'Small-market' Twins looking, playing like big-market team
MINNEAPOLIS -- The Twins were the small-market team that actually won, the team that should have inspired a book and a movie, the guys nobody hated because they simply did things the right way and didn't spend much time talking about it.
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| The Twins, boasting close to a $100M payroll, prove they're not afraid to spend as they signed Joe Mauer to a long-term deal. (AP) |
The Twins aren't small-market.
Sorry, but you're not small-market when you're drawing 40,000 fans a night at big-market prices, in a beautiful ballpark that any big city in the country would be proud of. You're not small-market when you can afford a payroll closing in on $100 million, and when you're bringing in so much cash that future Johan Santanas and Torii Hunters will have no real reason to leave town.
Small-market?
"No longer," former Twins pitcher and St. Paul native Jack Morris said Wednesday. "Throw that out that window."
The Twins aren't the Yankees or Red Sox, but when former Twins pitcher and longtime Twins broadcaster Bert Blyleven talks about Twins games this year at Target Field, he says, "It's like Boston or New York. It's an event."
But here's the thing: If going to a game at Target Field is going to feel like going to a game at Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium, then the standard for success around here has to change. If every game is going to be sold out, if television ratings are going to approach NFL numbers, then the Twins can't just be the small-market team that has done well to win the American League Central and make a quick exit in October.
That's fine for small-market teams, and once in a while things go right in October and you win. But remember, the Twins aren't small-market anymore.
"I think everyone's expectations have gotten higher," Joe Mauer said.
The promise of Target Field allowed the Twins to sign Mauer to a long-term deal this spring, but he said when he signed that he wants to win a World Series and he wouldn't have agreed to the deal if he didn't think he could do that here.
He didn't come out and say that the Twins can't have small-market expectations, but the implication was certainly there.
These Twins may not be good enough to do it. They've taken full control of the AL Central with two more wins over the White Sox this week, but there's still no real sign that they have the top-level starting pitching that wins in October.
That's fine, and maybe with the World Series scheduled to last through the first week of November, this isn't the best year to play it in open air in Minnesota.
Not that the fans would mind.
"They'll build ice sculptures -- and hang out next to them," Twins first baseman Michael Cuddyer said.
Ice sculptures were about the only Minnesota tradition the Twins left out of Target Field. The do-things-right Twins seemed to do everything right here, and it's easy to see why the fans like it so much.
The Twins have basically sold out every game (the second and third home games of the season were a few hundred shy of official sellouts, mainly because fans didn't realize that tickets turned back in by the visiting team would be available for sale at the last minute). The atmosphere is fun, and the support for the Twins is as enthusiastic as you'd expect.
It's exciting to see, for anyone who remembers walking into the sometimes-gloomy Metrodome on a nice summer day, when the crowd was so small that any noise echoed around the building, and when not only the visiting team hated to be there, but the home team wasn't too happy with it, either.
Who knows how big a part the Target Field effect has played in the Twins' 38-20 home record (including a 7-6 win over the White Sox Wednesday night), but it can't hurt.
"It's definitely not depressing to come here," Cuddyer said.
And it definitely doesn't feel small-market.
Sorry, Bill Smith.
Smith is the Twins general manager, and when it became obvious last winter that Minnesota's payroll would break into the top 10 in the game, he insisted that the small-market label should still apply.
He even says it now.
"We are a small-market team that has benefitted from a new ballpark," Smith said Wednesday. "We will continue to operate like a small-market team. I don't ever want to lose that [mindset]."
To Smith, the label only means that the Twins feel they need to work as hard as ever. But in modern baseball, the big-market teams work, too. The Yankees and Red Sox and Phillies are diligent, too, and Brian Cashman will remind you that even some of his smaller acquisitions played parts in giving the Yankees last year's title.
Losing the small-market label doesn't mean the Twins need to change who they are. But it does change, ever slightly, how we think of them.
They're not small-market anymore. As Jack Morris said, throw that out the window.
And throw the small-market expectations out, right along with it.
