3 Stats that Define the 2023 Twins

It's always felt like the Twins were being held back, potentially by themselves, in questionable ways. Pythagorean record agrees that the Twins should be at least a bit better, but they repeatedly fail to pick up any momentum for whatever reason. A few stats tell the story of why this might be.

.657 OPS Against Left-Handed Pitchers
That's good for 21% below league average by OPS+ against southpaws. Simply facing a left-handed pitcher of any caliber throws any momentum off course. It makes no sense from Buxton's .627 OPS against lefties to Kyle Farmer (.691 OPS) and Carlos Correa (.700 OPS) putting up below-league-average lines in these matchups. It continues to hamper an offense that has struggled overall.

It doesn't help that the Twins' best hitters, such as Edouard Julien and Alex Kirilloff are left-handed. Still, the team's continued struggles from their right-handed hitters defy decades of matchup data and years of data these players have accumulated in their careers. Like much of the 2023 Twins season, the team's stats against left-handed pitching are headache-inducing.

Carlos Correa's .691 OPS
Can blame be directed at one single player on a disappointing baseball team? Surely not. If it could, Carlos Correa would be the #1 candidate for the Twins. They completed the Hail Mary this winter by waiting out free agency, hoping the former cornerstone shortstop would find his way back to Minnesota. He made $32m in 2023 and is expected to be a key cog in the offensive machine. Instead, Correa has caused an endless series of misfires.

His OPS places him comfortably below average offensively, and despite his still stellar shortstop defense, by fWAR, Correa is tied for 6th highest on the team with Max Kepler and Michael A. Taylor with 0.9. His assumed backup, Kyle Farmer, has been more valuable overall by this measure despite playing in 19 fewer games. Correa has crippled the offense in the heart of the lineup, bouncing into a league-leading 20 double plays and showing that he can be beaten by fastballs repeatedly. So far, the Twins Dior-level investment has brought them Axe Chocolate Body Spray level returns (gross).

Sonny Gray's 4-4 Record
On Thursday evening, Sonny Gray earned his first win since April 30. Within this stretch are a few noteworthy numbers. Gray's 3.32 ERA earned him an all-star game nod and has him on pace for his first 4+ fWAR season since 2019 in Cincinnati. Despite his inconsistencies sometimes, he's pitching at peak levels for his career. Such a performance should have a pitcher on pace for 12-15 wins, at the very least, but not Sonny.

In St. Louis, the Twins spotted Gray five runs of cushion, good for 9% of the run support he's received in 21 starts this season. His 4 wins symbolize the potent pitching performances the Twins squandered during the first half of the season by completely no-showing on offense. The Twins have lost 15 games this season when allowing three runs or fewer, the most in baseball. While win/loss records have become a measurement of the past, Gray's record in relation to the rest of his numbers shows where things have gone wrong for the Twins.

We'll never know why 2023 has gone how it has, but inconsistency has been the name of the game for the Twins. Here's hoping they can outlast the Cleveland Guardians, who have given them every opportunity to take home a division title. There will always be some head-scratching stats on the record for 2023, and these are just a few of them.