Joe Pohlad is still trying to process what happened over the course of the last six weeks during which the Twins fell apart entirely, going from 17 games over .500 and seemingly bound for the playoffs, to a fourth-place team that will be watching the postseason from home.

As he was recounting how he felt, the Twins executive chair used phrases like, “embarrassing,” “angering,” and “not acceptable.”

“For most of the season, you’re headed down a path of the playoffs,” Pohlad said. “You’ve got all the right pieces in place and then all of a sudden for the last six weeks … it feels like I’m watching a trainwreck.”

Everybody owns a little bit of the collapse, he said before the Twins’ final game of the 2024 season, including himself.

The Pohlad family made an unpopular decision to slash payroll last offseason, a move which he defended. Coming off a season in which the Twins won their division, advanced past the American League Wild Card Series, winning their first playoff game in nearly two decades in the process, and fan morale was near its highest, ownership slashed payroll by nearly $30 million.

“As I reflect on my role in all of this, we were at an all-time high last year,” Pohlad said. “Fans were all in. Players were all in. We were headed down a great direction and I had to make a very difficult business decision but that’s just the reality of my work. I have a business to run, and it comes with tough decisions and that’s what I had to do. I wouldn’t make any other decision.”

Pohlad said he would not get into payroll on Sunday, but he promised that there would be a better product on the field next year. A Twins’ source confirmed the team does not anticipate a payroll reduction in 2025.

While it was clear the Twins had financial constraints, president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said he believed this team was good enough with the payroll they had.

The Twins were in position to make the playoffs for most of the season. Even amid their collapse, their playoff odds topped 95% just a few weeks earlier, but they finished by winning just 12 of their last 39 games.

“The harder part for me as I sit here today is that this stretch of baseball and us not being where we need to be was not about payroll. It just wasn’t,” Falvey said. “There’s no other way to put it. This was about the team that we had, on the field, that was 15, 17 games over .500 and capable of playing baseball the way we needed to down the stretch and didn’t play it. And I think if we had played that way, this wouldn’t be a topic.”

Twins drop finale

The Twins’ season ended with a thud, a sweep at the hands of the playoff-bound Baltimore Orioles.

Bailey Ober started the 6-2 loss and gave up three runs in five innings in the season finale. Rookie DaShawn Keirsey Jr. hit his first career home run in the loss and Carlos Santana, the Twins’ team leader in home runs, added one final blast to bring his total to 23 on the season.

With the loss, the Twins finished the season 82-80, four games out of a playoff spot.

“Obviously, it couldn’t be more disappointing as far as the way the season went,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Everyone knows that. I feel very repetitive having to declare that all the time, but that is the truth. That’s how we feel. We broke down as the season went on and that’s hard to say, but it happened.”

Briefly

The Twins drew 1,951,616 fans to Target Field during the 2024 season. That was a slight drop off from the 2023 season in which the team welcomed 1,974,124 fans through the turnstile. It was also less than the team had projected before the season began.

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