The Incredible, Extreme Present and Inscrutable Future of Matt Wallner - Caretaker Exclusive

[Davy Andrews]

We're not saying the Twins' young slugger is Paul Bunyan in disguise. But if he were, how would things be different, really?

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

I’m excited about Matt Wallner. You’re excited about Matt Wallner. Everybody’s excited about Matt Wallner. Since his return to Minnesota on Jul. 7, he’s running a 191 wRC+, which means that he’s been almost twice as productive at the plate as the average batter. Over that stretch, the only players who have hit better than Wallner are Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That’s some good company.

The Forest Lake native is very much a one-weird-trick kind of hitter, and that trick is interrogating the structural integrity of a baseball. Since his callup, he ranks first in hard-hit rate, first in barrel rate, second in average exit velocity, and sixth in average bat speed. Wallner is a big, strong man who takes big, strong swings, and the ball jumps off his bat like it’s a sentient being whose sole desire is to get as far away from him as possible. We’re going to take a closer look at Wallner’s unbelievable summer and what we should expect going forward.

Let’s start with past performance. If you combine the last three years, Wallner now has just a bit under a full season’s worth of playing time at the big-league level. Over that stretch, he’s slashing .250/.368/.512, with 26 homers, good for a wRC+ of 147.

Want to hear something strange? Wallner has had eight different stops in the minors, and while he was always an above-average hitter, he only ran a wRC+ of 150 or better in one of them. That’s not usually how things work. Most hitters don’t breathe a sigh of relief when they go from facing Triple-A pitching to big-league pitching. Even after his incredible run in the big leagues last year, it would have been completely unreasonable to expect Wallner to do what he’s doing now. What he’s doing now is completely unreasonable! He’s running a near-.400 BABIP, the highest in baseball, a sign of unsustainability if ever there was one. While his current performance should absolutely change our idea of Wallner’s ceiling, we should expect him to come down to Earth. It’s just going to take some time to find out exactly where his performance will settle.

One thing that I find both fun and encouraging is that pitchers are already scared of Wallner. You know the standard adjustment dance when a rookie comes up: Pitchers pound them with fastballs, and then once they prove that they can hit the fastball, the league starts attacking them with bendy stuff. If they prove that they can lay off the bendy stuff, then pitchers have to formulate a more nuanced plan of attack. If you were worried that Wallner is just succeeding because his up-and-down journey over the last couple years left him unfamiliar to big-league pitchers, who in turn just challenged him with fastballs, don’t be. Wallner has already passed that phase. So far this season, 44% of the pitches he’s has seen this season have been fastballs. Of the 400 players who have seen at least 500 pitches this season, that puts him in the 19th percentile. Likewise, his 47% zone rate puts him in the 11th percentile, and if you look just at the heart of the plate, he’s in the 9th percentile. Pitchers don’t want to throw him fastballs, and they’d rather hope that Wallner chases a bad pitch than attack him in the strike zone. (Yes, I realize that I should have written a whole article just about his zone rate, so that I could've titled it "Balls to the Wallner"). The good news is that (although he’s chasing more than he did in his previous stints with the Twins) Wallner isn’t biting. He’s running a better-than-average chase rate, while still being aggressive when he gets a pitch that he can drive.

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[Dman]

I have been waiting for him to regress for quite a while now and he keeps defying statistical logic IMO.  His Barrel rate is really helping him out IMO., as when he does hit something he hits it extremely hard.  It has been nice to see him adjust to the tougher pitches he is seeing as that bodes well for his future.  It's just hard to feel comfortable with a guy who strikes out 36% of the time, but right now the results speak for themselves.

For the most part I like players with excellent contact skills as they generally are fast movers up the system and transition better to MLB.  I have decried the FO\Draft team for going after just exit velocity in drafts and those types of hitters generally don't have good contact rates.  While it seems those players take much longer to make their MLB debuts the strategy is starting to look more successful recently with Rooker, Larnach and Wallner all with high OPS's and Rooker and Wallner currently top ten OPS MLB bats which are hard to come by. 

If those types of profiles are going to work out I guess I will have to rethink how I feel about contact rate versus exit velocity.

[jjswol]

Matt Wallner is the new and upgraded version of Joey Gallo. 

[RpR]

IF; if the accuracy of his throws remains as it was in the recent game, he is a threat to those who try to stretch singles into doubles.

[LA Vikes Fan]

What's interesting to me is Wallner is becoming the LH hitting OF who plays against LH pitching at some expense to Kepler. He also sometimes stays in when the other team switches to a LH reliever, whereas Larnach almost never does. His OPS is up to .721 against LH pitching, albeit with a weak .190/.292/.429 slash line. For reference, Larnach has a .423 OPS against left handers and Kepler has a .721 OPS against them. Oddly, Kepler is actually hitting better against southpaws than against RH pitching this year in a much smaller sample size. It looks to me like they are trying to see if Wallner can be an everyday OF to replace Kepler next year. Laranch is looking more like a platoon OF. 

Is Larnach Joey Gallo? Looks like it will be pretty similar. I think Wallner will hit for a higher average with the same basic OPS. Gallo had an OPS in the high .800s to the low .900s in 2017-2019, down in 2020, .806 again in 2021, and then fell off a cliff. Always had a high 30s% to 40% SO rate and a high walk rate. Sounds a lot like Wallner. Maybe he improves and gets his SO rate down to 30-33%. I see him settling in as a .250/.370/.510 guy who strikes out around a third of the time. Nothing wrong with that. It can really help to have one of those guys in the lineup … but you can only have one. 

[RpR]

Right now there is some thing physically wrong with Kepler but the Twins Org. seems to pretend it is not there more than they should.

Even I think it would be logical to bring up one of  the AAA dudes for look see if nothing else.

[Schmoeman5]

22 hours ago, RpR said:

Right now there is some thing physically wrong with Kepler but the Twins Org. seems to pretend it is not there more than they should.

Even I think it would be logical to bring up one of  the AAA dudes for look see if nothing else.

WHAT? Am I reading this correctly?  Say it ain't so. 

[mrcharlie]

To suggest a .250 average with 25 HR power over the length of 162 games puts him in the class of the best in MLB is ridiculous.  He has one swing.  I do see him maturing to be a more complete threat at the plate if he responds to coaching.