Twins can't afford a 'rebuild' if they want to avoid being a punching bag again

Sunday morning, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli used the word "rebuild.''

Sunday afternoon, Josh Hader blew away the Twins in the ninth inning of a 6-2 Milwaukee victory as what seemed like the majority of the fans chanted "Let's Go, Brewers."

This is the Twins' trip back to the future — a protracted rebuild that makes the team a punching bag again.

The Pohlads should not allow this to happen.

The 2021 season has been a disaster, one of the most disappointing seasons in franchise history. Two years after winning 101 games, and following a two-year stretch in which the Twins had the best record in the American League, the '21 Twins were noncompetitive from the start.

The Twins' starting pitching wasn't good enough this year even when Jose Berrios and Kenta Maeda were at the top of the rotation. Berrios is gone and Maeda might undergo Tommy John surgery.

Currently, the Twins have perhaps one big-league starter in the process of locking down a spot in the 2022 rotation — Bailey Ober. They may have only one starter at Class AAA who might be a sure thing to win a spot in the big-league rotation next spring — Joe Ryan.

Even if Ober and Ryan pitch well, neither should be asked to headline a major league rotation at this point in their careers.

So, as Baldelli indicated, the Twins might be forced to rebuild, which is a euphemism for losing at a grotesque rate while hoping a future bunch of young players will rescue the franchise.

"These types of conversations, they don't throw me off or frustrate me personally in any way," Baldelli said. "This is the way that you have to rebuild yourself on a regular basis in this game, especially in an organization that doesn't have the payroll of the Dodgers or the Yankees."

The problem is that the Twins rarely rebuild quickly. They fall off a cliff, then spend years looking for an extension ladder.

In the midst of the 1992 season, the Twins were considered baseball's model franchise. By May 1993, they were hopeless, and beginning a stretch of eight straight losing seasons that almost led to contraction.

At the end of the 2010 season, the Twins had completed a stretch of 10 highly competitive seasons with another playoff berth and the christening of Target Field. By the time Joe Mauer began complaining about leg soreness in 2011, the Twins were on their way to six seasons in which they would average 94 losses and fail to make the playoffs.

During good seasons, vocal Twins fans often complain about the Pohlads' unwillingness to spend hundreds of millions on an ace or a free-agent superstar. But winning a bidding war for an experienced player who costs that much money is risky, and the Twins will probably always get outspent by coastal teams with more revenues, and if pure spending won championships, the Yankees would have won more than one World Series since 2000.

Where the Pohlads' wealth should benefit the Twins the most is in avoiding another six- to eight-year span of empty seats and embarrassing beatdowns.

Between current big-league talent and rising prospects, the Twins should be able to field a quality lineup over the next few seasons.

What they need is pitching. Top-of-the-rotation pitching. Pitching depth. And an All-Star-caliber closer.

The Twins might not be able to sign the most expensive pitcher on the market, but they can't afford bottom fish, either.

What is the real-world cost of signing J.A. Happ, Matt Shoemaker and Alex Colome? They all wound up being overpaid. They all helped destroy a promising team.

After two years of productive decisions, the Twins front office whiffed this year. But they whiffed, in part, because they were searching for bargains, for problematic pitchers who theoretically could be fixed.

The Pohlads should allow the front office to pursue the best pitching on the market this winter.

Yes, paying for quality pitching is expensive.

But think of the cost of becoming irrelevant, again.