Is This Process Worth the Results for Byron Buxton?

A season ago, the Twins were forced to play Byron Buxton only as the designated hitter. His body continued to fail him, and a nagging knee injury forbade him play the field. That only worked for a short time, though. It soon became clear his offensive production wasn’t suited for a lineup-only role.

As Buxton got off on a strikeout bender last season, I wondered if he had sold out for too many Miguel Sanó-like tendencies in the process. Less of the doubles hitter he was earlier in his career, Buxton adopted a career-high 58.2% pull rate in 2022. That resulted in a swing from 30 doubles in 2019, and 23 in 2021, to a career-best 28 home runs to propel him toward a first-time All-Star Game appearance.

It’s not necessarily fair to formulate strong opinions based on 2023, now that we understand the level of pain Buxton was playing through. Now healthy, though, Buxton has played in 27 of Minnesota’s first 29 games, with 18 starts coming in the outfield. It is also fair to note that Buxton is now 30 years old, with additional mileage on his lower half due to the myriad injuries he has suffered. He's had a good few days, but his batting line for the year is still a below-average .242/.293/.385.

So, what’s going wrong? A very notable piece of the problem is an inability to catch up with the fastball. Having seen very little live action since shutting things down last August, there was always going to be a level of rust. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever, and as Nick Nelson pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Buxton is doing nothing with a pitch he used to feast on. Getting behind on the fastball is something that compounds everything else, and that’s where the picture gets murkier.

Buxton has never seen fewer fastballs, at any point in his career. Getting them just 45.1% of the time, pitchers know that when he’s going well, he will do damage there. Unfortunately for Buxton, the league has never been more comfortable leaning away from the fastball.

They are combatting his tendencies and lack of plate discipline with the highest rate of slider and changeup usage he has ever seen. The lack of discipline has played out to the tune of a 35.7% chase rate, something he hasn’t touched since 2019. The whiff rate, at 19.2%, is causing a 32.3% strikeout rate, and combining that with the third-worst walk rate among qualified hitters is an issue.

For Buxton to be productive with this process, he has to hit for power--lots of power. He changed that aspect of his game a few years ago, and he’s not enough of an on-base threat to make anything else work. His 110.5-mph max exit velocity is down 6 mph from where it was last season and his 89.5 mph average exit velocity is diminished as well. When he is making contact, it’s not hard enough to do anything productive; it took him 21 games to crush his first home run.

There are very few players who can strike out at a rate as gaudy as Buxton's, while having the rest of the pieces work. A 32/3 K/BB isn’t going to get it done, even with a boatload of home runs, and doing it with only a few extra-base hits sprinkled in makes things complicated. Signs of life are improving, as the Twins center fielder owned an .858 OPS over his last 14 contests coming into Wednesday's game against the White Sox, but with a 14/2 K/BB in that same stretch, the needle is still being threaded entirely too thin.

For a guy who talked about his health this spring, and has backed it up, his process doesn't currently play into his strengths. While he's not the slap hitter the Twins initially groomed him to be (and thank goodness for that), any desire he had to steal bases (let alone 30) is entirely rooted in getting on base. He doesn't hit a ton of singles, and there's often little benefit in him grabbing the 90 feet between second and third. If he's going to start swiping second and utilizing his 29.3 feet per second (97th percentile) sprint speed, then walking to first every once in a while would be a good idea.

It’s great to see Buxton back in a fuller capacity, but either there’s a significant amount of rust, or some tweaks not yet made are still keeping him from being the player that the Twins need in the lineup on a nightly basis.