Matt Wallner’s Unfulfilling 2025 Season and Uncertain Future

[RpR]

32 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Do you know of a better bat the Twins can get who makes the minimum salary? For a team trying to play with a budget in the bottom 20%, he's a great player to have.

Money hmmm, seems to be a reason the Twins are failing.

[Woof Bronzer]

 

40 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

OPS has been popular since the mid-1980s and on baseball cards since 2004. Is a 40-year old stat "new age"?

Look at the OPS leaders - they're all great hitters. If you want a really misleading stat for offensive production - use RBI.

The writer references OPS+, not OPS, as the end all, be all stat to evaluate Wallner.  Finding an obscure stat that supports your predetermined opinion, presenting it as the final answer, and ignoring all statistics to the contrary is a hallmark of the sabermetric movement .  As you surely know, OPS+ takes OPS and then erases all pitcher, park, weather, etc context to speculate would happen if every at bat happened in a controlled laboratory against a robot rather than in an actual MLB game.  It can give you some interesting what if data but it is not a measure of performance at all.  

Fwiw here's the all time top 10 RBI list:

Aaron

Pujols

Ruth

A Rod

Anson

Bonds

Gehrig

Musial

Cobb

Foxx

 

All great power hitters!  I'd say RBI does a pretty great job actually.

[DJL44]

Wallner's only plus defensive asset is his 96 MPH throwing arm. That becomes mostly useless at 1B. He has below-average range but plays home games in one of the smallest RF in the majors.

RF area rankings

30) NY Yankees 24.2

29) Philadelphia 25.5

28) Pittsburgh 25.5

27) Tampa 25.7 (Tropicana - Steinbrenner Field is more like Yankee Stadium)

26) Cincinnati 26.0

25) Baltimore 26.3

24) Seattle 26.4

23) Minnesota 26.6

22) Cleveland 26.6

21) Houston 26.6

 

Looks like Tampa would be a good fit for Wallner. The AL East has 3 of the 6 smallest RF.

[Fred]

2 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

"Despite injuries and historic oddities, Matt Wallner was still one of the Twins’ best batters in 2025."

This says more about the Twins as a whole than it does abut Wallner. Wallner being one of the better hitters and explains why the team is sitting at 68-90. Wallner was absolutely terrible this year! (.5 WAR)

And injuries once again. (Hey he did better against left handed pitchers than right handed pitchers)

RISP - .652 OPS (.177 BA, 323 SLG)

Late and close - .565 OPS

Tie Game - .624 OPS (4 homers)

Within 1 run - .661 OPS (9 homers)

Within 2 runs - .737 OPS  (13 homers)

Within 3 runs - .702 OPS (13 homers)

Within 4 runs - .708 OPS (15 homers)

Overall behind - .861 OPS (12 homers)

High Leverage - .680 OPS (3 homers)

Medium Leverage - .539 OPS (3 homers)

Low Leverage - .975 (16 of his homers)

Greater than 4 run league - 1.115 OPS (7 of his homers)

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound impressive at all.

[KirbyDome89]

30 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

OPS has been popular since the mid-1980s and on baseball cards since 2004. Is a 40-year old stat "new age"?

Look at the OPS leaders - they're all great hitters. If you want a really misleading stat for offensive production - use RBI.

In the particular case of Matt Wallner, or players who fit a similar profile, I do think looking only at OPS tends to overrate offensive contribution. 

[Fred]

1 hour ago, Greglw3 said:

The above league average hitter shows the weakness and depth of the flaw of the OPS+ stat, which rewards hitters with a high slugging percentage very disproportionately vs a play who can really hit, like Austin Martin or Luke Keaschall.

I watch all the games, have a long history following the Twins and for a key cog in a team’s batting order, that was one of the worst offensive season’s in Twins history. I’ve never seen a player with a bigger hole in his swing than Wallner and he made no attempt to adjust but soon from the heals all season long.

 

Bringing back Larnach and Wallner would conjure up the old saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I don’ thin the Twins can take that risk. I agree a trade for a .280+ hitter with .360+ on base skills would be a good start to fixing this long broken offense.

Plus we have Walker Jenkins, Gabriel Gonzalez (who hit .300 at all levels this year for a cumulative .329), Kyler Fedko, Emmanuel Rodriguez at AAA who I would start developing over the two incumbents who haven’t worked out if you’re a team aiming for excellence.

They also have 21 year old Hendry Mendez, acquired in the Bader trade, who hit very well at Wichita, well over .300. And we have Kaelen Culpepper.

Allen Roden may pan out.

Even though I really rooted for him, Outman looks iffy, at best, but I’d still bring him to spring training.

If the Pohlads would step aside and new owners replace the inept Falvey and fire Baldelli and his coaching staff, a significant turnaround could be possible.

 

"If the Pohlads would step aside". Now that they have "right sized the business" (probably more to come this Spring) there's little chance they are going anywhere. Doom and gloom and agony on me!!

[DJL44]

11 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

The writer references OPS+, not OPS, as the end all, be all stat to evaluate Wallner.  Finding an obscure stat that supports your predetermined opinion, presenting it as the final answer, and ignoring all statistics to the contrary is a hallmark of the sabermetric movement .  As you surely know, OPS+ takes OPS and then erases all pitcher, park, weather, etc context to speculate would happen if every at bat happened in a controlled laboratory against a robot rather than in an actual MLB game.  It can give you some interesting what if data but it is not a measure of performance at all.  

Fwiw here's the all time top 10 RBI list:

Aaron

Pujols

Ruth

A Rod

Anson

Bonds

Gehrig

Musial

Cobb

Foxx

 

All great power hitters!  I'd say RBI does a pretty great job actually.

The commenter referred to OPS, not OPS+.

The fact that Bonds is only 6th on the list actually shows what a terrible job RBI is doing. Bonds has the best offensive production of any player in the history of baseball by a significant margin and he's ranked 6th. Ted Williams ranks 16th in RBI but he's a top 10 hitter. Willie Mays is also a top 10 hitter but he's 12th in RBI. Rickey Henderson doesn't show up on the RBI list until #216 and he's one of the top 20 offensive performers all-time. 

RBI is hot garbage.

[mnfireman]

2 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

In the particular case of Matt Wallner, or players who fit a similar profile, I do think looking only at OPS tends to overrate offensive contribution. 

Joey Gallo stands up: .177/.301/.440 (.741 OPS) 21 HR, 40 RBI - 2023 slash line with Twins, TD basically ran him out of town, did not write articles suggesting he was one of the teams better hitters.

[Fred]

34 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

The writer references OPS+, not OPS, as the end all, be all stat to evaluate Wallner.  Finding an obscure stat that supports your predetermined opinion, presenting it as the final answer, and ignoring all statistics to the contrary is a hallmark of the sabermetric movement .  As you surely know, OPS+ takes OPS and then erases all pitcher, park, weather, etc context to speculate would happen if every at bat happened in a controlled laboratory against a robot rather than in an actual MLB game.  It can give you some interesting what if data but it is not a measure of performance at all.  

Fwiw here's the all time top 10 RBI list:

Aaron

Pujols

Ruth

A Rod

Anson

Bonds

Gehrig

Musial

Cobb

Foxx

 

All great power hitters!  I'd say RBI does a pretty great job actually.

Now I'm curious how that list compares to career RISP, but I'm as lazy as I am curious, so....

[Woof Bronzer]

11 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The commenter referred to OPS, not OPS+.

The fact that Bonds is only 6th on the list actually shows what a terrible job RBI is doing. Bonds has the best offensive production of any player in the history of baseball by a significant margin and he's ranked 6th. Ted Williams ranks 16th in RBI but he's a top 10 hitter. Willie Mays is also a top 10 hitter but he's 12th in RBI. Rickey Henderson doesn't show up on the RBI list until #216 and he's one of the top 20 offensive performers all-time. 

RBI is hot garbage.

I'm just using your metric ("Look at the OPS leaders - they're all great hitters.") to evaluate the stat.  Are you saying the RBI leaders on the list are not great power hitters? Which ones?   

Of course RBI (or any other stat) is not the end all be all stat, that's my point.  But if your point is that all one needs to do to determine the worthiness of a stat is look at the leaderboard and see what the results turn up, then RBI is unquestionably a great statistic.  "RBI doesn't exactly reflect my personal opinion of hitters" isn't relevant at all, sorry.  

Fwiw Barry Bonds is 4th all time in OPS+, so by another of your own metrics, OPS+ fails.  In fact I'd say RBI and OPS+ are pretty well aligned when it comes to Mr. Bonds!  Facts can be pesky, can't they?

 

[RpR]

30 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The commenter referred to OPS, not OPS+.

The fact that Bonds is only 6th on the list actually shows what a terrible job RBI is doing. Bonds has the best offensive production of any player in the history of baseball by a significant margin and he's ranked 6th. Ted Williams ranks 16th in RBI but he's a top 10 hitter. Willie Mays is also a top 10 hitter but he's 12th in RBI. Rickey Henderson doesn't show up on the RBI list until #216 and he's one of the top 20 offensive performers all-time. 

RBI is hot garbage.

RBI win games, analytics to not.

[Woof Bronzer]

42 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The commenter referred to OPS, not OPS+.

The fact that Bonds is only 6th on the list actually shows what a terrible job RBI is doing. Bonds has the best offensive production of any player in the history of baseball by a significant margin and he's ranked 6th. Ted Williams ranks 16th in RBI but he's a top 10 hitter. Willie Mays is also a top 10 hitter but he's 12th in RBI. Rickey Henderson doesn't show up on the RBI list until #216 and he's one of the top 20 offensive performers all-time. 

RBI is hot garbage.

 

Oh and just fyi:  in career OPS+ Williams is 2nd, Mays is 27th, and Henderson is tied for 229th.  It would appear that by your own metrics, OPS+ and RBI are pretty similar.  If one's hot garbage, both are.  The more you know!  

[DJL44]

Just now, Woof Bronzer said:

Oh and just fyi:  in career OPS+ Williams is 2nd, Mays is 27th, and Henderson is tied for 229th.  It would appear that by your own metrics, OPS+ and RBI are pretty similar.  If one's hot garbage, both are.  The more you know!  

Comparing a rate stat to a counting stat is usually a terrible idea. 

What you're really pointing out is how linear weights are necessary to fully measure offensive performance. In other words, sabermetrics.

If we want to look at sabermetrics - Wallner has an RBat of 6, which isn't great, but it's 3rd on the 2025 Twins after Keaschall (8) and Buxton (22). He's had a down year, which everyone agrees with. That's not the problem with the Twins offense. The big problem is fourteen other players with a negative contribution on offense including Keirsey (-12), Vazquez (-11) and Lee (-11). If you look at just RBI it will tell you that Brooks Lee was the 2nd best batter on the Twins when he's actually one of the worst.

28 minutes ago, RpR said:

RBI win games, analytics to not.

Scoring more runs than you allow wins games, not RBI. The Athletics are 6th in the AL in RBI.

[DJL44]

In case anyone wants to look at the SABR numbers, here's Twins ranked by RBat + RBaser + RDP. That's batting plus baserunning, plus double-play avoidance.

Buxton 30

Keaschall 10

Bader 6

Wallner 4 (a very mediocre number)

Castro 3

Martin 2

Pereda 1

Jeffers 0

Fitzgerald 0

Clemens -1

McCusker -2

Larnach -3

Outman -3

Correa -4

Lewis -4

Roden -4

Miranda -4

Bride -5

France -6

Julien -7

Gasper -7

Keirsey -11 (in just 86 plate appearances!)

Lee -12

Vazquez -12

[Woof Bronzer]

Just now, DJL44 said:

Comparing a rate stat to a counting stat is usually a terrible idea. 

 

Ah, moving goal posts now. 

Take the L, man.  I didn't know RBI and OPS+ were so closely aligned until I looked it up - it's interesting, wouldn't you agree?   I don't use a single stat to evaluate any player, and baseball is about entertainment for me, not math, but I do push back on the sabermetric tendency to hand wave away stats like RBI and wins.  It's actually pretty incredible that for all the fancy OPS+ formulas and assumptions and normalizations, the results are fairly comparable to good old fashioned, not fancy, not perfect RBI.  

[Woof Bronzer]

14 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Scoring more runs than you allow wins games, not RBI. The Athletics are 6th in the AL in RBI.

Lol.  6th is such a random number, I wonder why you selected it...who are the 5 AL teams above the As in RBIs, and how many are playoff teams?

Who are the 6 NL teams above the As, and how many of those are playoff teams.  

[DJL44]

Just now, Woof Bronzer said:

Lol.  6th is such a random number, I wonder why you selected it...who are the 5 AL teams above the As in RBIs, and how many are playoff teams?

Who are the 6 NL teams above the As, and how many of those are playoff teams.  

Now look at runs allowed. Does RBI tell the whole story of why teams win games or is there more?

[Woof Bronzer]

8 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Now look at runs allowed. Does RBI tell the whole story of why teams win games or is there more?

Keep moving those goalposts and constructing strawmen bud!  This is going great for you!

[RpR]

35 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Scoring more runs than you allow wins games, not RBI. The Athletics are 6th in the AL in RBI.

Allowing fewer runs than you scored is a Defense/Pitching problem.

[SteveLV]

So this whole "slow reactions" thing.   Not necessarily buying it.

You have to have pretty good reaction time to see a baseball and hit it with a bat and drive it out of a ballpark.

That is WAY different than seeing a batted ball hit your direction in the air and trying to figure out where it is going and moving to intercept it.  That is a different skill IMO (and in my own baseball experience).

This, in turn, is different from reacting to a ground ball hit at you and trying to field it.

Which is also different from seeing a ball thrown towards you and moving to catch it and simultaneously getting your feet in position to tag 1st base.

I am simply not buying outright that the same guy who may struggle to track a line drive to right field is not capable of fielding a one-hop throw from 3B.

Wallner may SUCK at trying to play 1st Base, but the fact he struggles in right field does not, IMO, rule out that as something to explore and find out about, especially in a 6 month off-season.

And DH is an option.

Nonetheless, the consensus is that he should be moved out of RF as a permanent position notwithstanding a strong throwing arm.  He simply does not cover ground effectively and catch balls that should be caught.

[TwinsDr2021]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

RBI is hot garbage.

RBI is very similar to pitcher wins, by themselves the aren't the end all of end all stats and are just another thing to look at to see how a player performed. But it isn't a mistake that the best players in history end up at the top of all those lists. (yearly and historically) .

There is a huge difference in years Felix Hernandez and Bert Blyleven had where they pitched a ton of innings and their team just didn't score, compared to current pitchers that aren't getting wins because they are pitching much less innings and requiring the bullpen's being much better.

It is pretty much the same for RBI, there are odd years where a player ends up with a lot of RBI because they had so many opportunities, and years where great players numbers don't look great because of chances. But when you start looking at Wins and RBI over multiple year periods they do tell a decent enough story.

 

This year Wallner had 392 plate appearances, and of those 79 times he had runners in scoring position. (20%) of the time. 

Buxton had 529 plate appearances and of those 117 (22%) 

Compare those to Pete Alonso for example, 692 plate appearances, with 210 times he had runners in scoring position. (30%) which explains why he has 50 plus more RBI than Buxton. 

 

[DJL44]

19 minutes ago, RpR said:

Allowing fewer runs than you scored is a Defense/Pitching problem.

So, analytics?

[tony&rodney]

23 minutes ago, SteveLV said:

So this whole "slow reactions" thing.   Not necessarily buying it.

You have to have pretty good reaction time to see a baseball and hit it with a bat and drive it out of a ballpark.

That is WAY different than seeing a batted ball hit your direction in the air and trying to figure out where it is going and moving to intercept it.  That is a different skill IMO (and in my own baseball experience).

This, in turn, is different from reacting to a ground ball hit at you and trying to field it.

Which is also different from seeing a ball thrown towards you and moving to catch it and simultaneously getting your feet in position to tag 1st base.

I am simply not buying outright that the same guy who may struggle to track a line drive to right field is not capable of fielding a one-hop throw from 3B.

Wallner may SUCK at trying to play 1st Base, but the fact he struggles in right field does not, IMO, rule out that as something to explore and find out about, especially in a 6 month off-season.

And DH is an option.

Nonetheless, the consensus is that he should be moved out of RF as a permanent position notwithstanding a strong throwing arm.  He simply does not cover ground effectively and catch balls that should be caught.

I'm curious why he has never been used at any level at first base. What is your best guess?

Do you think it is possible that no manager or coach ever even thought about trying Wallner at first base in the last decade?

[SteveLV]

I think in HS he was the stud athlete that hit, pitched and played OF when he wasn't pitching.

With his arm, he played OF from there on out.

He might not be able to field grounders, I don't know.  But for the Twins, 1B would be better than DH if he can play that position, or at least can play that position at times for flexibility.

Let's face it:  1B is a boring position.  Most guys want to play OF instead of 1B.  That is the position for the slow guys!  :)

[Parfigliano]

6 hours ago, Old Crow said:

I still don't understand why a low average, long ball hitter bats in the ledoff position.   

They wouldn't somewhere else.

[Road trip]

1 hour ago, Parfigliano said:

They wouldn't somewhere else.

I think it was a faddish "Schwarber effect".  Phillies started hitting Schwarber leadoff a few years ago.  Schwarber of course is a power hitting, slow, high OBP/low batting average guy.  Back in 2023 Schwarber didn't even manage to hit .200 while batting leadoff almost exclusively.  He did draw a lot of walks though (and also led MLB in strikeouts), and a few other teams copied this, putting power hitters in the leadoff spot.

The Phils have since relented after doing this a couple of years, and Schwarber mostly hits in the "2" spot now, although he moves around a bit.  Of course, Schwarber is a superior hitter to Wallner, but as hitters their profile is a little similar.  

Anyway... it didn't work, and I doubt we see Wallner in the leadoff spot again...

[TopGunn#22]

With all due respect to Sabermetrics and esoteric statistics of all sorts, it's like a lot of guys posting on TD never played baseball, or just don't remember how really difficult it is to drive in runs.  I read all of the books Bill James wrote in the 80's.  Fascinating, interesting stuff.  I just disagree about RBI.  It's not that EASY to drive in runs.

Opportunity plays a HUGE role in it.  But when a guy steps into the batters box with a chance to drive in a run, the pitcher always bears down and works the hitter as hard as they can.  Driving in runs is NOT hot garbage.

It's time to move on from both Wallner and Larnach.  The Twins have a plethora of younger, more athletic options who are going to be on the Twins roster sooner, rather than later. 

Larnach is too expensive to be nothing more than an average player for the Twins.  MAYBE some other team will be willing to take him off the Twins hands.  Sometimes "average" is what a team is looking for.  Lord Knows we, as Twins fans are familiar enough with THAT mindset.  Wallner on the other hand could be a very interesting player to a number of teams. 

Because MLB has glamorized stats like OPS Wallner's value, even after this year's "less than good season" is still pretty strong.  The last time I saw a "value" for Matt Wallner on BBTV it was 29.5.  In comparison, the White Sox 2 young Catchers have the following values:

Kyle Teel 24.8  Edgar Quero  17.1.  

I would trade Matt Wallner to the White Sox for either of them straight up.  Would the White Sox be interested in a 27 year old below average OF with a cannon for an arm that clobbers RH pitching?  The White Sox can afford to deal one of their young Catchers to get a "potential" 30-40 HR bat.  I'd at least want the Twins to have a conversation.  

Wallner is NOT a cornerstone.  He's NOT a part of the Twins future.  As soon as Walker Jenkins, E-Rod and Gabe Gonzalez hit the big leagues,  Wallner is gone.  He's NOT a 1B.  The White Sox aren't especially well stocked with Outfielders.  Let's have a conversation this off-season.  

[tony&rodney]

6 hours ago, SteveLV said:

I think in HS he was the stud athlete that hit, pitched and played OF when he wasn't pitching.

On almost every high school team the best athlete plays shortstop and pitches. A loaded team might have two stars, one playing third base or centerfield. That was Royce Lewis in high school, a third baseman.

Dave Winfield pitched and played shortstop for Central High School. He played outfield when his older brother was the shortstop.

Matt Wallner was a very good high school athlete. I'm not aware of him playing in the infield.

[tony&rodney]

18 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

I would trade Matt Wallner to the White Sox for either of them straight up.  Would the White Sox be interested in a 27 year old below average OF with a cannon for an arm that clobbers RH pitching?  The White Sox can afford to deal one of their young Catchers to get a "potential" 30-40 HR bat.  I'd at least want the Twins to have a conversation.  

Hopefully a team will see big potential and the BTV value is a match of someone between 15-30 in that system. I'm not holding out any hopes for one of the Chicago catchers because I think the White Sox will keep both of them. You definitely have the right idea about the Twins having conversations though.

I don't follow BTV but I will be interested to hear of varying values for a number of Twins players. Whether it is Wallner or others, the Twins need to make some changes and become more athletic and skilled.

[TopGunn#22]

We need Doc Gast to kind of give us a review of the values of Twins players who could be involved in a trade (Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Wallner etc...) and the values of some interesting trade targets for the Twins.  

The Values change and fluctuate a lot so for someone who just visits the site but doesn't pay for the service I can't access the "Propose a Trade" tab.  But I like to look at the various trades proposed and determine if it's fair, a good fit and possible. 

Doc Gast frequently posts trade ideas and they're always interesting.