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While Minnesota Twins fans ponder the question of what’s wrong with their favorite team, the Star Tribune this week published three letters and an equal number of columns in a single issue that posed different views (Oct. 1). The three letter writers accused the team’s owner of disloyalty to its fan base. A commentary written by an executive defended a billionaire team owner’s right to make sound business decisions despite how they might affect the outcome on the playing field. Another writer believed a baseball team is a public trust and not just a business. And a sports columnist apologized to the Twins’ manager for being expected to win when the team was battered by injuries and all he had left were inexperienced players on his roster.
I couldn’t disagree with any of the views. They all fit together side by side without contradictions. So what is the answer? As Twins fans, what should we expect from our team’s owner, managers and players — and ourselves?
It’s been said that baseball fans are obsessive about statistics. So here goes.
An analysis of statistics for all 30 major league teams yields conclusions that are not surprising. One is that teams whose owners spend the most on player salaries win the most games. Of the eight teams that rank highest in salaries, six of them made this year’s playoffs and the other two missed out in the last weekend of the season. Another is that those same eight teams rank highest in average home game attendance. Fans love winners. High-salaried teams win. Owners who want to win spend a lot to win.
This year the Twins ranked 24th out of 30 teams in both salaries and attendance. And 27th in wins. Most MLB teams fit the profile of salaries, attendance and wins, with a few outliers. The Colorado Rockies won the fewest games — 43, or fewer than half of those won by playoff teams — but ranked in the top half in attendance. The Cleveland Guardians made the playoffs with a salary ranking of 26th out of 30. And the Milwaukee Brewers won the most games in the major leagues with a salary ranking of 17th, lower than eight other playoff teams. These exceptions may be explained perhaps by better fan loyalty and better business decisions that resulted in teams winning more while spending less.
So what does this mean for us? For one thing, while the Twins’ owners should be entitled to run a profitable business, fans can expect them to make good business decisions as well. Profit-seeking doesn’t allow them to put a mediocre team on the field. The Twins are indeed a public trust and fans are entitled to expect a winner. Twins fans are no different from any consumer who won’t buy a mediocre product.
