In the Age of Declining DH Performance, Twins Have Bucked the Trend

[Cody Christie]

Jim Thome and Nelson Cruz aren’t walking back through the doors of Target Field to save the team. So, why do the Minnesota Twins still have an advantage in an age of declining DH performance?

 

Image courtesy of Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

Major League Baseball universalized the designated hitter rule in 2022, and some franchises have struggled to find players to fill the role. The DH decline can be tied to multiple factors, with only four players logging at least 450 plate appearances as a DH last year. Some players are better suited for the mental preparation needed only to be asked to hit, and your lineup spot only coming around once every couple of innings.

The Twins are finding a way to succeed In an age of declining DH performance. Over the last two seasons, the Astros and Blue Jays are the only teams with more fWAR from the DH position than the Twins have gotten. Since 2020, DH has been the Twins’ best offensive position by OPS, and their 17.9 fWAR is baseball’s highest mark. This total puts the Twins higher than the Astros and Angels, who had Yordan Álvarez and Shohei Ohtani regularly playing DH. So, how have the Twins avoided the DH decline impacting the league?

2023 Twins DH Performance: .216/.319/.447, 34 2B, 1 3B, 35 HR, 223 K, 83 BB
Minnesota entered the 2023 season expecting Byron Buxton to get most of the plate appearances at DH, because of his nagging knee injury. He played 80 games at DH, but struggled to hit .207/.295/.442, with 17 doubles and 17 home runs. Edouard Julien spent the second-most time at DH, and his .734 OPS was over 100 points lower than his OPS for the season. Former Twin Jorge Polanco had the team’s highest OPS (.929) with 20 or more plate appearances as the DH. Royce Lewis finished tied for second in home runs among DHs, despite only playing nine games at the position.

2022 Twins DH Performance: .256/.336/.415, 37 2B, 2 3B, 19 HR, 156 K, 63 BB
During the 2022 campaign, the Twins had three batters receive 140 or more plate appearances at DH. Luis Arráez led the team with 157 plate appearances, and hit .322/.369/.427 when he did, with 12 extra-base hits and a 9-to-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Buxton posted an .823 OPS, with five doubles and nine home runs in 128 at-bats. Gary Sánchez logged 140 plate appearances at DH and tied Arráez with 10 doubles from the position. The Twins also got solid production from José Miranda, as he batted .373/.434/.507 with eight extra-base hits in 75 at-bats. 

2021 Twins DH Performance: .252/.338/.474, 30 2B, 3 3B, 30 HR, 154 K, 68 BB
The 2021 season was unique, because the DH had been universal during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and became universal again in 2022. In between, though, the National League played one last season under its old rules, with pitchers required to bat for themselves.

These rule changes helped the Twins, because Nelson Cruz had fewer suitors, so he returned for another run. In 340 PA, he hit .295/.371/.541 with 13 doubles and 19 home runs. His OPS+ was 168 in his first two seasons with the Twins and dropped to a respectable 148 before the team traded him to Tampa Bay. Josh Donaldson was the only other player to have more than 40 at-bats (125 AB) at DH, and posted a .708 OPS with 11 extra-base hits. 

The Twins have managed to post strong numbers at DH for multiple reasons since Cruz was traded away. Arráez and Buxton combined for a one-two punch of contact and power during the 2022 season, with other players like Miranda adding to the team’s overall numbers. Minnesota hoped Buxton would carry the DH spot in 2023, but when the club was forced to turn the position over to other hitters in the second half, those fallback guys performed well. Other teams might pencil in the same name at the DH spot regularly, while the Twins have rotated through options and played the platoon advantage. Minnesota has started five players at DH through the team’s first eight games in 2024, so it will be interesting to track whether their DH performance continues to rank near the top of the league. 

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Who will get the most time at DH this year? Where will the team rank by season’s end? Leave a comment and start the discussion.

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[Mark G]

I think Cody hit it when he talked about players being mentally suited for the role of batting only and not playing the field; a lot of time goes by in between at bats and staying in the game mentally is a challenge for some players.  The Twins use the DH to a considerable degree as a semi rest game for some of our regulars that we want to give the day off in the field, but still want their bat in the lineup, and sometimes use specific guys more often because there is no place in the field for them that day, and that means some of the time guys don't go long stretches in the DH role, meaning they don't have to settle into a mind set that is long term.  Personally, I don't care for using the DH for that purpose, as it is not the purpose MLB brought the DH into existence in the first place, but it does appear to help with the mental part of the position for our guys.  Until we get another Molitor, Thome, or Cruz to grace us with their bat, it looks like this is the path we are on, so let's make it work.  

[IndianaTwin]

Overall, it speaks to the emphasis the Twins have been putting on depth and roster flexibility. When you've got 13 legitimate hitters on the roster, you're always going to have someone decent in that spot. Few teams have that. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

"This is the business we have chosen!" said Hyman Roth in "The Godfather"

[Doctor Gast]

Always thought that DH was a sore spot since Cruz. It seemed that Buxton had troubles w/ his body & DH mindset to excel at that position.

[Riverbrian]

16 minutes ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

"This is the business we have chosen!" said Hyman Roth in "The Godfather"

"He's small Potatoes". 

[joefish]

I can't buy the mental part of dhing.

Swing the bat. Wait your turn. Study the pitcher. Get used to it. It's better than not playing. But jeffers stunk last night too. Again.

Maybe having a different dh every game is the problem. And Rocco's musical chairs lineups. 

 

[IndianaTwin]

3 hours ago, Bigfork Twins Guy said:

I wonder if we will ever get to a time where they rotate DH's within a game.  Kinda like when they used to move a pitcher to RF for one batter and then return him to the mound in the NL pre-DH days.  As long as they are not removed from the game, they can continue playing.  With all the movement towards flexibility and players being able to play multiple positions, this seems somewhat feasible.  This would eliminate a full game DH and keep the DH's in the game more mentally since they would be playing in the field for much of the game.  Just a weird thought that randomly came into my head🤪.  Feel free to attack it with vigor.

It would take a rules change. Currently, if a DH comes into play defense, the team loses the DH and the pitcher moves into the replaced player's spot. 

For example, last evening if Jeffers had moved from DH into the catcher's spot, the current pitcher would have slid into Vazquez's spot in the seven hole. 

 

The Twins did have an interesting situation last week, when they were getting shelled by the Royals. Had they not had an off day the next day, I wondered if they would bring in a position player to pitch. See this lineup: 

In this case, the potential logical choice to pitch is Castro, based on him having done it three times last year. If so, Austin can move to SS (or Farmer, with Martin going to 3B). And then the logical thing is to bring Margot in from DH to play center. In this case, they would have been losing the DH, BUT the new pitcher is Castro, so I believe that he would have just stayed in his spot. His position in the box score would just show up as 3B-SS-P. (At least, I'm pretty sure how that would have been handled.)

It does mean that if Castro was replaced as a pitcher, the new pitcher would then have been batting in Castro's spot, just as if it was a straight-up substitution in the olden days when pitchers hit.

(And for the record, through eight games, Castro seems to be hitting like a pitcher with his OPS+ of 23.)

 

 

[bean5302]

As DH:

2024 - Twins wRC+ 74 (28th)
2023 - Twins wRC+ 111 (11th)
2022 - Twins wRC+ 120 (6th)