Entering the 2025 season, the Twins were expecting great things from Matt Wallner. “The Pride of Forest Lake” had a 143 wRC+ (.251/.366/.500) in just over a full season’s worth of games, showing enough promise that the Twins were willing to part with longtime right fielder Max Kepler. He even took over one of Kepler’s primary spots in the batting order as the team’s leadoff hitter to start this season and rewarded the organization’s faith in him by hitting .263/.373/.474 (138 wRC+) until he was sidelined by a strained hamstring on April 15th. 

From his return to the active roster on May 31st to July 2nd, Wallner looked more like Joey Gallo than classic Wallner. While the power was still present (.244 ISO), his batting average plummeted (.156), leading to a 77 wRC+ and for calls to demote him to Triple-A. However, it was notable that his struggles did not coincide with an increase of strikeouts. A big man with big power, striking out in over 30% of his plate appearances has been the tradeoff for being a threat to go deep every time he steps up to the dish. While a slump to start the 2024 season included striking out in over half of his plate appearances, this season’s decline featured a strikeout rate just below 30%. Wallner’s problem wasn’t a lack of contact, it was a lack of hard contact. 

The good news is that Wallner appears to have righted his ship without taking a detour to St. Paul, as he’s been hitting .239/.340/.522 (139 wRC+) in his last 15 games. What’s puzzling is that a big part of Wallner’s game is still missing, though.

During his 2023 season, Twins Daily writer Matt Braun labeled Wallner a “Hit By Pitch Savant.” At the time the article was written, “Cement Bones” had amassed 12 plunkings in just 49 games, and finished with 13 in 76 games. Despite only appearing in roughly half of the season’s games, his hit-by-pitch tally was just 2 behind Donovan Solano for the team lead, who achieved 15 while needing 58 additional games. Wallner’s 2024 season was similar as he was drilled 16 times in just 75 games, yet once again was only good for second place as Willi Castro accumulated 21 in over double the playing time.

If that wasn’t enough evidence, his rate of beanings is where Wallner really shined. While he’s not atop any hit-by-pitch leaderboards because of his injuries and slumps taking away playing time, he’s still rivaled his contemporaries when we look at his ratios. From 2022-2024, Ty France led MLB with 68 hits-by-pitch, which equals 1 HBP per 6.4 games, or 1 HBP per 26.7 PA. Here, we see the Top 10 (or 11, as there’s a 3-way tie for 8th) over Wallner’s first three partial seasons.

MLB Hit By Pitch Leaders by Volume, 2022-2024

But when we look at his games played per hit by pitch and plate appearances per hit by pitch, that’s when Wallner enters the chat. 

MLB Hit By Pitch Leaders by G/HBP, 2022-2024 (min. 60 games)

MLB Hit By Pitch Leaders by PA/HBP, 2022-2024 (min. 60 games)

Returning back to Matt Braun’s 2023 article about Wallner, he pointed out that Wallner gets hit in two primary locations by doing one simple trick: It’s either his elbow or his lower legs, and it’s because he simply does not get out of the way. Regarding his elbow, he even seems to stick it in the path of the ball while also appearing to get out of the way. 

This season, The Minnesota Moose hasn’t been as much of a ball magnet. While he’s still shy of his 76 games in 2023 and 75 games in 2024 and thus his volume of hit by pitches should be expected to be lower, his rate of plunkings has dropped precipitously. 

Matt Wallner Hit By Pitch, MLB Career

Anecdotally, I don’t recall seeing Wallner suddenly develop an aversion to wearing one from a pitcher, so I was puzzled when I discovered his dropoff. My instinct was to check if he’s being pitched differently than in years past, which turns out to be true (the images below are from the catcher’s view). 

As you can see in the 2025 image, not only is Wallner seeing fewer pitches off the plate inside (the right of the zone in the pictures), he’s seeing fewer pitches outside the zone, period. This is confirmed by his 2025 zone percentage (the percent of pitches seen inside the strike zone) being the highest of his career. It might seem that challenging a power hitter like Wallner is a recipe for disaster, but we have to remember that swinging hard often comes with a fair number of whiffs, too, of which Wallner has not improved. (MLB average zone% is 52.4% and average z-contact% is 85.6% in 2025). 

Matt Wallner Zone% and Zone Contact% By Year

While getting hit by pitches may seem accidental, we have to remember that some players show that it is indeed a skill, such as Ty France and Willi Castro. Wallner was demonstrating the same in the past, but pitchers are also pitching inside the zone more to take away one of his weapons. Fortunately, he’s countered the loss of HBPs by boosting his walk rate to a career-high 11.3%, so he’s still finding ways to get on base even when the hits and hit-by-pitches weren’t coming.

It seems like Wallner might be getting himself out of his most recent slump, and returning to being a threat at the plate will probably lead to more pitches out of the zone and thus more chances to demonstrate how he got the moniker “Cement Bones.” Regardless, I think all of us (and perhaps Wallner himself, too) would prefer to see him rack up hits and home runs more than fastballs to the elbow pad and breaking balls to his lower body.