{"id":163912,"date":"2025-09-23T16:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T16:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163912\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T16:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T16:46:09","slug":"cleveland-guardians-leave-the-mn-twins-behind-in-al-central","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163912\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleveland Guardians leave the MN Twins behind in AL Central"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rt-Text\">In the middle of July, Twins fans could still choose to see this season with glass half-full optimism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rt-Text\">Sure, the Twins had underachieved relative to expectations by carrying a 47-49 mark into the All-Star break. But what if they came out hot after the break, and maybe added a big bat to the lineup at the trade deadline? They would be within striking distance of a wild-card spot, and maybe they could put some heat on division-leading Detroit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rt-Text\">We know, of course, what actually happened. The Twins slumped out of the break and then traded 10 MLB players (including their five best relievers). The Pohlad family in August decided to keep ownership of the team by instead adding two limited partnership groups.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rt-Text\">The optimism glass is nearly as empty as Target Field, with the Twins finishing with their lowest non-COVID season attendance in a quarter-century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rt-Text\">And maybe the hardest thing to reconcile: That mid-July hope doesn\u2019t seem silly based on what has happened since then with two other AL Central teams, something I talked about on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/vikings-qb-dilemma-and-film-review-what-might-have\/id1550932167?i=1000728062238\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/vikings-qb-dilemma-and-film-review-what-might-have\/id1550932167?i=1000728062238\">Tuesday\u2019s Daily Delivery podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rt-Text\">The Tigers led the AL Central handily at the break. The Twins were in second place with that 47-49 record, 11\u00bd games back. Kansas City and Cleveland were right behind them at 12 games back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the middle of July, Twins fans could still choose to see this season with glass half-full optimism.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-163912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}