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As Twins fans know far too well, injuries have been the bane of Byron Buxton throughout his professional career. They've kept him off the field for long stretches—usually at least half of any given season—and sometimes diminished him even when he's been able to gut his way through and keep playing with them. They've denied both fans and the man himself the opportunity to see just how much this extraordinary player, with a once-in-a-generation blend of tools and lovingly honed baseball skills, is capable of.
Funnily, though, injuries have also sometimes shielded Buxton, in a way. They've taken him off the field, at times, just when you could see an inevitable slump developing, or they've forced him to play a more controlled, less outlandish version of his game—something better resembling what the rest of the baseball universe has to play. Players with unique talent can take unique approaches to their craft, but there's a reason why even the best players in history tended to operate in certain ways. Buxton belongs to that class of player, like Mickey Mantle and Alex Rodriguez but also like, say, Bo Jackson, who have so much talent that the challenge becomes understanding where the game does and doesn't permit extreme approaches to flourish.
This year, we've gotten arguably the longest stretch of uninterrupted, undiluted healthy Buxton of his entire career—and it's not even the middle of May. He's not merely feeling well enough to stay on the field. He's actually played at his full capacity for a full quarter of a season, starting every day in center field, batting near the top of the order, and running at full speed. Naturally, therefore, he's trending toward an MVP-caliber season (albeit in a league where that award itself is already virtually locked up, by Aaron Judge). According to Baseball Reference, he's already been:
- 3 runs better than average at bat
- 2 runs better than average on the bases
- 1 run better than average due to his ability to avoid hitting into double plays
- 2 runs better than average on defense
That's despite a horrendous start in which he batted .171/.209/.293 over his first 11 games, with the shadow of an illness in his family hanging over him. At the end of that stretch, when the family member passed, he was away from the team for two games to attend the funeral and be with his loved ones. Since his return, he's hitting .299/.339/.607. This is Peak Buxton, at age 31 and on the other side of such a litany of injuries.
He's pushing even his own profile to new extremes, though—perhaps because the restrictor plates are off, for the moment. Buxton is swinging at the first pitch 46.3% of the time, which is the highest rate of his career (save 2020, his playing time during which he's already exceeded this year) and more than half again the league average (29.6%). He's not swinging as often as he sometimes has, overall, showing decent plate discipline: He's swung at 74.7% of the pitches he's seen inside the zone, and 29.2% of those outside it. Those numbers are typical of his last few seasons, marking him as much more aggressive than the average hitter on strikes but not especially prone to chasing.
However, when he does chase, Buxton is coming up empty at a truly remarkable rate. He's only made contact on 34.8% of his swings at out-of-zone pitches this season, which is not only a career-low, but the fourth-lowest among qualified batters this year. Only Brandon Lowe, Judge, and Ryan McMahon have made less contact outside the zone, and they all chase less often than Buxton, anyway.
This is why Buxton leads the majors in strikeouts. He's swinging with reckless abandon when he sees what he believes to be his pitch. He's not modulating his swing or reshaping it to make contact if it turns out to be something other than what he thought he saw. That's leading to lots and lots of whiffs, and not very many walks, and he would need to make a major approach change to see those trends reverse themselves. On the other hand, it's also leading to 55.2% of his batted balls jumping off the bat at 95 miles per hour or more, a career-high mark. He's been able to use his legs to grab extra bases and beat out a few infield hits. He's been such a menace for opposing defenses that his BABIP is a whopping .341, despite his extreme fly-ball tendencies.
It's not clear how long one can play this high-octane a level of offensive baseball. It's not as neat or orderly or obviously sustainable as the way Judge is thriving—not by a long shot. Indeed, Baseball Prospectus's Deserved Runs Created model assigns him a DRC+ (where 100 is average and higher is better) of 89 this year, indicating that these fundamentals aren't supposed to add up to production this good. Buxton's talent is breaking baseball a little bit, as it often does, when he's healthy enough to put it on full display. Now, there are two questions remaining: Can he keep this up, despite the gravity of the game and its tendency to pull players back toward less extreme combinations of process and outcome? And the scarier one: can he stay healthy long enough to allow us to get an answer to the first thing?
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