FORT MYERS, Fla. – Everybody is happy at Minnesota Twins spring training. The players, the coaching staff, the management, the media, the fans. Everybody’s smiling, everybody’s friendly, everybody’s accessible.
This is not always the case in professional sports. Some big-time athletes are grumpy, standoff-ish or just downright jerks. Not at spring training. The constant sunshine and 80-degree temperatures of southwest Florida in March likely has much to do with the positive attitudes. Who can be cranky when there are palm trees swaying gently against a perfectly blue sky?
The question for the Twins in 2015, though, is this: How long will the smiles last?
A franchise that had high hopes after moving into a new ballpark in downtown Minneapolis five years ago that was partially funded by taxpayers has hit an ugly four-year stretch. The Twins have lost more than 90 games since 2011 and have been largely irrelevant since then.
It’s a bad sign when the only question Upper Midwest sports fans are asking about the Twins is, “When does Vikings season start?”
“Obviously, the last four years were not part of the blueprint we had going into Target Field,” Twins president Dave St. Peter said.
The plan was supposed to go something like this: New stadium draws more fans, which drives more revenue into the team coffers, which leads to the Twins spending more money on better players, which leads to the World Series.
Instead, as general manager Terry Ryan says, “The last four years we’ve given everybody a chance to jump off our bandwagon and that’s not good.”
St. Peter points out it’s all relative – the Twins will sell the equivalent of 14,000 season tickets this season, while in their final season in the Metrodome that figure was about 10,000 – but nobody’s denying the team needs to win more games. A lot more games.
“I want to win. It’s as simple as that. Let’s win more games,” Twins catcher Joe Mauer said.
There have been a number of changes toward that end, all of which were on display in the sunshine of Fort Myers. Ron Gardenhire is gone as the longtime manager, replaced by Paul Molitor. The teams committed four years and $55 million dollars to starting pitcher Ervin Santana. A blast from the past, popular outfielder Torii Hunter, received $10.5 million to return for one year and provide hits to go with his winning personality.
What would be an acceptable jump for the Twins? Ryan doesn’t want to talk about incremental improvement.
“I don’t have much interest in any of that competitive stuff. I have an interest in the postseason, and to do that you’re going to have to get somewhere around 90 wins. That’s a huge jump for us, I understand that,” Ryan said. “But if we’re not prepared to go out and play the type of baseball that would allow us to play some games in the postseason, then it’s a waste of time. We are not here to waste our time. Molitor didn’t take this job to waste his time. So we’re going to look to the postseason and try to get into that fray.”
For that to happen, many things – likely too many things – would have to go just right. The fans and media would accept competitiveness and relevancy. A .500 record would go miles toward mending fences.
Part of that low standard is because the Twins have done such a wonderful job of selling the future. The team has told everybody for the past two years how loaded its minor-league farm system is. The Twins have essentially said, “Just wait until you see what we have coming next.”
The names Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, Danny Santana and Alex Meyer are far more familiar to fans than many players who’ve been in the major leagues. Those players, too, were showing off their talents in the sunshine of Florida.
“I’m very bullish of where we’re going to be in ’15, but beyond that where we’re going to be for the next five to 10 years, mainly because I know our farm system is on the cusp of delivering what is going to be a group of young players who we think is going to have great success at the big-league level,” St. Peter said.
Even now, after spending millions on current big-leaguers like Ervin Santana and Hunter, the Twins can’t quite get away from selling the future. Truth is, it’s time those players have an impact on the won-lost record
If they don’t, and if the Twins continue to flounder in the cellar of the American League Central, all the smiles and warm-fuzzy feelings of early March in Fort Myers are going to be long forgotten by June.
(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. He can be heard from 2-5 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)