John has gotten very into following MLB over the last few years. He and I of course follow the Twins religiously through ups and downs. Every morning while getting ready for school we watch MLB’s “Recap Rundown”, expanded highlights of every game from the previous day. On weekends and evenings he’s playing MLB The Show: Road To The Show, guiding his created player through the minors. And what time is left we’re at the fields playing baseball as the Orioles.

One thing that puts a serious damper on the whole experience is how the Twins seem to frequently fall into deep, weeks-long offensive droughts where they struggle to so much as put balls in play. Even in good years, it seems like they have deep-rooted batting problems that make the games very unenjoyable, painful, and downright maddening to watch. The 2024 Twins are the worst of all-time though. Through 18 games they were batting in the .180s as a team, second-worst by any team in the last 50 years. They were batting under .140 with runners in scoring position, worst by any team ever. They are on pace to break the all-time strikeout record set by last year’s Twins. The Braves could go 0-for-300 and still have a higher average than the Twins. The list of futility goes on. With so many key injuries, a brutal April schedule, and a lot of rainouts mixed in, this year’s Twins are truly unwatchable.

Angrily tuning out of their Friday game vs. the Tigers as they continued to look completely clueless at the plate, John and I decided that in order to salvage the last 144 games of the long season, we would choose a second team to follow. I have two favorite football teams, after all. But choosing a second team wouldn’t be easy.

Here’s how we decided.

  • The Royals, White Sox, Tigers and Guardians were all eliminated because they are the Twins division rivals. After decades of rooting against them, there is no way I can suddenly support these four teams.
  • The Astros and Rangers would make sense, as we live in Texas, except that local TV blackout restrictions mean we can’t watch their games! If we can’t watch them, then we ain’t cheering for them, despite the fact that these are the last two defending World Series champions.
  • The Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Braves, Dodgers and Cardinals are five teams I can’t bring myself to cheer for—largely because of their deep pockets and big markets.
  • The Mariners, Padres, Giants, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Angels, and Athletics are in time zones that would make it difficult for John to watch many games with a bedtime in the 8:00 timeframe. That was unfortunate, as several of those teams would have been good fits. The Angels are the baseball version of the Chargers, I figure, second-fiddle to the Dodgers and Rams in LA. The Dbacks, Mariners, and Padres all seemed reasonably likable.

That left the Blue Jays, Brewers, Cubs, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Orioles, Pirates, Rays, and Reds. We would have to eliminate a few more, for less apparent reasons.

  • The Nationals and Marlins are expected to be as bad or worse than the Twins. That would solve nothing. The Marlins were something like 4-17 at the time of this. We need a little more upside.
  • The Orioles are going to be good for a long time with their young core, so it felt too bandwagony to choose them despite the fact that we play baseball as the Orioles, have a lot of Orioles gear, and had a memorable trip to Camden Yards in 2022.
  • The Brewers are the Twins’ natural geographic rivals. That would be like a Viking fan adopting the Packers. So it felt wrong despite the Brewers feeling otherwise like a great pick.
  • Of the remaining five, John eliminated the Mets and Blue Jays as a team he just doesn’t like, despite Lauren’s Toronto ties. For similar reasons I eliminated the Rays. I feel like the Tampa sports market has been spoiled rotten in recent years with Buccaneers Super Bowls and Lightning Stanley Cups and the Rays AL pennant in 2020.
  • The Pirates I feel would be setting us up for devastation, despite Edie holding on to the Pirates as a favorite team after her fall teeball team. They haven’t been very competitive the past few decades, and their recent fast starts have been quickly erased by mid-season.

That left us with the Cubs and Reds. We could have gone either way on this. Neither of us had anything against either team. Neither team has enjoyed super recent success, with the Cubs’ title now 8 years ago. The Reds are a team that appears to be on the fringe of contention, but haven’t been that good to where we could be accused of being bandwagoners. We have absolutely no ties whatsoever to Cincinnati or the Reds, but we do have relatives in the Chicago area who are diehard Cub fans, and even a pretty cool family story about Lauren’s grandfather and their equipment manager. While Chicago is a traditional Minnesota sports rival, that’s really more Twins-White Sox and Vikings-Bears. There is no Twins-Cubs rivalry.

It would be tough. Our natural inclination is that the Reds were easier to root for, but then I remembered that Cincinnati is in Ohio, as is Ohio State, a college team I have long rooted against in several sports. Whereas Illinois’ college teams I have no particular bias. However, there is always a chance we’ll wind up in Chicago any given year en route to family things, and much more likely to be able to happen upon Wrigley Field.

That means the Cubs won out as a team that John and I could agree to follow for the 2024 season as a second team to the Twins. As much as I would like to, I simply cannot just turn off the Twins and forget about them. If a game is happening, I have to be following it in some way or another, no matter how mad it makes me or how little enjoyment I get out of it. So, no, we will not be choosing the Cubs over Twins. This is in addition to.

John is excitedly into the idea, but time will tell if I can force myself to care about them.