Minnesota Twins 2024 PECOTA Projections: The Hitters

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Yesterday, we looked at the projections for the men who will toe the rubber for the Twins in 2024. Today, we’ll analyze the hitting side of things. I’ve chosen to use DRC+ as the sole hitting metric, simply because it’s the cleanest one Baseball Prospectus offers, and lord knows no one wants to read a table bigger than it should be. If you want a rundown on what exactly that stat means, click here.

I’ve added the top comps for each player, mainly because I find the exercise fun. They’re based specifically on age, so Carlos Correa’s Jim Fregosi comp—sorry, spoilers—relates to Correa moving into his age-29 season compared to Fregosi’s career up to that point. Also, don’t take them too seriously. Some comps are way closer than others, and just because someone is likened to another player doesn’t mean they’re cursed with the weight of mimicking their career. Anyway, on to the projections:

Nothing is too shocking here. Royce Lewis gets a much heartier projection than last year, thanks to his increased sample of dominance. He’s the 72nd-best position player in the league, which is incredibly impressive considering that systems like PECOTA are typically suspicious of players with a limited history of crushing the ball. It’s hard to fake that kind of power, though. 

 

Edouard Julien is an interesting case. Robert Orr laid out in a piece a few days ago that PECOTA will naturally be skeptical of a young player striking out at a 30+% clip while BABIPing .370, regardless of their contact quality. It’s certainly possible that that’s simply how his game works—and his plate discipline is legit, buoying his profile—but projection systems need to see more before they begin to give a guy like him the benefit of the doubt. Consider him a tough one to figure.

Perhaps the most shocking result is that Emmanuel Rodriguez, despite only reaching High-A in 2023, is projected to hold his own at the major-league level. Holding a .400 OBP over 99 games in a tough hitting environment obviously impressed the computer. That comp got a chuckle out of me, too.

Speaking of comps: I wasn’t expecting Carlos Santana’s to send me on a history trip like that. Earl Torgeson was a very good player, though, and one of the best the state of Washington ever bore.

 

Finally, I didn’t put him on the table, but Brooks Lee was way, way down the list, somewhere in the 1,000s. I think projecting anything solely based on minor-league stats can yield some goofy results. Still, perhaps his performance so far deserves more scrutiny than we’re giving it. Or maybe not. We’ll earn a better understanding of him as a player once he sees playing time in the majors—which could come as soon as this season. 

If you would like to see any of this PECOTA stuff yourself, consider heading over to Baseball Prospectus's basket random website to subscribe and read some of the best baseball writing in the business. Their alumni include Brandon Warne and Aaron Gleeman, and our editor, Matthew Trueblood, writes pieces for them as well. No one told me to write this; I truly believe they are one the best resources for analytical and creative baseball thinking currently in operation.

I like that the BP staff makes an effort to be transparent about the meaning and scope of the PECOTA estimates. They don't hesitate to discuss the implications for someone like Julien and the reasons the system will demote him despite the fact that his on-field performance and hitting style indicate otherwise. Because he is an oddity of a player and projection algorithms are historically awful at managing outliers, there's a strong possibility PECOTA is incorrect about him this year.