Perhaps the saddest thing about Minnesota pro sports, as a collective, is that the period of time that stands out as a de facto "golden era" was a period about 20 years ago filled with woulda, coulda, shoulda finishes.
Every Minnesota pro team is a contender to make the playoffs — and maybe more
Are we entering an era of competence?
March 25, 2022 at 2:20PM
The Vikings (2000), Twins (2002), Wild (2003) and Wolves (2004) all reached the conference finals/title game of their respective leagues in a five-season span.
All of them lost.
And by the time the Lynx were stacking four championships together in the next decade, the rest of the teams in this market were generally somewhere between OK and bad.
Eras are generally only defined in retrospect — something that is being reinforced as I read Chuck Klosterman's very interesting and too-close-to-home book, "The Nineties" — but here at the start of 2022 something feels like it is brewing in Minnesota sports.
On Friday's Daily Delivery podcast, I took a stab at guessing which of our six major pro sports teams is most likely to win a championship in the next five years.
Here, let's settle for something equally ambitious, at least on scale: All six could make the playoffs in their 2022 seasons.
- The Wild is a virtual lock to make it, registering at more than 99% probability on various sites. After an uncharacteristic slump, Minnesota has won four in a row and seems more slump-proof after Bill Guerin's deadline deals.
- The Wolves have clinched a spot in the play-in tournament, still have a shot of jumping into the top six, and at worst should have to win just one of two home play-in games to reach the top eight of the West.
- Minnesota United has allowed just two goals in its first four matches, getting two wins and two draws so far. FiveThirtyEight has the Loons as MLS's seventh-best team and third-best in the West.
- The Lynx loaded up on quality free agents and have made the playoffs every year since 2011.
- The Twins are predicted to win 86 games and have a 51.9% chance of making the postseason according to Baseball Prospectus, numbers that could swell if they add another front-line starting pitcher.
- The Vikings, for all my concerns about their potential for mediocrity, are always in the playoff hunt and should benefit from new schemes and a fresh way of doing things.
It is likely that one or two of these teams won't pull through. This is Minnesota, after all. But the potential for all of them is there, which hasn't been the case for as long as I can remember.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
