Most of us did not reasonably expect the last two months of the Twins season to be filled with cheerful news after a late July trade deadline that felt like an everything must go mattress liquidation as much as a set of baseball moves.
But Tuesday’s set of headlines still made me take a half-step back and think: “Wow. This is bleak.”
It wasn’t just one thing, which I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
It was enough to make up half of the list of 10 things you need to know today:
- Fans are voting with their feet, either two or four at a time, as evidenced by Tuesday’s crowd. Paid attendance was announced at just 11,721. That was the smallest September crowd in Target Field history, breaking the old mark by about 2,500 fans even though it was a gorgeous late summer evening and despite a Bark at the Park promotion in which canine companions were welcome at the game. About 300 of them were there with their humans; these are the dog days of the season, both literally and figuratively. What this portends for attendance in 2026 is probably not something President Derek Falvey wants to think about.
- Those who did show up were subjected to a wretched display of baseball. An overmatched Twins bullpen, operating without the five top relievers dealt away at the deadline, did the bulk of the heavy lifting in turning a 3-1 lead into a 12-3 defeat against the White Sox. Yes, that’s the same White Sox who are 51-88 but 4-0 in their last four against the Twins.
- If that wasn’t bad enough, starting pitcher David Festa was shut down for the year with inflammation in his pitching shoulder. Any hope for the future is built around young arms like Festa, particularly if the fire sale continues into the offseason.
- Speaking of young pitchers: Mick Abel was recently sent back to Class AAA St. Paul after getting rocked twice with the Twins. He was one of the prizes in the Jhoan Duran trade. And Kendry Rojas, a fast-tracked lefty, gave up seven runs in one-third of an inning for the Saints on Tuesday. He was obtained in the Louie Varland trade. Those are small sample sizes, but if you are looking for optimism from the trade deadline moves, you did not find them in those performances.
- The Twins are now 11-19 since the start of August, 7-16 in their last 23 games and 62-76 overall. They will need to go 11-13 in their final 24 to avoid losing 90 games. Who cares, you might say? I do. The Twins have been good, bad and mediocre in the last several seasons, but they haven’t lost 90-plus games since 2016. That was the end of a bleak stretch of five 90-loss seasons in six years. Are the Twins headed back in that direction for a sustained period of time?
- In happier local sports news, the Gophers women’s basketball team landed the best recruit in Wisconsin and one of the top shooting guards in the country.
- The Gophers football team learned a lot from their Week 1 victory over Buffalo. Randy Johnson and I talked about several of those things on Wednesday’s podcast.
- Did you enjoy watching the NFL Red Zone channel without commercials? You probably did. But that experience is ending this year.
- ESPN’s Bill Barnwell is among the noted Vikings skeptics out there, saying in a recent piece that he expects them to be left out of the playoffs this year.
- La Velle E. Neal III is expected to be my guest on an all-Vikings edition of the Daily Delivery debate Thursday.
