Maybe you’re the crying type. Maybe you’re the angry type. Maybe you’re the type to bury it and not admit it hurts. But it does. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t care about your Minnesota Twins.
Whatever emotions you want to engage with, engage with them. Whatever complaints you have about the end of the season—whether it’s with the manager, the hitters, the pitchers, the front office, the umpires, or TC Bear (he knows what he did)—let them be heard.
The end comes at least one game too early for 29 teams, and it came for your Minnesota Twins.
I won’t tell you how to mourn this season or how long it should affect you. Pardon my French, Edouard Julien, but it sucks.
When you’re ready to start looking forward to next year, we’ll be here for that. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to read about next year’s potential. Free agent targets, projections, trade candidates, philosophic waxing, and everything in between will fill the front page. Hope springs eternal.
There’s so much to be excited about next year. Nearly all of the pieces of the 2023 team are already penciled in for 2024. The top-flight rotation and bullpen may see minimal turnover. It’s easy to dream on the promising starts to the careers of rookies Royce Lewis, Edouard Julien, and Matt Wallner. Carlos Correa’s foot will hopefully be healed and ready for Opening Day. An offseason will help Byron Buxton. Top prospects like Brooks Lee and Austin Martin are ready to join the mix.
But that’s not today.
No one will blame you for looking ahead to next year. There’s a lot of reason to believe that the 2024 team can be better than this year’s team as young players take the next steps and season-long injuries can heal. However, we need to appreciate what we just watched.
Coming into the year, very few analysts, experts, or pundits picked Minnesota to win the Central. There was more steam behind them securing the third seed in the worst division in baseball than there was that they would get a playoff berth. Yet here they stand.
The Twins had a pitching staff that competed for the best in the game, besting any Minnesota squad from the past three decades, at minimum. Two pitchers—Sonny Gray and Pablo López—will likely rank in the top eight in Cy Young voting in the American League. We got to watch that.
A trio of rookies—Lewis, Julien, and Wallner—injected so much energy into this organization. Although our instincts tell us they will only improve, it’s not guaranteed. Frankly, this could be the best season that any of them ever have. They may play at this level for most of their careers. We don’t know what the future holds for them.
We do know how they made us feel this year, though.
What happens next year, or in the years down the road, doesn’t change the fun that it was for this team. After back-to-back-to-back division championships between 2002 and 2004, expectations were great. Surely 2005 would be the year they take the next step and get back into a deep playoff run.
We know how that ended.
An incredible core of young and controllable talent led the 2016 Cubs to the Promised Land for the first time in 108 years. Surely a young team like that could contend for the World Series for a decade.
It’s been seven years, they’ve won one playoff game since, and the core is completely disbanded.
This isn’t an attempt to put a damper on your dreams. It’s a call to appreciate what you watched this season.
Sure. This team struck out way more than anyone would like. We all pulled our hair out watching called strike threes on middle-middle fastballs. The offense was positively anemic for half the year, and once they got themselves figured out, the stellar pitching’s wheels began to wobble.
Inexplicable injuries seemed to pile up, and no timetables were ever clear. The two most highly-paid players were dragged down by season-long, nagging injuries.
But this team won the division. But fans got to watch meaningful October baseball. But those in attendance got to revitalize and call up the ghosts of the crowd that used to inhabit the Hubert. H. Humphrey Metrodome.
But this was the team that broke the streak.
No longer will it be brought up on national broadcasts that the Twins had lost their previous 18 playoff games. No one will talk about 2004 again.
This was the team that made it happen.
From breaking the longest playoff losing streak in North American professional sports history to the individual moments of joy watching the Max Kepler resurgence or a Jorge Polanco professional plate appearance. This team provided joy.
Appreciate it before turning the page to next year.
Appreciate the energy of Kyle Farmer, the emergence of Ryan Jeffers, the chaos of Willi Castro, the random bombs from Michael A. Taylor and Joey Gallo, and the barrels into the gap of Donovan Solano.
Appreciate an entire bullpen throwing gas, Jhoan Durán and Caleb Thielbar’s elite curveballs, Brock Stewart’s comeback story, Emilio Pagán’s redemption arc, the Dallas Keuchel experience, the late-season moves to the pen of Louie Varland and Chris Paddack, and one of (if not the) best starting rotations in Twins history: Gray, López, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Kenta Maeda, Varland, Tyler Mahle, Keuchel, and José De León.
Appreciate how this season made you feel, and the fun you had along the way, before looking into who should get a qualifying offer.
Thank you, everyone, for this season—especially those of you who work at 1 Twins Way.
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