Patrick Reusse: 'Dark days' of Twins baseball motivate today's decisions

There were a couple of versions of an important Jim Pohlad quote to be found in Sunday's Star Tribune. The accurate one included the word "by" — as in, "We're not going to let him go over by 50 percent, but if it's a few million over, we're not going to say anything."

The him was Terry Ryan, the Twins' general manager, and the subject was the payroll for the team's 25-player major league roster.

Twins owner Carl Pohlad and his son Jim have been setting that payroll at roughly 52 percent of revenues in recent years, and that was projected at $70 million for 2007.

So, Ryan could have strayed by several million in an attempt to win another AL Central title, but he wouldn't be allowed to go 10, 20 or 30 million dollars over the budget.

Today, the Twins will get a better idea at how much their contribution to the new ballpark will increase when an arbitration panel sets a price for the condemned acreage next to the garbage burner.

"We already know that we're going to spend more than the original figure [$130 million] for the ballpark," Jim Pohlad said. "We don't know the land price. We also know that we're getting a final plan for a $390 million ballpark, and then we'll have to see if there are other elements needed."

The Twins didn't add the hitter that the fans, the media and eventually some players were bellowing for before the July 31 trading deadline. They also signed their top draft choices for comparatively low money, started with a $750,000 bonus for first-rounder Ben Revere.

There was some suspicion that money was being watched closely in anticipation of the extra millions the Twins will wind up putting into the outdoor park that opens in April 2010.

"Not true," Jim Pohlad said. "The baseball operation is a completely different budget."

Ryan said the same thing when asked about the lower amount of money than normal spent on draft choices.

"We're not going to put that money in our pocket," he said. "We're going to spend it somewhere ... maybe signing players from the Dominican, Venezuela, Europe, Australia. Some years, you spend more money in the draft, and some years you spend more internationally."

The deadline for signing players from this June's draft was midnight on Wednesday. The Twins tried to sign fifth-rounder Nathan Striz, a righthanded pitcher from Lakeland, Fla., but he decided to stick with his college commitment to North Carolina.

The rumor was that the Twins allowed Striz to get away because he wanted twice "the slot" — the bonus for that position in the draft recommended by the Commissioner's Office.

"Not true," Ryan said. "We weren't that far apart in dollars at the end. The young man had a very strong connection to North Carolina. When it came down to the final hours, he decided he wanted to go to college."

The Twins entered 2007 with six consecutive winning seasons. In the team's first 40 years, they never had more than three in a row.

Baseball is the only major league sport in this country where the triumph is in the pursuit as much as in the ultimate result. It's a six-month marathon and only 27 percent of the field reaches the postseason. Almost always, it takes winning more than 90 games to get there.

In football, 38 percent of the teams advance and the Vikings have crawled in with as few as eight victories in 16 games. In hockey and basketball, 53 percent of the teams reach the playoffs, making the regular season a charade.

There's substance to a team that succeeds over 162 games to reach baseball's Elite Eight. And when you consider where the Twins came from in the 1990s, this has been a period of praiseworthy achievement for the franchise.

"Those were dark days," said Jim Pohlad, referring to eight consecutive losing seasons (1993-2000). "We never want to go through those days again. With Terry Ryan in charge, I don't think we will."

Staying consistently competitive. That's the goal here. If that leads to another run to the World Series, hallelujah, but avoiding a return to the dark days seems to carry equal importance with today's Twins.

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com