The Twins' Offense Has Gotten Off to a Poor Start - Why is that?

[cHawk]

The Twins just lost to the Royals tonight by a score of 2-0, dropping them to 4-8 in their first 12 games. Why is that? Somewhat shockingly, it has not been because of their pitching staff.

Here are some of the Twins' offensive rankings:

Batting Average: Bottom 5
Runs Scored: Bottom 10
Strikeouts: Top 10 Most
Team OPS: Bottom 10

Several of their hitters have underperformed (Sano, Polanco, Kirilloff, Correa, etc). They have also been hit with the injury bug early in the year. Buxton and Kirilloff have both hit the IL early in the year.

Why is this? Why are the Twins struggling so much on offense when it was expected to be one of baseball's best? And what needs to happen to fix it?

[notoriousgod71]

Major holes at catcher, 1b, dh, lf, rf, and cf half the time plus underachieving Correa. Of the poor performances Correa is the only shocker. 

[USAFChief]

50 minutes ago, alex ψ said:

Why are the Twins struggling so much on offense when it was expected to be one of baseball's best? 

The offense won't continue to be this anemic, but only on TD was the offense "expected to be one of baseball's best."

No 1.000 OPS hitters. Polanco and Buxton should be good hitters. Correa maybe very good. Other than that...where are the good to great hitters? We had Urahela and Garlick hitting 3 and 4 tonight. That's not "one of baseball's best." That's putrid.

 

[Twins_Fan_For_Life]

Twins offense.

[Blyleven2011]

The twins need to hand out hand warmers and heaters in the dugout to keep them warm  ..

The hitting should get better  .

I'd like our wiz kids to talk to the schedule makers and have us on the west coast to start the season  , coming up from Florida to the cold could possibly be the problem  ,,,

Since target field opened have we really ever got off to a great start ...

[cHawk]

1 minute ago, Blyleven2011 said:

Since target field opened have we really ever got off to a great start ...

2019, 2020, etc

[Irishman]

8 hours ago, Twins_Fan_For_Life said:

Twins offense.

It is no wonder Twins offense still suck!  LOL!   

I will not watch Twins game this season,  The offense are terrible!    Batting coach(es) should be fired!  

[laloesch]

52 minutes ago, Irishman said:

It is no wonder Twins offense still suck!  LOL!   

I will not watch Twins game this season,  The offense are terrible!    Batting coach(es) should be fired!  

They don't have a whole lot of talent.  I think the pitching is on the way, but it will take some time. The offense is anemic and I'm also extremely tired of the Sano strikeout show.  They should have traded that guy a couple of years ago when his value was at it's highest.  He's a poorly conditioned non disciplined hitter and he's not the only one.  This is easily a 100+ loss team in my opinion.  The best the Twins can hope for is that Correa does fairly well up until the all-star break and then flips him to a playoff contender at the trade deadline for several top prospects.

[cHawk]

1 minute ago, laloesch said:

They don't have a whole lot of talent.  I'm also extremely tired of the Sano strikeout show.  We should have traded this guy a couple of years ago when his value was at it's highest.  he's a poorly conditioned non disciplined hitter and he's not the only one.  This is easily a 100+ loss team in my opinion.  The best the Twins can hope is that Correa does well and they flip him around the trade deadline for prospects.

Damn. Why the **** the FO decided to make moves for Gray and Correa is beyond me then.

[nicksaviking]

Agree with Chief. This offense will get better (seems most years they start slow), but there was never any reason we should have thought this offense would be much better than average. I mean when it takes us pages to discuss who's going to be the clean up hitter, and there were never any satisfactory answers, we should have known there were issues.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Agree with Chief. This offense will get better (seems most years they start slow), but there was never any reason we should have thought this offense would be much better than average.

It really depends on the health of Buxton and Correa. If both are healthy, this offense should be quite good. Not elite but very good.

If either is injured, I don't see the offense being better than average, especially if players like Jeffers continue to not hit. The end of this lineup is quite a blackhole right now.

[In My La Z boy]

Bi-polar leadership. The juxtaposition / late signing of Correa for $35.1M / opening day trade of Rogers your closer.

Are we going for it / are we re-building?

Do we want to win today / is this more about next year?

Can we do both at the same time / Who does this, you're either trying to win today, or trying to position yourself to win in the future. Trading our closer on opening day flies in the face of signing the top free agent to play short. 

[nicksaviking]

7 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

It really depends on the health of Buxton and Correa. If both are healthy, this offense should be quite good. Not elite but very good.

If either is injured, I don't see the offense being better than average, especially if players like Jeffers continue to not hit. The end of this lineup is quite a blackhole right now.

Sure, but you go Buxton, Correa, Polanco, then the lineup falls off of a cliff, even when healthy.

Some decent options for #7-9 hitters, but the heart of the lineup was always going to be way too small.

[Linus]

It’s a very one dimensional lineup - the one dimension being power. If we aren’t hitting home runs we aren’t scoring. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Sure, but you go Buxton, Correa, Polanco, then the lineup falls off of a cliff, even when healthy.

Some decent options for #7-9 hitters, but the heart of the lineup is way too small.

Arraez is good, Urshela is fine, losing Kirilloff again really hurts.

I'm so over Sano and Kepler at this point, particularly Kepler. He has no excuse to be this bad whereas Sano just has lousy contact skills, we've all known that for years.

[Squirrel]

All I know is that the players need to get it together. This offense is on them more than anything else. I can’t say why it is this way but it shouldn’t be this bad. I don’t expect home runs from everyone at every at bat, but I do expect some hitting and I just can’t say why it’s this bad. Hopefully it turns around soon.

[cHawk]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Arraez is good, Urshela is fine, losing Kirilloff again really hurts.

I'm so over Sano and Kepler at this point, particularly Kepler. He has no excuse to be this bad whereas Sano just has lousy contact skills, we've all known that for years.

What’s interesting is Kepler’s Baseball Savant page would suggest that he’s been playing better than his stats

So either these shouldn’t be given as much weight as I thought or he’s been underachieving. IDK though.

[Trov]

40 minutes ago, laloesch said:

They don't have a whole lot of talent.  I think the pitching is on the way, but it will take some time. The offense is anemic and I'm also extremely tired of the Sano strikeout show.  They should have traded that guy a couple of years ago when his value was at it's highest.  He's a poorly conditioned non disciplined hitter and he's not the only one.  This is easily a 100+ loss team in my opinion.  The best the Twins can hope for is that Correa does fairly well up until the all-star break and then flips him to a playoff contender at the trade deadline for several top prospects.

Sano actually is very disciplined hitter, which why his strikeouts are an even bigger issue.  He has a low chase rate for a guy that strikes out as much as he does.  His issue is he cannot hit fastballs in the zone well, and he takes a lot of called strikes on the edge of the zone.  He is not up there swinging at anything thrown, his huge issue, which is worse than chasing, is that he misses strikes in the zone.  

[Number3]

6 minutes ago, Trov said:

Sano actually is very disciplined hitter, which why his strikeouts are an even bigger issue.  He has a low chase rate for a guy that strikes out as much as he does.  His issue is he cannot hit fastballs in the zone well, and he takes a lot of called strikes on the edge of the zone.  He is not up there swinging at anything thrown, his huge issue, which is worse than chasing, is that he misses strikes in the zone.  

In other words, Sano is a bad hitter.

[4twinsJA]

I am discouraged by the Twins hitting performance as well. If they do hit a ball hard it is at someone, or if someone gets a hit the next batter grounds into DP. In regards to Sano, he played all 4 games in Boston series and only had 1 K, and 1 last night. He is making contact more often. When he is on, he is one of the most dangerous hitter in MLB. Sanchez had high K rate last year and much improved this year. Everything will average out over the course of the year, Sano will have 30+ HRs, Polanco and Correa will end up hitting around .275. Hopefully Buxton back soon, weather and hitting improve.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

52 minutes ago, Linus said:

It’s a very one dimensional lineup - the one dimension being power. If we aren’t hitting home runs we aren’t scoring. 

I think this is a very good point, and part of why the lineup changes so drastically when a lefty starts, and then the chess match in the mid innings of righty/lefty bullpen usage.

outside of Arraez there is not a ton of contact being made, Arraez doesn’t hit Lefties well, and the team is very LH heavy. They’ve also faced Lefties frequently thus far.

over the course of the season the Lefties frequency should normalize and the ball should carry better in the heat of summer, but contact rate could/should persist unless the FO can find a couple hitters.

Additionally, I think the short spring roster construction to pad the bullpen helps the pitching end of the lefty/righty matchups and hurts the bench strength. Who are they going to promote? Move Miranda to LF or RF I suppose, but he’s not exactly crushing it.

[CRF]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but the overall hitting and approach was better when Rowson was here. It kind of seems to me that we got significantly worse at the plate after he left. I think he was a solid influence on the team overall too. Just my two cents. I wouldn't have minded at all if he was the manager, and not Baldelli. One other thing...how does everyone feel about the constant batting order and line up changes. I don't care for it at all. I'd like to see a relatively set batting order, kind of day in day out for the most part. Obviously, you can't do that over the course of a season, but I think you catch my drift. I'm old school that way. 

[gunnarthor]

I think this team is slightly better constructed then last year's team, so it should be slightly better. And everyone is at or under 50 PA, so we have a huge sample size issue. But if you construct a high slg, low obp team, you'll get dry spells. I thought adding Kiriloff and Correa full time would improve that. I didn't have high hopes for Kepler, he's underperformed his stats for years now. And, obviously, Buxton's injury isn't good (1-4 without him in the lineup).

There's no obvious fix, the players will have to play their way out of these slumps. I expect most will. It's also worth remembering that the AL is pretty blah this year. As bad as the Twins are, we're only 3GB of the best record in the AL. So we haven't been knocked out of the playoffs yet. 

[gunnarthor]

7 minutes ago, CRF said:

One other thing...how does everyone feel about the constant batting order and line up changes. I don't care for it at all. I'd like to see a relatively set batting order, kind of day in day out for the most part. Obviously, you can't do that over the course of a season, but I think you catch my drift. I'm old school that way. 

I've complained about that before as well. That was one thing Gardy always advocated for - even when he rested Mauer, he would put Redman in the same spot. (As did Leyland when Redmon was playing for Rodriguez). He said that players need consistency, even when they are struggling. It's interesting to see how much batting orders change. If you look at 2006 - 6 players got 90+ starts in the same batting order spot. Last year, the Twins had one. And almost every spot was pretty fluid. No consistent middle of the order.

[CRF]

Just saw that Buck is the DH today.

[Irishman]

Baldelli needs to be replaced by Rowson.   Twins hitting performance declines since Rowson left.

[Doctor Gast]

The Twins hasn't thawed out yet because of the weather hasn't let them. Why not start the season in sunny Florida, TX, AR and southern Cal.? so they can get their juices flowing. I think is part of the reasons.

[PatPfund]

Sano has been a disaster, but if anyone gets the Athletic, you should read the Gleeman piece on the Twins cold start. The rest of the hitting roster COMBINED is striking out at a higher rate than Miguel Sano. That's how bad it has been.

I'm confident Polanco and Correa will come out of it soon. Urshela looks solid, and Sanchez encouraging (if he keeps hitting .240-.250 he should get the majority of catching starts over .200 Jeffers). Arraez will hit if healthy and in the lineup. Beyond that are huge question marks. (Will Byron stay on the field? Is Larnach even an MLB hitter? Is Jeffers? Is Celestino? Is Gordon? Is Kepler? Will Sano get started before the Twins drop out of contention? Can a call-up like Miranda help? Can the Twins get in-season help?)

Probably need at least three strong positive outcomes in that group of questions to be "competitive".

[Squirrel]

2 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

The Twins hasn't thawed out yet because of the weather hasn't let them. Why not start the season in sunny Florida, TX, AR and southern Cal.? so they can get their juices flowing. I think is part of the reasons.

You realize that about a third of Major League Baseball has the same issue? While it seems reasonable to us to work the schedule in our favor, the league has to deal with 29 other teams also making schedule requests. Would you really want the Twins to start the season on the road for 3-4;weeks? I don’t think that would work. But, that said, I don’t think April baseball helps. But the Twins have managed to have a few good games offensively, even in the cold, so I don’t think all of this can be attributed just to weather. The players themselves need to get it done. And they aren’t.

[Old fox]

I too am a little old fashioned and  baseball players are creatures of habit and like a set batting order.  When hitters have momentum let them play and then let them rest a day after going 0-3.  I would think the manager would figure this out and a lot of other things because he isn’t a rookie manager as he is starting his 4th season. The fans, FO, players aren’t as forgiving as with a rookie manager.  The other 29 teams have books on Baldy’s managing tendencies.