, Byron Buxton at $15 million and Christian Vazquez at $10 million. These four players make over 55% of the Twins 26 man payroll (plus the five players on the IL). With the top four players $82.5 million, that leaves the remaining 27 players to share about $67,578,459. Spotrac shows 13 players making under $1million. With Correa and Vazquez playing sub par baseball, Lopez on the IL for most of the rest of the year things do not look like this team is playoff bound.
Manager Rocco Baldelli‘s current contract with the Minnesota Twins is a 3-year, $30 million deal signed in December 2022, according to Baseball Prospectus. The contract covers the 2023-2025 seasons. Some time this season, the Twins brain trust picked up their 2026 club option for Baldelli, according to Yahoo Sports.
There is something seriously wrong with this team and I certainly don’t know what that is, but, I feel confident in saying that Rocco Baldelli is not the right manager for this team at the present time. It makes no difference if it is Rocco’s fault or not, the bottom line is this team is not winning and history has shown us that when this happens you need to get a new spoon to stir the pot. Every team gets injuries and they fight on but how can you explain an entire team short of Byron Buxton and Joe Ryan playing so poorly? I have followed the Twins through thick or thin since 1961 and I will probably continue being a Twins fan until I pass on, but it sure would be more fun watching a team and an organization that wants to win versus just fielding a team that is plays .500 or less baseball. Believe me when I tell you that the 2025 Twins are not a fun baseball team to watch. I will continue to watch the Twins but whenever they play bad baseball (all too often these days) I am glad that the TV remote is close at hand.
