Who Was the Least Valuable Player on the 2026 Twins?

Last week we handed out our honorary Twins Daily Awards for the 2026 season, highlighting our picks for Most Valuable Player, Best Pitcher, Rookie of the Year and Most Improved. It's important to recognize and shine a light on the standout performances that elevated this team and offered real reason for encouragement.

However, since this team ultimately fell short of its goals and finished below .500, it also feels worthwhile to look at the MVP conversation from the other side: who was least valuable to the 2026 Twins? Which players were most complicit in holding the club back from being a true contender in this watered-down American League?

There are a few ways to look at this. It's not as simple as asking who had the worst base numbers. Guys like Justin Lawrence (18.00 ERA in 6 IP), Luis Garcia (10.38 ERA in 8 ⅔) and Kyler Fedko (0-for-16 with 8 Ks) would qualify by that measure, but none played enough to have a truly substantial impact on the team's fate. 

Here are seven players who merit consideration for 2026 Twins LVP, with an added note at the end on why it matters moving forward.

Victor Caratini

A randomly excellent month of June is the only thing salvaging what was otherwise a disastrous season for the free agent signee. Even with his 1.059 OPS that month, he still finished with a 77 OPS+ and a negative-1.35 Win Probability Added that ranked worst among all Twins position players. He was one of the slowest players in the league, clogging the base paths when he got on, and defensively he was totally unable to control the opposing run game, allowing 64 steals on 77 attempts.

The Twins signed Caratini to a two-year deal with the expectation that he'd take over for Ryan Jeffers as starting catcher in 2027, but they've got to be having second thoughts about that plan with Caratini coming off an alarmingly lackluster season at age 33.

Justin Topa

He borders on too small of a sample, having thrown just 19 innings before being released in late May, but Topa packed a whole lot of badness into his 23 Twins appearances: 8.05 ERA, 6.47 FIP, 2.00 WHIP, 12-to-11 K/BB ratio. Making matters worse is that the team was counting on him for a semi-significant role, coming into the year as one of the more established members of a piecemeal Opening Day bullpen. 

He was decent for the first month but went off the rails afterward, and largely epitomized what was wrong with this relief corps before it got revamped. 

James Outman

Not a serious contender because he didn't have a big enough role, but with Outman it's more about opportunity cost. The Twins could have used those 70 plate appearances more productively on just about anybody. Instead, Outman batted .156 with 29 strikeouts, and his outfield defense was not nearly strong enough to make up for the offensive ineptitude.

The situation was more frustrating in terms of optics than functional damage done. It was always obvious Outman was not a good player. He was bad before the Twins acquired him last year, bad after they acquired him, and bad this year when given another chance. He somehow got another 100 plate appearances in Detroit after the Twins cut him loose in June, and was bad there too. 

Tristan Gray

A strong candidate. The Twins took an inexplicable liking to him and ran him out for 52 starts, mostly at shortstop, before his demotion to Triple-A around the All-Star break. Offering little on offense or defense, Gray was chiefly responsible for turning the shortstop position into an area of massive disadvantage for Minnesota in the first half.

The only redeeming quality of Gray's time with the Twins is that he batted .300 with runners in scoring positon and had a few memorable clutch hits, compiling 29 RBIs in his 188 plate appearances. He might skirt LVP status for that reason alone despite sub-replacement level production overall.

Matt Wallner

Wallner, conversely, provided little in terms of positives to offset his poor performance. The combination of a .167/.259/.292 slash line with bottom-barrel defense in right field led to negative-0.8 fWAR and negative-1.4 bWAR, both surpassing Gray for lowest among Twins position players. Wallner also had the second-worst WPA (ahead of only Caratini), so his lack of offensive output was costly. 

The 28-year-old was optioned to Triple-A in mid-May and never made it back, despite hitting pretty well for the Saints. It's been a dramatic fall-off for a hitter who was one of Minnesota's best in 2023-24. 

Simeon Woods Richardson

In the span of 12 appearances (10 starts) for the Twins, Woods Richardson was about as bad as can be. He posted a 7.74 ERA and 6.16 FIP, allowing a jaw-dropping 65 hits and 25 walks with only 26 strikeouts in 47 ⅔ innings. The team went 1-9 in games he started. His negative-2.24 WPA was not only the worst on the team, but in all of baseball.

The performance was discouraging enough that the Twins simply released Woods Richardson in early June — a stunning turn of events for a 25-year-old starting pitcher with a recent track record of MLB success. 

Royce Lewis

Lewis is a bit different from everyone else on this list. Relatively speaking, his performance wasn't horrible, just well below average. FanGraphs and Baseball Reference both pegged him as modestly above replacement level. He stayed healthy, hit some homers, drove in some runs, played a ton.

But that last part is sorta the issue. Lewis had by far the most playing time of anyone here. When healthy he was consistently an everyday player but rarely was he helpful. Yes, his 86 OPS+ is better than the 77 from Caratini, but Lewis made 130 more plate appearances and he was putting forth this sub-mediocre production from an offense-driven position, especially after the move to first base.

So, where do you land on the least valuable player for the 2026 Twins? For me it's probably between Wallner and Woods Richardson, but Caratini has a case and I think Lewis might have an even stronger one. That's where this discussion takes on forward-looking relevance. Because while some of these guys are already out of the picture and others are on their way, Lewis and Caratini remain penciled into 2027 plans as of now. 

This sets up a critical question for the offseason: Are the Twins content to hope that two of the players most responsible for their disappointing outcome this year will reverse course, despite giving little tangible reason for such belief? Or will they seek to find ways to upgrade at catcher and first base? The latter would be a bit easier, given that Lewis is arbitration-eligible whereas Caratini is locked in for $7 million with a $3.5 million buyout for his 2028 option.

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