Will the Twins Generate Enough Power at First Base in 2024?

7 minutes ago, saviking said:

I thought they signed Santana for his OBP ans are going to bat him lead off 😄

It just doesn't make sense to have him in lead off spot, but many of Rocco's moves do not make sense.

1B will be fine..as long as the K machine Gallo is off team this offense will improve. put the ball in play boys..and make this game easier to watch. constant K's has ruined MLB

Not everyone is built to be a power hitter. Not every position needs to be or should be expected to producing HR's. Catchers, middle infielders, CF, more important to be sound defensively and make contact and get on base.

I hope the days of sound fundamental baseball are not gone. Making contact and hitting for average, shortening your swing with two strikes, sacrifices and advancing runners into scoring position, getting runners home when in scoring position, especially with runners on third with less than two outs. 

Homeruns are great, but the massive number of strikeouts last year was unwatchable at times.   

If you think of the Twins infield, with Lewis, Correa, Julien and Santana/Kiriloff, with Lee on the outside looking in, it's inevitable that something needs to happen at 1B long-term.

My bet:  Kiriloff gets traded.  Santana hangs in there this year playing 1B and DH.

The best fielding 2B between Lee and Julien gets the nod at the keystone and the other one gets 1B.  Likely Julien. 

Long term, as he loses range, Correa plays 3B and DH's.  At that point it's a cage match between Lewis and Lee for SS.  Likely Lee wins it.

Kind of out there, but the Twins have 3 fully capable SS, plus Castro right now.  Someone has to play 1B.

1 hour ago, John Belinski said:

It just doesn't make sense to have him in lead off spot, but many of Rocco's moves do not make sense.

Santana works counts and gets on base, which makes him a reasonable choice to lead off when Julien isn't in the lineup. When Julien is playing, I would expect him to lead off as he gets on base a ton and has shown an affinity for steals in the minors that will likely be deployed more this season.

We best hope that above average production continues from Lewis, Julien, etc, since we've decided that 1B is now a glove first position.  I would be fine with Santana getting the 40-45 starts against LHP and being a late inning defensive sub. He should not be everyday at this point in his career.

I hope you are right that the Twins are seeking more contact and willing to sacrifice some home runs if they have fewer strikeouts. Watching hitter after hitter flailing away in the playoffs rendered it almost unwatchable. It is the opposite of the Tom Kelly philosophy of focusing on hitting line drives, not home runs. That especially hurt future HOF David Ortiz and led to him leaving the team. We know how that turned out. You need on base guys like Arraez and hopefully Austin Martin. Somewhere in between seems like a good compromise. 

I see no reason to be concerned.  If indeed we see a drop off in HR production of previous years (#4 in MLB) I believe we still are among the league leaders... #8-10.

Twins have other more pressing issues.

It's not really an issue if you have less power at 1B if you're generating it in other areas, so long as you're not just handing out tons of ABs to players that are poor offensive contributors as a whole. If Correa is back to his usual self, with Buxton and Jeffers also generating real power production then it doesn't matter as much if 1B isn't at league average SLG, so long as you're getting other contributions.

It'll be interesting to see if Santana can SLG .400 or better this season; if he does I think we'll be just fine with our production from 1B between him and Kirilloff and maybe a little of Julien or possibly Farmer. If he's hovering around the Mendoza Line for his BA and SLG closer to .350 then his overall production isn't going to be good enough for him to be getting starting playing time.

I do think this is a really deep lineup with a lot of players who have high ceilings and not too many low floors. They should score a lot of runs, and there's better balance this year than last, presuming average levels of health.

Up the middle positions (CF, SS, C & 2B) are glove 1st positions. 1B is a bat 1st position we are getting a bit mixed up here. I advocated Julien at 1B since the beginning of '23, Julien at 1B would have helped correct the shortage at 1B. 2Bmen need to have range & turn a smooth DP. Julien has below average range plus a healthy Julien & recuperating Polanco ranked 29 out of 30 in DPs. With Julien at 1B we didn't need Santana. 

I'm not a big HR guy, I'd be fine with 9 Arraez-type bats in the line-up.

I did my own independent survey.  

The concensus was that it's nothing to worry about. No sweat. LOOK for something else to fret about. Keep the line moving. Home runs are rally enders.

1 hour ago, Doctor Gast said:

Up the middle positions (CF, SS, C & 2B) are glove 1st positions. 1B is a bat 1st position we are getting a bit mixed up here. I advocated Julien at 1B since the beginning of '23, Julien at 1B would have helped correct the shortage at 1B. 2Bmen need to have range & turn a smooth DP. Julien has below average range plus a healthy Julien & recuperating Polanco ranked 29 out of 30 in DPs. With Julien at 1B we didn't need Santana. 

I'm not a big HR guy, I'd be fine with 9 Arraez-type bats in the line-up.

I remember some St.Louis Cardinal teams from the early to mid eighties that were close to that. '85 they had Jack Clark who hit HR's. '82 they had George Hendrick who could. But they won a lot of games with pitching, defense, getting on base, speed and using Busch Stadium to their advantage. They were almost always last or near the bottom in HR's. But they were fun to watch. I don't enjoy watching a team strikeout 13 times in a game, even if they did hit 4 HR's.

The Twins led the AL in HRs last season.  I think they tied for the lead but whatever.  They lost Gallo and Taylor and traded Polanco from their totals and added Margot and Santana.  The Twins should still hit over 200 HRs as a team and be a top 5 HR hitting team in the AL.