The Twins have effectively been for sale for the better part of the past year, but it seems the current ownership group is instead embarking on a new path. Executive chair Joe Pohlad announced in a press release this morning that his family is no longer pursuing a sale of the majority stake in the franchise and will instead sell minority stakes to a pair of new parties.
“Over the past several months, we explored a wide range of potential investment and ownership opportunities. Our focus throughout has been on what’s best for the long-term future of the Twins. We have been fully open to all possibilities,” Pohlad said in a prepared statement. “After a detailed and robust process, our family will remain the principal owner of the Minnesota Twins. To strengthen the club in a rapidly evolving sports landscape – one that demands strong partnerships, fresh ideas, and long-term vision – we are in the process of adding two significant limited partnership groups, each of whom will bring a wealth of experience and share our family values.”
The surprising 180-degree turn comes less than two weeks after the Twins gutted their roster in a trade deadline punctuated by slashing payroll. The Twins traded a whopping 11 players, including the five best relievers in what was a strong bullpen and shortstop Carlos Correa, who’d signed the largest contract in Twins history (six years, $200MM). The Twins sent Correa back to the Astros, including $33MM of cash to offset some of the remaining $103.5MM on his contract, and effectively receiving no return.
The entire slate of players traded by the Twins was fairly remarkable. Not only were rental players like Harrison Bader, Willi Castro, Danny Coulombe, Chris Paddack and Ty France shipped out, but so were controllable players like Correa and relievers Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Louis Varland and Brock Stewart. The Twins dumped the remainder of Randy Dobnak’s contract on the Tigers as part of the Paddack trade as well. In all, Minnesota trimmed nearly $83MM in guaranteed money while also shrinking an arbitration class that would’ve called for notable 2026 raises for Duran, Jax and Stewart.
In the immediate aftermath, the general expectation was that the fire sale, which extended far more broadly than anyone anticipated, had been done as a means of increasing the appeal for potential buyers. Perhaps that’s still partially the case in reference to the incoming minority owners who are joining the group, but that’s a far different scenario than anyone anticipated — particularly after Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred voiced confidence at the All-Star break that a sale of the Twins would still come together sooner than later.
Following the Twins’ deadline teardown, the thinking has been that if the Pohlad family came to terms on a sale of the team quickly enough, new ownership might put a halt to further stripping down the roster in the offseason. Today’s announcement dashed any such hopes, meaning that Minnesota’s remaining appealing players will enter the offseason as prime trade candidates.
All-Star center fielder Byron Buxton said he planned to be a Twin for life when asked about his no-trade clause earlier this summer and doubled down on his desire to remain in Minnesota even after the deadline. There’s no reason to expect him to change that thinking. However, catcher Ryan Jeffers (controlled through 2026 via arbitration), right-hander Joe Ryan (controlled through 2027 via arbitration) and righty Pablo Lopez (signed through 2027 for $21.75MM annually) can all freely be traded, as can arb-eligible players like Trevor Larnach and Bailey Ober.
If the teardown was only about making the prospect of retaining ownership more palatable for the current group, there’s little reason to think the Pohlad family won’t push the front office to further reduce expenses. MLB.com ranked the Twins as the No. 2 farm system in the sport just this morning, after factoring in every team’s deadline dealings. Baseball America ranked them fourth on this morning’s post-deadline update. Offseason swaps involving some combination of Ryan, Lopez and/or Jeffers (among others) could vault them to the top spot in the game. That’s little consolation for a fanbase was riding high after the team snapped its postseason losing streak in 2023 — only to see Pohlad mandate a payroll cut amid uncertainty surrounding the team’s television broadcast rights.
The Pohlads have owned the Twins for more than 40 years. Carl Pohlad purchased the franchise for $44MM back in 1984. The Twins won the 1987 and 1991 World Series but quickly spiraled into a tumultuous state as Pohlad first looked to sell the team in the late 90s before nearly agreeing to his team’s contraction around the turn of the century before the Hennepin County District Court intervened. Carl Pohlad passed away in 2009, at which point his son Jim took over as the face of the team’s ownership group.
Jim remains the team’s chairman to this day but turned day-to-day oversight of the ownership group to his nephew, Joe, in November of 2022. There was some optimism among the fanbase in the months that followed. The Twins re-signed Correa to that franchise-record $200MM contract — a move that didn’t feel like it would ever have come together under the previous iterations of the Pohlad family ownership. Minnesota subsequently traded for Lopez and quickly signed him to a $73MM contract extension. Payroll climbed to a franchise-record $154MM on Opening Day 2023, and the Twins went on to reach the postseason and topple the Blue Jays, ending a two-decade drought in terms of postseason wins.
Those brief halcyon days now feel like a distant memory, and the immediate outlook for Twins fans is a grim one. Prospective buyer Justin Ishbia went from the perceived front-runner to purchase the club back in January to instead abandoning that pursuit as he instead agreed to increase his stake in the White Sox — where he was already a minority owner — with a path to majority control down the road. The Twins continued to explore potential sales even after Ishbia backed down, but with a reported $1.7 billion asking price and more than $400MM in debt, it seems no buyers materialized.
Instead, the Pohlad family will remain at the helm for at least the foreseeable future, placing the Twins alongside the Angels and Nationals as clubs that recently were put up for sale and pulled off the market after sufficient bids never manifested. The forthcoming additions to the ownership group are still pending the approval of Major League Baseball, per the Twins’ press release, and details won’t be made public until that league has signed off on the changes.
Joe Pohlad added in today’s statement that the Twins owners “see and hear the passion from our partners, the community, and Twins fans,” adding that said passion “inspires us.” It’s the type of boilerplate ownership speak that will ring hollow for a fanbase that has, for quite some time now, been desperate for changes that apparently aren’t coming anytime soon.
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