After 40 years and three generations of owning the Minnesota Twins, the Pohlad family announced Thursday it’s considering selling the team.
The Pohlads said they decided during the summer to explore a sale. The family has hired Allen & Company, a New York-based investment bank, to direct the process.
Laurel Prieb spent seven years each as a baseball executive for both the Pohlad family, and the Griffith family that owned the Twins up until the Pohlads purchased the team in 1984. His reaction when he heard the team was for sale?
"I was stunned really," said Prieb who talked to Steve Simpson on the WCCO Morning News. "And, you know, the Pohlads in 40 years of ownership have brought stability to that organization that you don't find in life in a lot of things today. And that, of course, followed up on about 70 years of the Griffith organization owning the franchise. So, the Senators-Twins have been in only two hands over the course of time and that says a lot for the stability."
Prieb says even those in the know across Major League Baseball were surprised by Thursday's announcement from the Pohlad family.
"The Pohlads have always been viewed with a great amount of respect and that continues on," explained Prieb. "And from the few conversations I had yesterday, you know, there is just a lot of surprise that a lot of people within the game just did not see this coming."
Prieb says that he understands there is fan disappointment when it comes to wins and losses, and it can be easy to blame ownership, especially coming off a very difficult finish to the 2024 season. But adds that sustained success in baseball is not easy to come by.
"I know how it is when you're a fan and I've been a fan of the game since I was nine years old, you want your team to win the World Series every single year," says Prieb. "But forming and having a successful baseball team is not always the easiest thing. The Twins have been competitive now, with the Pohlads, for a number of years now in recent years. And under Jim's stewardship and now Joe's, you know, they've continued on to be a successful team. You don't win every year of course."
In a statement released by Twins Executive Chair Joe Pohlad, the family says it became clear it was time for them to move on.
“For the past 40 seasons, the Minnesota Twins have been part of our family’s heart and soul,” Twins executive chair Joe Pohlad, the third-generation owner, said in the statement. “This team is woven into the fabric of our lives, and the Twins community has become an extension of our family. The staff, the players, and most importantly, you, the fans — everyone who makes up this unbelievable organization — is part of that. We’ve never taken lightly the privilege of being stewards of this franchise.”
The process of selling pro sports teams can take months or even years, in the case of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves across the street. The Pohlads indicated they weren’t in a rush: “After four decades of commitment, passion, and countless memories, we are looking toward the future with care and intention — for our family, the Twins organization, and this community we love so much.”
With the late Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett leading the way, the Twins won World Series titles in 1987 and 1991. Since the turn of the century, the Twins have won the American League Central Division nine times and claimed a wild card spot once. Manager Rocco Baldelli has won three division titles in six years.
The team has had plenty of lean years, too. The Twins finally broke an 18-game postseason losing streak, a record for North American professional sports, last year by sweeping Toronto in the Wild Card Series. That was their first series win since 2002.
Falling short in the fall with talented teams has fueled a frustration within the fanbase. Attendance at Target Field, which opened in 2010 to rave reviews, has been in decline. After the feel-good 2023 season that felt like a breakthrough, the Twins were caught like many other major league clubs in the bankruptcy proceedings around Diamond Sports Group that held their local television rights.
The steep decline in revenue this year preceded a spending cut on the roster, with the 2024 payroll nearly $30 million less than 2023. That rankled some fans who have long been frustrated with the family for a conservative approach to player spending. The skepticism dates back decades to multiple times that the family patriarch, Carl Pohlad, tried to sell the club. With no traction at the time on a new stadium, he also offered the Twins up for contraction in 2001 before the plan was blocked by a local judge.
The Twins went 82-80 this season, missing the playoffs after a late-season collapse, which only enhanced the disappointment.
“Everybody owns this a little bit, and I played a role in that,” Joe Pohlad said in an interview with reporters last month. “We were at an all-time high last year, right? 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 world. I have a business to run, and it comes with tough decisions.”
Carl Pohlad, who built his fortune in the banking industry, bought the Twins in 1984 for $44 million. He died in 2009. The only major league teams held by the same ownership longer than that are the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox. One of his three sons, Jim Pohlad, succeeded him as chairman. Jim Pohlad’s nephew, Joe Pohlad, stepped in two years ago.
The Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961 after Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith moved the team east. The franchise has been owned by only two families for more than 100 years, starting with the Griffith family before the 1920 season. The Senators won the World Series in 1924.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.