What It Means to Me to Have the Minnesota Twins in the Playoffs

The last time the Minnesota Twins were in a playoff series was 2010. When I was in the sixth grade, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” came out, and Kesha’s song “Tik Tok” hit the charts. Back then there were simpler times for the Twins, winning on pitching, defense and timely hitting. A team lead by Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel and Jim Thome led to them winning 94 games and taking the American League by storm—until they ran into the Yankees in the American League Division Series and were swept.

Since then it has been a plethora of disappointing seasons. There were seasons where we would miss the playoffs, and that one year in 2017 we made the wild card game and were beaten by the Yankees. No matter how much we tried, we couldn’t seem to get anything together for a solid playoff run. Every year October came around, we would sit at home.

That was until this season, when the Twins solid young core of Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, Byron Buxton and Jose Berrios were joined by three big free agents signing. They knew how to do one thing—hit home runs. The Twins signed switch hitter Marwin Gonzalez, C.J Cron  and Nelson Cruz who immediately jumped in and started hitting home runs.

The Twins cruised through the season hitting a major league record of 307 home runs and labeling themselves the Bomba Squad. I can’t remember a more fun season to be a Twins fan than this last season. In my opinion, though, what made this team so great this season wasn’t all the home runs. Rather, there wasn’t one guy that was the face of the team. They all just played as a team. They enjoyed the highs and trudged through the lows together.

They finished the season with 101 wins the second most in franchise history, and their first playoff series since 2010. Again, we ran into the Yankees. Even though the series didn’t end the way we all hoped, I think we can all enjoy the fact that we had fun baseball season in Minnesota again, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.