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Late in spring training, Trevor Larnach was optioned to Triple-A St. Paul. It wasn’t an unexpected result after the year rookie Matt Wallner had in 2023, but it signified another setback for the career of the 2018 first-round pick. When Wallner continued to struggle (as he did most of the spring), though, Larnach was promoted directly from a rehab assignment at Single-A Fort Myers to the majors.
As they brought him back to the big leagues, the Twins needed to see a few different things from Larnach. Most importantly, he needed to prove that he could handle more than fastballs. We have seen him do that only in brief bursts during his career, and it has often been surrounded by periods of injury or disastrous slump.
It's only been a few weeks since Larnach got the call, but so far, he's checking all the boxes that he needed to check in order to reestablish himself as part of the team's long-term plan.
The outfielder is batting .328 with an .871 OPS. Three home runs in that brief a stretch put him on a pace to blow by previous career highs; he's doing consistent damage. While his walk rate isn’t where it has been, Larnach is striking out more than 10% less often, and his hard-hit rate is over 50% for the first time in his career.
There is some smoke and mirrors to his production, with an out-of-whack BABIP, but Larnach has increased his average exit velocity by more than 4 mph this season. He hasn’t changed a ton with regard to his spray chart, but he's hit a few balls solidly to left-center field, maintaining a threat to all fields.
Maybe most impressively, all of this has taken place against a career-low 31% fastballs. The book has always been that Larnach will destroy heat, but can’t hit breaking or offspeed pitches. Right now, though, he’s producing impressively despite seeing mostly junk.
Larnach has some room to zone up and make things work in a more sustainable way. Right now, he is chasing a bit more than his historical norm, and he’s swinging at nearly 50% of the pitches he sees, overall. His contact rates are solid, but if he can be a bit more picky as to which pitches he attacks, the optimal results he has shown can be expected to hold--or even improve.
It’s fair to note that three weeks still isn’t a significant sample size, and Wallner starting to come around at Triple-A may provide a bit of tension to keep it going. With a player whose track record is inconsistent, a wait-and-see approach is always a wise one. The process has changed this time around, though, and that makes the outcomes feel more earned and portentous.
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