The wake was held Friday night at Target Field, and you could practically hear verse after verse of “Danny Boy” over those silent Minnesota hitters and gasping pitchers. writes Brian Murphy.

As I said, this was outside the Irish pub at 2:15 a.m., after the beer and whiskey had dried up and the mourners were stumbling to an afterparty. Pour one for the suffocating 2024 Twins, who humbly bowed out of contention with a typical 7-2 loss to the playoff-bound Baltimore Orioles.

A breakdown for the ages, heralding a winter of discontent and self-reflection, if they can bear it.

“This was clearly more than a disappointing end to a seemingly promising season,” said manager Rocco Baldelli darkly. “This will worry me forever.”

Yes, get in line.

The Twins needed just two hours to complete a historic collapse after the Detroit Tigers put them in trouble with their wild-card home win over the hapless White Sox around 8 p.m. But never forget that their grave was dug last winter when the owner cut a modest payroll and stripped the studs of all the goodwill they had earned in October.

“I’m just trying to right-size our deal,” a tone-deaf Joe Pohlad explained casually during spring training about cutting $30 million from a postseason roster and sifting through the free-agent bargain bin like one old maid. Willful disregard for your audience is no way to run a business, but hey, I’m not the one with diversified holdings and billions in the bank.

The Pohlads betrayed their fiduciary duties as franchise managers by petrifying their product and assuming their customers wouldn’t notice. They conveniently scapegoated bankrupt Bally’s Sports and that summer’s legal battle that reduced revenue and obscured broadcasts for a large swath of loyal and constantly exploited patrons.

Worse, they failed to understand the space and reward an abandoned fan base that had fallen in love with the Twins again and made a splash again at Target Field last fall when the team won its first playoff game in 20 years and finally advanced after nine consecutive defeats. Cynical administration for all to see. What a waste.

All that energy and momentum turned to ash as the Twins started the season 6-12. They awoke from their slumber and accumulated enough wins by August 17 to reach a high of 70-53 and eventually build a 10½ game lead over Detroit in the wild card race. Not quite the 1951 Giants and Bobby Thompson, who erased a 13 ½ game deficit and defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers. Or the Red Sox, who blew a 14-game lead over the Yankees in 1478. But the humble Twins’ six-week collapse was thorough enough to declare this season one of the most complete and embarrassing in franchise history.

“There is an expression that everything happens for a reason. I don’t like him,” said Pablo Lopez, burdened by his 10th and final defeat in a disappointing and inconsistent season for the ace. “People use it when what you didn’t want to happen happens.”

Nothing can disguise the fact that the Twins have simply bled to death, and the boos that rang out from the seats on a balmy early fall night may be the least of the club’s worries. Beer at the ballpark is still $14 every night, but fans are finally waking up from the frost they’ve been in since Target Field opened its gilded doors in 2010.

During this week’s Miami series, attendance dropped to just under 17,000 on Thursday night as the Twins choked in the 13th inning and needed life support. The autopsy should spare no one, from the owner’s suite and front office to the manager’s office, the clubhouse and the ever-crowded training room. Accountability is not just a press conference cliché. By padlocking the vault, the Pohlads left Executive Vice President and Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey and Senior VP/General Manager Thad Levine no room for error as they attempted to bolster the pitching staff and supplement this gassed lineup .

Still, they took advantage of each acquisition to replenish a staff thinned by the offseason departure of Sonny Gray and the loss of Joe Ryan in August or to bolster a beaten-down bullpen that has been bleeding runs and bodies for weeks.

Mystery backup Trevor Richards was brought in from Toronto at the late July trade deadline, but proved so useless that he was released in less than a month. It would have been better for Falvey to strike rather than cause another failure. Lopez’s resurgence at the end of the season was hardly enough to put together a suitable starting lineup without battle-tested veterans.

Three rookies — Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa and Zebby Matthews — were desperately thrust into a pennant-race role they were woefully unprepared for and unfairly aided by an offense that went up in flames over the summer.

Minnesota’s inability to go deep or put runners in scoring position in September was an accelerant. Manager Rocco Baldelli’s stubborn refusal to check his gut before the charts came out robbed proven starters like Bailey Ober of the chance to continue shutting down opposing lineups because of the addictive lure of data-driven late-inning matchups.

Superstars Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton were in the lineup together for about two weeks while the Twins’ injury woes only worsened. Bally’s celebrated this week as Buxton played his 100th game for the first time in seven years, as if he had survived the Bataan Death March.

The autopsies reveal the harsh truth that the Twins are a mediocre team constantly struggling for top talent and postseason breadcrumbs because the Pohlads would rather have clean records than play tough against competitors more driven by the championship hunt. This is not a matter of correct sizing, but of billing. The status quo is untenable. Everyone knows it. Will anything change?

The Pohlads have revealed their motives. It’s time for fans to vote with their wallets, drain 1 Twins Way’s revenue stream, and stop carrying water for a team that treats them like idiots.