The Bomba Squad Twins of 2019 won 101 games and charmed the Target Field faithful (at least until another October plummet).
Those fans weren’t allowed into the ballpark during the Covid-shortened 2020 season, but the Twins still went 36-24 (a 97-win pace over a normal 162-game season) and repeated as AL Central champs.
That led into 2021 and the expectation that the Twins would once again occupy a lofty perch in the division. Baseball Prospectus projected the Twins would win 90.6 games, five more than anyone else in the AL Central and the third-most in the American League.
Instead, that season began a five-year era filled largely with frustration and what can only politely be termed underachievement.
I talked on Thursday’s Daily Delivery podcast about how things still figure to get worse for the Twins in 2026 before they get better, basing much of the calculus around rightful frustration over the Pohlad family retaining control over the team and what that might mean for the near-term future.
Hey, I don’t want to stop you from blaming the Pohlads for the disappointing trajectory of the franchise.
But at the start of today’s 10 things to know, we also need to talk about just how much the Twins have underachieved in the last five seasons and how much that has shaped their current predicament.
- 2021: The Twins missed that 90.6-win projection by a mile, which is about the distance that homers off J.A. Happ seemed to travel that season. They finished 73-89, a shocking tumble fueled by a 14-28 start to the year.
- 2022: Still, Baseball Prospectus gave them a bit of a mulligan and said they would win 84 games in 2022. That would have put them firmly in wild card contention that season. They were 68-64 in early September and tied for the division lead. They went 10-18 down the stretch to finish 78-84, 14 games out of the lead and six games below their projected win total.
- 2023: No, really, Baseball Prospectus said. The Twins are good. Just look at that roster. They projected the Twins to win 87.8 games, which was just about spot on. The Twins won 87 games and took the crown in a weak AL Central. They followed that with their first playoff series win in two decades, snapping an 18-game postseason losing streak in the process. Optimism was high!
- 2024: Based on that success and a still-talented roster, BP projected the Twins to win 89.8 games in 2024. That seemed to be a good bet when the Twins sat at 70-53 in mid-August. But they went 12-27 down the stretch to botch a near-certain playoff spot. 82-80 was their final mark, eight games off the projection.
- 2025: The Twins insisted they would learn their lessons from the collapse, and Baseball Prospectus agreed. They liked the Twins for 87.3 wins this season. Instead, the Twins again underachieved before a trade deadline fire sale. They are on pace to finish with 77 wins.
- Add it up: I count the Twins being 42.5 wins under projection over the past five years combined. Some of that, perhaps, is miscalculation by Baseball Prospectus. Injury bad luck, especially to pitchers, has played a role. But missing expectations by 8.5 wins a year on average is also flat-out underperformance, and it has left the Twins where they are now.
- By the way: The Twins finally beat the Yankees on Wednesday.
- Also on Thursday’s podcast, I broke down what I saw from J.J. McCarthy during Wednesday’s practice with the Patriots and went in-depth on Gophers soccer. Here is a clip from my conversation with incoming Gophers player and Aurora standout Mariah Nguyen:
- Strib Varsity reporter Jim Paulsen is expected to join me on Friday’s podcast to talk about his list of the 25 best Minnesota high school athletes of the last 25 years.
- Worth monitoring: Andrew Van Ginkel’s health.
