It’s time for Twins fans to vote with their wallets after an embarrassing season

The wake was Friday night at Target Field, and you could practically hear “Danny Boy” verse for verse above those silent Minnesota hitters and whistling pitchers, writes Brian Murphy.

As for faces, it was 2:15 a.m. outside the Irish pub after the beer and whiskey had dried up and the mourners had headed to an afterparty. Pour one out for the stifling 2024 Twins, who meekly bowed out of contention with a characteristic 7-2 playoff loss to the Baltimore Orioles.

A meltdown for the ages that portends a winter of discontent and soul-searching, if they can stand it.

“It was clearly a more than disappointing way to end what was and appeared to be a promising season,” said somber manager Rocco Baldelli. “This will bother me forever.”

Yeah, get in line.

It took the Twins just two hours to complete a historic collapse after the Detroit Tigers put them on the clock around 8 p.m. with their home wild card victory over the hapless White Sox. But never forget that their grave was dug last winter when ownership emptied a modest payroll and stripped the studs of all the goodwill they had earned in October.

“I’m just trying to right-size our company,” deaf Joe Pohlad said casually during spring training of cutting $30 million from a postseason roster and sorting in the free agent bin like an old maid. Deliberately disregarding your audience is no way to run a business, but hey, I’m not the one with diversified assets and billions in the bank.

The Pohlads betrayed their fiduciary duties as franchise stewards by letting their product fossilize and assuming their customers wouldn’t notice. They conveniently scapegoated Bally’s Sports and this summer’s legal fight that depressed revenues and banned broadcasts for a large group of loyal and perpetually cheated customers.

Worse yet, they failed to read the room and reward a desperate fan base that had fallen in love with the Twins again and restored the roar to Target Field last fall when the team won its first playoff game in 20 years and finally advanced after nine consecutive defeats. series. Cynical management in plain sight. What a waste.

All that energy and momentum turned to ashes when the Twins started the season 6-12. They awoke from their slumber and racked up enough wins through August 17 to peak at 70-53 and eventually build a 10 ½ game lead over Detroit in the wild-card race. Not quite the 1951 Giants and Bobby Thompson who rallied from a 13 ½ game deficit and defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers. Or the Red Sox stifling a 14-game advantage over the Yankees in 1978. But the meek Twins’ six-week collapse was profound enough to declare this season one of the most encompassing and embarrassing in franchise history.

“There’s an expression that everything happens for a reason; I don’t like that,” said Pablo Lopez, who suffered his 10th and final loss in a disappointing and inconsistent season for the ace. what you didn’t want to happen. »

Nothing can whitewash the way the Twins simply bled, and the boos that fell from the seats on a balmy early fall night might be the least of the club’s worries. It’s still a $14 beer every night at the ballpark, but fans are finally waking up to the sugar-coated spell they’ve suffered since Target Field opened its golden gates in 2010.

Attendance plunged this week during the Miami Series to barely 17,000 on Thursday night, when the Twins choked in the 13th inning and found themselves on life support. The autopsy should spare no one, from the owners’ room and reception to the manager’s office, including the clubhouse and the perpetually crowded training room. Accountability is not just a cliché of press conferences. By padlocking the safe, the Pohlads left no room for error for Executive Vice President and Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey and Senior Vice President/General Manager Thad Levine when they attempted to delve further into the pitching team and complete this gassed formation.

Yet they whiffed on every acquisition to fill a staff thinned by the offseason departure of Sonny Gray and the August loss of Joe Ryan, or to fortify a tattered bullpen that has been bleeding runs and bodies for weeks.

Enigmatic reliever Trevor Richards was brought in from Toronto at the trade deadline in late July, but proved so useless that he was released in less than a month. Falvey would have been better off staying put than going too far for another failure. Lopez’s late-season resurgence was barely enough to create a proper starting rotation devoid of battle-tested veterans.

Three rookies – Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa and Zebby Matthews – were desperately pushed into pennant-chasing roles they were completely unprepared for and unfairly propped up by an offense that heated up as the summer was moving forward.

Minnesota’s inability to go deep or drive runners into scoring position in September was an accelerator. Manager Rocco Baldelli’s stubborn refusal to check his instincts before the seedings has robbed proven starters like Bailey Ober of chances to continue to blow away opposing lineups because of the addictive lure of data-driven late-inning matchups.

Superstars Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton were in the lineup together for about two weeks of games as the Twins’ puzzling injuries only got worse. Bally’s celebrated this week as Buxton played his 100th game for the first time in seven years, as if he had survived the Bataan death march.

Autopsies reveal the harsh truth that the Twins are a middling team looking for top-tier talent and playoff breadcrumbs because the Pohlads prefer clean results over playing hardball with more motivated competition by the championship race. This isn’t a resizing, it’s a calculation. The status quo is untenable. Everyone knows it. Will anything change?

The Pohlads revealed their motives. It’s time for fans to start voting with their wallets, drain the rivers of revenue that flow at 1 Twins Way, and stop carrying water for a team that treats them like saps.