Expectation vs. Reality: Comparing Preseason Projections to What's Happened So Far

[Nick Nelson]

With 40 games in the books, we are now almost exactly one quarter of the way through the Twins 2024 season. It seems like a good opportunity to look back at how this team was projected heading into the campaign, and how reality has matched up thus far.

Image courtesy of Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

Before the start of the season, I wrote up a series of Position Analysis articles previewing each position across the roster. As part of that exercise, I noted where FanGraphs projected the Twins to rank among 30 teams in Wins Above Replacement for each positional unit. 

With 25 percent of the season now in the books, I thought it would be interesting to compare those preseason projections to where the Twins stand at each position, as a way of reviewing how expectations have matched reality through the first quarter of the schedule. Here's a rundown of each position – you can click on the name of the position to look back at the full preview for a refresher on how they were viewed heading into the season.

Catcher
Preseason Projection: 15th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 4th out of 30

As I noted at the time, it was surprising to see the Twins forecasted as a middle-of-the-pack catching unit, with Ryan Jeffers coming off a breakout year and backed up by a good-glove veteran in Christian Vázquez. Much of the system's skepticism stemmed from expected regression for Jeffers, who was projected at just 1.8 fWAR. He's already reached that number in a quarter of the season, and is on an MVP-type pace. Vázquez once again isn't hitting, but is once again grading out extremely well defensively.

First Base
Preseason Projection: 26th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 15th out of 30

Much like at catcher, the Twins are headily outperforming expectations at first base, which were understandably very low coming into the season with declining veteran Carlos Santana and oft-injured Alex Kirilloff set to handle the position. It was trending this way for a while, with Minnesota ranking near the bottom of the league through the first few weeks, but they've inched up to the median thanks to Santana's awakening at the plate and solid work in the field.

Notably, more than one-third of the league (11 teams) have gotten sub-replacement level production at first base.

Second Base
Preseason Projection: 14th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 7th out of 30

FanGraphs projected a steep drop-off for the Twins at second, ranking them 14th after they finished third among MLB teams in 2023. The reason was the same as at catcher: anticipated regression from the starter, following an outrageously good season. Indeed, Edouard Julien has experienced some minor regression at the plate, with his 131 OPS+ as a rookie dropping to 121 so far in his sophomore campaign. But he's still been very good, and his better-than-expected defense has him on pace for a 4+ WAR season, placing the Twins comfortably in the top 10 at this position despite Kyle Farmer's negative contributions.

Third Base
Preseason Projection: 6th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 14th out of 30

This is one of the only positions where the Twins have been significantly worse than expected, and the reason is obvious: Royce Lewis was primed to be one of the best third basemen in the league, and he's been unavailable since Opening Day. In light of that fact, it's fairly impressive they've managed to hang around the middle of the league, and that owes in large part to José Miranda stepping up. Coming into the season, it wasn't clear that Miranda was really even in the picture anymore at third base, so his re-emergence has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the season so far.

Shortstop
Preseason Projection: 6th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 8th out of 30

With superstar Carlos Correa entering his age-29 season, the Twins were expected to be among the league's best at shortstop. They've nearly met their No. 6 projection so far, despite being without Correa for almost half of their games – a major credit to Willi Castro, who slashed .322/.369/.542 while Correa was on the injured list.

Left Field
Preseason Projection: 19th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 22nd out of 30

The Twins are right around they were expected to be in left field, though the way they've gotten there is not quite what we expected. Matt Wallner was lined up as the regular at the spot, but he made only three starts there. He quickly shifted to right field to cover for injured Max Kepler and was demoted by the time Kepler returned. Left field has mainly been handled by Kirilloff (13 starts) and Austin Martin (11), with Trevor Larnach, Manuel Margot and Castro also factoring in. Collectively, this group has been below-average, but not downright terrible.

Center Field
Preseason Projection: 7th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 6th out of 30

This might come as the biggest surprise as you read through these rankings; it certainly did for me. Byron Buxton has been mediocre offensively, but was providing a lot of impact on defense before going down with his knee injury, with FanGraphs rating him as the third-most valuable center fielder in baseball behind Julio Rodríguez and (guess who) Michael A. Taylor. Castro and Martin have also done a decent job in center.

Right Field
Preseason Projection: 10th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 12th out of 30

The Twins started out slowly here, but have been steadily climbing the rankings, with Kepler on an absolute tear over the past three weeks. Since returning from the injured list, Kepler leads the major leagues in both Wins Above Replacement and Win Probability Added. Combine that with the subpar production Minnesota got from right before he returned, and on the whole, you end up right around the fringe of the top 10.

Designated Hitter
Preseason Projection: 16th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 23rd of 30

The expectation coming into the season was that Kirilloff would get the lion's share of at-bats as the designated hitter. Instead, he's spent much more time in the outfield. Starts at DH were distributed pretty widely in April, but here in May, it's developed into a consistent rotation between Jeffers and Trevor Larnach. For as much power as the Twins have gotten throughout the lineup, they haven't gotten a ton from this position, which is slugging .363 with a sub-.300 on-base percentage.

Starting Pitcher
Preseason Projection: 6th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 7th out of 30

Many were surprised to see the Twins rotation so favorably projected by systems like FanGraphs, following an offseason where they lost Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda. But these lofty projections were influenced by the premise that Minnesota's top three starters – Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober – present a 1-2-3 trio that few others can match. So far, that has proven to be exactly the case. Meanwhile, Chris Paddack has pitched well and Simeon Woods Richardson's positive contributions have erased the negative ones from Louie Varland. The Twins' rotation isn't quite elite overall, but it has been in the past three weeks – or, since Varland exited.

Relief Pitcher
Preseason Projection: 9th out of 30
Through One Quarter: 13th out of 30

Minnesota's bullpen was projected as one of the best in the league, until Jhoan Durán and Caleb Thielbar went down with injuries just before Opening Day, pushing them to the back end of the top third. They've more or less played to that level, with Durán returning just in time for Brock Stewart to go down. As was the case last year, Griffin Jax has thus far led the bullpen in fWAR.

So what have we learned here?
For one thing, kudos to the FanGraphs and their projection system! By and large, it has proven to be pretty accurate in its assessment of the 2024 Twins and how they stack up against the rest of the league. At six of 11 positional units, Minnesota is within four spots of their preseason forecast through a quarter of the season, even if they had to Jekyll-and-Hyde their way there. 

The other big takeaway is that the Twins are only severely underperforming in a couple of areas (3B/DH) that seem correctable in the long run. Meanwhile, they are overperforming at some positions (like catcher, first and second) in a way that feels more sustainable. It will be interesting to check back in at the halfway point and see how these rankings have evolved, but right now, this looks like a very balanced and strong team relative to the league.

What are your thoughts on where the Twins stand at the quarter mark, compared to what you expected coming into the season? What are your biggest surprises and disappointments? Let's hear from you in the comments.

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[bighat]

Jeffers is playing out of his mind, and Santana has been a nice surprise after a slow start. Correa is the steady keel guiding the ship. 

Julien is striking out 40% of the time, it's not sustainable. Kirilloff has to be the biggest disappointment so far, but we can add Buxton to that list. He wasn't hitting even before he went down. 

Starting pitching has been great. Bullpen is a "meh". 

The health of Royce Lewis will make or break this Twins team and determine how far they can go. Without him I don't think they win a playoff series, or perhaps won't even make the postseason. With a healthy Royce they could shock the world. 

[Patzky]

These numbers were accomplished the 'hard way' starting poorly and working back to the expected norms. Still I feel there's more room for improvement than regression overall.. especially in the bullpen and the outfield.

[LambchoP]

I think Kiriloff could benefit from a AAA trip. Replace him with Keirsey Jr and see what he can do for a few weeks. I think it's obvious we need some bullpen help. It's looking more likely that Topa isn't coming back anytime soon so there needs to be an addition or two from outside the organization. Make a trade or see who available as a FA

[Rod Carews Birthday]

It was a pretty weird way to get there, but the Twins are looking a lot like we had hoped they would.  Certainly Jeffers is playing well above expectations, but there are many players playing about like we thought they would or even not quite there.  And yet, we’re sitting with a solid record and probably room to grow.   It’s a pretty good reality check for fans that this team is really pretty solid.  

The bullpen is a little worrisome in that there have been so many injuries to key people there.  I still feel like if we could get people healthy, it could be lights out.  But alas, that may not be possible.  I’m not panicked about it yet, but the eyes should be open for some potential help.  It probably too early for this, but if the rotation keeps on functioning as they are, Varland is a potential pen arm as could be Canterino.  Later on, help could be on the way from the minors.  

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

1 hour ago, bighat said:

Julien is striking out 40% of the time, it's not sustainable.

34%, which is terrible but doesn't round to 40.

I looked up Julien's % of strikeouts looking and I am truly shocked. 26 of his 50 strikeouts this season are looking - 52%. Admittedly, the percentage last season was 42.2% but I never would have guessed over half his strikeouts have been looking.

Since 2015, there have been 2804 player seasons with 50 or more strikeouts. Only 4 such seasons, including Julien's 2024, have a ratio of over 50% of looking strikeouts.

Austin Barnes' 2018 at 53.7%, Julien's 2024 at 52%, Robbie Grossman's 2017 and Greg Garcia's 2019 at 50.6%.

There are only 61 such seasons, 2.2% of the last 10 years, with a ratio over 40%. Julien owns 2 of those. 

[bean5302]

27 minutes ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

34%, which is terrible but doesn't round to 40.

I looked up Julien's % of strikeouts looking and I am truly shocked. 26 of his 50 strikeouts this season are looking - 52%. Admittedly, the percentage last season was 42.2% but I never would have guessed over half his strikeouts have been looking.

Since 2015, there have been 2804 player seasons with 50 or more strikeouts. Only 4 such seasons, including Julien's 2024, have a ratio of over 50% of looking strikeouts.

Austin Barnes' 2018 at 53.7%, Julien's 2024 at 52%, Robbie Grossman's 2017 and Greg Garcia's 2019 at 50.6%.

There are only 61 such seasons, 2.2% of the last 10 years, with a ratio over 40%. Julien owns 2 of those. 

Julien striking out looking has to do with him understand what he can hit, and what he can't. I think he knows he's better off hoping a corner strike gets called a ball rather than swinging at it and either missing entirely or GIDP. He definitely breaks the mold at the plate.

[Brandon]

Santana is on pace for 28 HRs and 85 RBIs. With good defense at 1B.  Not bad for 5.625 million.  
 

on the pitching side it seems like the pitchers are all pitching like aces except one appearance where they give up too many runs in an outing where Rocco refuses to remove a pitcher until too much damage is done.

[Mike Sixel]

Twins bullpen is 21 st in innings pitched. Since fwar is a volume stat, that effects their rank. If they were league median in innings, they'd be right around ninth. Otoh, that would drop the starters just a bit ...

I'm shocked, pleasantly, at how Castro has remained so valuable. Imagine this team with Lewis and CC always healthy. 

As for me, I have always believed in Jeffers, and was shocked at the projections....

[mikelink45]

Quote

The other big takeaway is that the Twins are only severely underperforming in a couple of areas (3B/DH) 

I think we are doing fine, but as I review your list we are better than projections:

C

1B

2B

CF

We are worse than projections:

3B

SS

LF

RF

DH

SP

RP

3 - 7 - I enjoyed this review, but we have a lot of work before us.  I know some were close, but at 1/4 of the season it is a good time to assess.  Let's hope quarter two builds on the end of quarter 1.  

[Morland]

The amount of third strikes that Julian takes is ridiculous. Even if he doesn't think he can do much with the pitch he's better off trying to swing and make contact. He's not Ted Williams and he's not going to get the benefit of the doubt on close calls from umpires.

[Oldgoat_MN]

5 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

34%, which is terrible but doesn't round to 40.

I looked up Julien's % of strikeouts looking and I am truly shocked. 26 of his 50 strikeouts this season are looking - 52%. Admittedly, the percentage last season was 42.2% but I never would have guessed over half his strikeouts have been looking.

Since 2015, there have been 2804 player seasons with 50 or more strikeouts. Only 4 such seasons, including Julien's 2024, have a ratio of over 50% of looking strikeouts.

Austin Barnes' 2018 at 53.7%, Julien's 2024 at 52%, Robbie Grossman's 2017 and Greg Garcia's 2019 at 50.6%.

There are only 61 such seasons, 2.2% of the last 10 years, with a ratio over 40%. Julien owns 2 of those. 

This is why I have trouble being a Julien fan. Strikeouts are frustrating. Strikeouts looking, especially fastballs that are very obviously strikes, are maddening. 

Yes, he's productive. How much better could he be if he swung the bat at half the third strikes thrown to him that he's currently taking?

Just drives me crazy. 

[Linus]

5 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

34%, which is terrible but doesn't round to 40.

I looked up Julien's % of strikeouts looking and I am truly shocked. 26 of his 50 strikeouts this season are looking - 52%. Admittedly, the percentage last season was 42.2% but I never would have guessed over half his strikeouts have been looking.

Since 2015, there have been 2804 player seasons with 50 or more strikeouts. Only 4 such seasons, including Julien's 2024, have a ratio of over 50% of looking strikeouts.

Austin Barnes' 2018 at 53.7%, Julien's 2024 at 52%, Robbie Grossman's 2017 and Greg Garcia's 2019 at 50.6%.

There are only 61 such seasons, 2.2% of the last 10 years, with a ratio over 40%. Julien owns 2 of those. 

This is really interesting. He has a very unique hitting style and he takes it to the extreme. It’s like he is looking for one pitch in one spot and if ain’t there he’ll take strike 3. Not my cup of tea but his ops is respectable. 

[bean5302]

57 minutes ago, Morland said:

The amount of third strikes that Julian takes is ridiculous. Even if he doesn't think he can do much with the pitch he's better off trying to swing and make contact. He's not Ted Williams and he's not going to get the benefit of the doubt on close calls from umpires.

Is a weak rolling GIDP better than a strikeout?
Is a 10% ball vs. 90% strike call better than a 95% strikeout or ground out?

That's what Julien is deciding on, and why he's not swinging. The 95% out vs. the 90% chance he'll be out and take another player with him on the GIDP.

[DocBauer]

I don't recall ever seeing a "make your final record guess" before the season began, though many mentioned it on their own. I don't believe I ever did. But as constructed, I felt the Twins had an 88 win team that could hit 90 easily, and 92 without much trouble. More than that would probably take a few too many good things happening, so in my head I pretty much had 92 wins.

I thought there'd be a couple speed bumps for the "new" bats after such an impressive 2023 debut, I didn't feel good about 1B, and I was a little worried about the 5th rotation spot, and who was up next when someone inevitably got hurt. Nothing major, just enough questions to temper my opinion somewhat.

And then the first 3 weeks happened and I was in shock. Even with the injuries, I saw ZERO reason for this team to be so bad. 

What's been so interesting to me in the huge turnaround...Twins currently on pace for like 95-97 wins...is how it's been done.

Despite a rash of injuries, including a couple guys who haven't even appeared yet, the pen was strong initially, not as good lately, though not horrible. A few less close games...a bad loss...and a day off here and there might just help settle the bullpen and get it a little more back on track.

I thought Kepler might be really good again and being part of the torch and pitchfork brigade previously, but I didn't see Larnach as his fellow LH OF producer in Larnach. I saw Kirilloff having his best season so far, nut didn't see him suddenly going in to a whole. I was hoping Castro would be as good as last season, and he's actually been better. I don't know if he's going to be able to sustain anything close to the past 3 weeks or not, but Santana has surprised me. Wasn't sure SWR would look this good, but never expected Varland to struggle so badly.

My whole point is the team has been winning collectively, with contributions from all area and phases of the game, often despite a rash of early season injuries. It's just been interesting and a little surprising who some of those contributions have and have not been coming from.

This team is not a finished product by any means. With all the injuries, they may need to find one more good pen arm. There's still a major question about Margot. 

But imagine Wallner getting back on track, same with AK, Larnach being for real, Stewart back, Lewis back, Santana keeps approximating his younger self to some degree, SWR keeps being solid, there's a real chance the TEAM might, as a whole, be better a few weeks from now than the one we've been watching the past 3 weeks.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

Julien is certainly an enigma, particularly in his approach at the plate. You don't want him swinging at anything close because then you lose what makes him Edouard Julien, the prospect who refused to have an OBP below .400.

On the other hand, there's a lot of red in the heatmap of his looking strikeouts that are well within the strike zone. 7 of Julien's looking strikeouts have been on balls in the heart of the strike zone and 5 more were breaking balls that ended up as clear strikes at the bottom of the zone. Seems like a pretty valuable skill he should learn to at least be able to foul off those pitches, even if you don't want to swing and put them in play. 

[JD-TWINS]

6 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

34%, which is terrible but doesn't round to 40.

I looked up Julien's % of strikeouts looking and I am truly shocked. 26 of his 50 strikeouts this season are looking - 52%. Admittedly, the percentage last season was 42.2% but I never would have guessed over half his strikeouts have been looking.

Since 2015, there have been 2804 player seasons with 50 or more strikeouts. Only 4 such seasons, including Julien's 2024, have a ratio of over 50% of looking strikeouts.

Austin Barnes' 2018 at 53.7%, Julien's 2024 at 52%, Robbie Grossman's 2017 and Greg Garcia's 2019 at 50.6%.

There are only 61 such seasons, 2.2% of the last 10 years, with a ratio over 40%. Julien owns 2 of those. 

Well, Eddie looks really ugly as he tries to lead the League in backward K’s! His K% has come down to 34 plus% from 40% a couple weeks ago. He needs to get his BA to .250 in next 4-5 weeks. His OBP would get to the very effective .350 level at that point.

I’ll say it, the good news is we traded Polanco. He’s actually leading the League in strikeouts with 53. He’s hitting .192. He’s headed to the IL today with hamstring tightness. Sorry, I get the sentimental attachment, but it was clear he was a high risk guy with injury and at the start of declining production. If Topa ever pitches it’s still a positive move.

Stewart - Topa coming back in June should bump up our Pen performance for 2nd qtr.

Not having Varland in rotation should help those stats 2nd qtr. as well……..Gray has been great in St. Louis until last outing with 6 runs in 5 innings……Maeda is hurt and has  6.75 ERA.

I think we’ll improve at 3B - LF - 2B - 1B in 2nd qtr.

Royce will be back in 4 weeks - Wallner won’t be allowed to wallow for 4 weeks with no production - Eddie will be better and so will Farmer (gotta be) - Santana has leveled & Kirilloff has to have bottomed out.

I think the off season moves will start to pay off as we go forward through June.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

Stewart - Topa coming back in June should bump up our Pen performance for 2nd qtr.

They just shut down Topa for I think 6+ weeks due to a partially (25%) torn patellar tendon.

[Whitey333]

Great article.  Now if we can just get Fangraphs to play out the season statistically we won't need players, fans, or umpires.  Sometimes it appears baseball is just turning into one big electronic, computerized, analytical fantasy league lol.  Great start by Twins so far.  Go Twins

[JD-TWINS]

17 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I think we are doing fine, but as I review your list we are better than projections:

C

1B

2B

CF

We are worse than projections:

3B

SS

LF

RF

DH

SP

RP

3 - 7 - I enjoyed this review, but we have a lot of work before us.  I know some were close, but at 1/4 of the season it is a good time to assess.  Let's hope quarter two builds on the end of quarter 1.  

Starting pitching is a draw & w/o Varland in the mix, it’s pretty positive.

I get you are commenting on just the information shown, strictly. The bettering of all aspects probably isn’t realistic. They got to 8 games over .500 with these circumstances.

Correa being out for most of 3 weeks hurt the SS rating - pretty solid there as well.

Kepler was out for 16-17 days and it turned out to be a blessing going from 1-20 start to super HOT! RF seems solid as well going forward.

Lewis out is obviously a problem at 3B.

Relievers have not had great health - they will be up & down but I still think this will be a positive in another 3-4 weeks as guys get healthy.

Left Field is an issue!

Larnach has stabilized the DH spot v. RH pitching……..consistency going forward?

[JD-TWINS]

14 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

They just shut down Topa for I think 6+ weeks due to a partially (25%) torn patellar tendon.

Oh boy - as I said somewhere recently, he’s becoming icing on the cake at some point but not to be counted on…….,,thanks for the update. Bummer!

[mikelink45]

1 minute ago, JD-TWINS said:

Starting pitching is a draw & w/o Varland in the mix, it’s pretty positive.

I get you are commenting on just the information shown, strictly. The bettering of all aspects probably isn’t realistic. They got to 8 games over .500 with these circumstances.

Correa being out for most of 3 weeks hurt the SS rating - pretty solid there as well.

Kepler was out for 16-17 days and it turned out to be a blessing going from 1-20 start to super HOT! RF seems solid as well going forward.

Lewis out is obviously a problem at 3B.

Relievers have not had great health - they will be up & down but I still think this will be a positive in another 3-4 weeks as guys get healthy.

Left Field is an issue!

Larnach has stabilized the DH spot v. RH pitching……..consistency going forward?

Yes, it was simply a response to what was presented.  I hope the upward trend continues, but then we cannot predict injuries or other situations that might arise - like Paddock and SWR running out of gas.