Major League Baseball took another gut punch over the weekend when outfielder Kyle Tucker agreed to a four-year, $240 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Dodgers spend so hard it would make the early 2000s New York Yankees blush, and they are overwhelming favorites to win their third straight World Series. The New York Mets, whose owner Steve Cohen also spends with reckless abandon, responded with a three-year, $126 million deal for Bo Bichette. Both moves made fans of small-market teams feel like their stadiums just turned into outdoor bars for the 2026 season, especially Target Field.
Minnesota Twins fans are more disconnected than ever, as the team and ownership have used their feelings as a speed bag since the 2023 season ended. It’s hard to see the Twins signing a player like Tucker or Bichette. Or, in Carlos Correa‘s case, they dumped him at the earliest convenience. Therefore, it’s hard to find optimism for the direction of the franchise, especially after the Pohlad family retained ownership of the team.
The biggest development came when Tom Pohlad took over as the new Executive Chair and Control Person for Joe Pohlad in December, and Twins fans may have rolled their eyes at his comments that he was a “go big or go home” guy. But after the Twins spent the winter hiding in their basement following those comments, spending may be more of a timing issue than a way to buy back the trust of Twins fans.
I’m not defending the Pohlads. Two years ago, the Twins were starting to grab the attention of a dormant fan base. They won their first playoff game in nearly two decades. They also had a solid nucleus that people could latch onto, including Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa, and Byron Buxton.
However, instead of riding the wave of momentum and eating a short-term loss, the Pohlads pulled the plug and have been cutting payroll, irking players, and alienating fans ever since.
That backdrop meant there was nothing that Tom Pohlad could say at last month’s press conference that could instantly win fans back. While he did some things, like admitting the payroll cut following the 2023 season was a mistake, he also said now is not the time to throw money around to fix the team.
I don’t think the landscape, what I see right now, that we should put a significant investment into the team of [adding] $50-60 million [to the payroll], but I don’t think we’re far off from that.
There was probably an argument to tear the whole thing down, get as much value as you can for our players, and really put an emphasis on two years from now or three years from now. On paper, yeah, maybe that makes sense. But you can’t just look at things on paper. We owe the fanbase something. We owe our veteran and star players something. We owe this organization something. And that something is hope.
Twins fans will be the first to tell you there’s not a lot of hope with this franchise after the Pohlads pulled the team off the market last August. Pohlad’s comments could also elicit another sarcastic expression of Twins fans who want to see them put a winning team on the field. But looking at the current state of baseball, Pohlad’s comments make some sense.
The Dodgers have walked a fine line under baseball’s current structure. In a league without a salary cap, big-market teams have consistently used their larger revenue streams to field larger payrolls. But there’s a difference between that and taking advantage of the system.
Los Angeles won’t just have the largest payroll in baseball next season, which FanGraphs estimated to be at $429 million. They have over $1 billion in deferred money, most notably the $680 million owed to Shohei Ohtani. Part of the reason they can do this is a settlement from Frank McCourt’s 2011 bankruptcy that limits the amount of TV revenue shared with the rest of MLB. Still, it also created a financial juggernaut that few teams in baseball can compete with.
The Mets are one of those teams. So are traditional powers such as the Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Philadelphia Phillies, among others, who will have the highest payrolls each year. Other teams, like the San Diego Padres, have spent to keep up with them. However, that has put San Diego around $300 million in debt, and ownership has put them on the market.
While the revenue generated by the Twins’ current TV deal with MLB isn’t publicly disclosed, it’s less than the $54.8 million they reported from their previous deal with Bally/FanDuel Sports Network. That’s not something unique to Minnesota. Other teams have been caught in the RSN’s bankruptcy battle in recent years. Still, it’s a big reason why the spending gap has widened to a critical level.
The uncertainty around TV revenue is why there could be another lockout. The debate over a salary cap is a touchy subject, both for owners like the Dodgers and for players who don’t want to limit their earning power when $700 million contracts are being thrown around. But if there’s a shortened season in 2027, or MLB completely loses it, that’s another year of lost revenue that teams like the Twins will have to endure.
Of course, no Twins fan cares about the Pohlads’ pocketbooks, especially after decades of frugal spending. But it also matters when considering the team’s current state.
The Twins can compete in an AL Central that has also tightened the collective pursestrings. Still, it’s hard to see them leapfrog other teams with the questions they have at first base, the back end of the starting rotation, and the bullpen roughly one month before the start of Spring Training.
They’re also facing uncertain futures with star pitchers Pablo López and Joe Ryan. If they deal one or both of those players ahead of this summer’s deadline, it would likely be a result of the moves the Twins made this offseason, angering the fan base even more.
That could be why the Twins have signed just two major league free agents (Josh Bell, Victor Caratini) for a grand total of $14 million this winter and have a bullpen that would make Lou Brown proud. It could also have the Twins part of a public relations recovery period if baseball locks out in 2027, when teams will have to try to win back their fans.
There’s no guarantee that this is what they’re thinking, and with the Pohlads’ past, it’s hard to trust that this is the plan. But looking around the sport, it makes sense that the Twins are saving their bullets for when they know what the post-lockout MLB structure will look like.
It’s a mess that has been created by frugal ownerships across the sport and a commissioner who is more concerned with tackling problems that don’t exist. But it’s also a condemnation of a sport that has gone entirely off the rails, that may have reached its breaking point with another big Dodgers signing.
