Minnesota Twins Decade Retrospective: 2000

As I mentioned in a hastily (and poorly) written introduction last week, I am diving into a Twins year-by-year decade retrospective. Instead of doing the seasons in order, however, I have decided to rank each year from best to worst using a scoring system.

I will analyze each season based on these categories:

Successfulness: This one is pretty simple. Most successful team gets the highest score, least successful team gets the lowest score, and the rest fall somewhere in between. More cut and dry than the others, but there is some room for debate.

Memorableness: First off, yes, I know memorableness isn’t a word. I don’t care. Deal with it. This category is simply both how memorable the year was as a whole, and how many single moments stand out.

Likeability: This will be mostly about how likeable the team was, and how enjoyable they were to watch as a fan.

Intangibles: Other basic randomness that makes the year more or less enjoyable.

Overall: The overall score will be the total of the other four categories added up. In other words, 40 is a perfect score, and 4 is me in calculus (epic failure). However, once I have assigned a 1 in a category, no other season can receive a score of 1. I will be ranking each category 1-10, making a perfect (or anti-perfect) score highly unlikely.

Make sense? If not, it will soon enough.

So without further ado, onto the tenth best season of the decade…

The 2000 Minnesota Twins sucked. A lot.

If you had to say something nice about the team, it would be that between Jacque Jones, David Ortiz, Torii Hunter, Cristian Guzman, Corey Koskie, Eric Milton, and A.J. Pierzynski the Twins appeared to have some solid young talent. Of course, the potential talent was bridged by Ron Coomer, so naturally fans were skeptical. Plus, everyone was still shell-shocked by Scott Stahoviak and friends from the 1990s.

Very much the anti-Stahoviaks, the 2000 core went on to kick-start the (arguably) most successful decade in Twins history.

Obviously at the time, however, nobody saw a decade of success coming, and 2000 – thankfully -- proved to be the worst season of the decade.

Successfulness – 1

From every imaginable standpoint, the 2000 Twins were the least successful team of the decade. They finished in last place with a 69-93 record, featured one all star and precisely zero players who would even be considered for any postseason award. Well, other than least-talented-fan-favorite, an award that would almost certainly go to Ron Coomer. (I’m not piling on the Coom Dawg. I love the Coom Dawg too. But come on. In hindsight, ugh. Just ugh.)

The only successful thing about the 2000 Twins is that it would be the last year the team completely sucked. Of course, at the time, nobody knew this.

Memorableness - 1

There is only one game I remember from 2000, and that was when Ron Coomer, Jacque Jones, and Matthew LeCroy hit back-to-back-to-back home runs against the Royals.

Conversely, the 2000 Twins featured the only player from the decade I don’t remember: John Barnes.

Who the fuck is John Barnes?

In combing through Baseball Reference, I remember literally everyone (even the random pitchers who threw like three total innings) from the decade. It pisses me off to no end that I don’t remember John Barnes. I should know who John Barnes is. This is going to drive me crazy for a very, very long time.

Of course, I was also 13 at the time, so I was probably busier trying to figure out how to discreetly watch porn than worry about John Barnes. In hindsight, I am pleased with that decision.

Team Likeability: 1

It’s not so much that I disliked the 2000 Twins; they were just very meh. I mean, aside from Midre Cummings and Butch Huskey, they didn’t even have the random veterans I enjoyed in the 90s.

Just a completely meh team.

Intangibles: 3

Remember when Butch Huskey ran into the left field wall? That was fun.

Also, according to Wikipedia, the Twins started their Hall of Fame in 2000. That has to be worth a few points right?

Overall: 6

The obvious choice for worst season of the decade, the 2000 Twins just managed to avoid the dreaded lowest-score-possible.

Honestly, I just felt bad giving them a 4. Jay Canizaro deserves better.