Having spent a lot of my college years at the University of Minnesota in the mid-to-late 1990s making the trek to the Metrodome with just a handful of other fans to watch increasingly bad baseball, I do have a strange soft spot for the optimism of a rebuilding process.
The Twins won the World Series in 1991, were strong again in 1992 before missing the playoffs, regressed in 1993 and endured a work stoppage that spanned parts of the 1994 and 1995 seasons. Kirby Puckett was forced to retire in 1996, and the Twins didn’t fully realize they needed to start over with a new wave of prospects until after the 1998 season.
By the time they were competitive with that young group it was 2001 and they had endured eight straight losing seasons. But that patience did pay off with six division titles in next nine seasons, a span that when it was over led to the next rebuild.
The Twins were mostly horrible in the early years at Target Field before again finding their footing between 2017 and 2020 with three playoff appearances in four years.
The last five years, 2021-25, have been a strange sort of limbo. The Twins were never bad enough for a full-on teardown but never good enough (or rich enough) for a full-on investment. A week ago, that led to the conclusion that it was time to strip things down again with the trade of 10 players.
Where do they go from here? Star Tribune Twins writer Bobby Nightengale and I talked about that on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
Some of it depends on whether the team is sold. If the Pohlad family continues to own the team into the 2026 season, Nightengale said he would expect the Twins to also trade starting pitchers Joe Ryan and Pablo López during the offseason.
If the team is sold, which is the expectation but is not a certainty, a new owner could theoretically authorize the signing of players using the payroll flexibility created by the dumping of salaries (particularly Carlos Correa) in order to try to compete again in 2026. A looming labor negotiation after the 2026 season complicates all of it.
