Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images To be fair to Matt Wallner, the Twins have seen a crazy number of left-handed pitchers so far this year. Of the 109 plate appearances Wallner has accumulated over the team's first 31 games, a whopping 40 have come against southpaws. In 2024 (admittedly, an injury-disrupted year), Wallner only had 40 confrontations with fellow lefties all season. There's no question that being the lefty batter tasked with absorbing more of those left-on-left matchups than other Twins batters has contributed to Wallner's slow start. He also got hit in the ribcage with a mid-90s fastball two weeks ago, and can be seen most days since in the clubhouse with a huge wrap around his torso, suggesting there's considerable residual soreness there. All of that matters. It's not a set of excuses; it's a set of legitimate explanations for some of what's happening. The problem, of course, is that what's happening is untenable, no matter what's causing it. It's also getting hard to convince yourself that it will ever change. Wallner will turn 29 years old this winter. Though they haven't come without major interruptions, he has over 1,000 plate appearances in the majors. Right now, he doesn't look like a big league-caliber player—in either half of any given inning. Wallner is batting .168/.275/.284 this season, and striking out 38% of the time. He's lost speed this year and was never good at getting going, anyway, so he's become the worst defensive outfielder in the big leagues, with no serious rival. Last year, I wrote about Wallner's bat path flattening out, and the negative effects thereof. This season, it's flattened out even more. He's also lost some bat speed, though surely, part of that is due to both seeing more lefties (harder to swing with full conviction when you pick the ball up later) and the lingering issues from that plunking. He's just not a functional hitter right now, either. Defenders of Wallner are fond of observing that hitters with high strikeout rates can look disproportionately bad during cold spells, and that he's gotten equally hot at times in the past. That's true, to some extent, but it's not as helpful if you try to apply it broadly to all strikeout-prone hitters as if you analyze each player as an individual. Nor does it remain equally true over time. Wallner's swing is losing its ability to generate consistently lethal contact, even when he gets on time. His approach and pitch recognition have never been all that good, which has been proved for all to see since the advent of the ABS system. And again, he's almost 29. Players age faster than ever in the modern game, and Wallner is already moving out of his prime, physically. It's probably true that, given another 100 plate appearances, he would get on a streak and deliver enough power to invite the team to invest another 200 plate appearances in him. Now that the defense has gone terribly sour (and having seen that there's always another low valley after the next peak), though, that feels more like a threat than a promise: more wasted time, rather than a long-awaited breakthrough. As tantalizing as a homegrown, local product with light-tower power is, the allure is fading, for everyone involved. Even Derek Shelton, who tried to show abundant faith in Wallner by making him an everyday player to begin the season, is moving away from that plan now. Emmanuel Rodriguez is showing the same elite power potential Wallner once had, with Triple-A St. Paul. He's more disciplined than Wallner, and much, much more athletic. The Twins need better defense in the outfield, and they need a lefty slugger with more upside than Wallner offers at this point in his career. Rodriguez offers it. It's going to be awkward. It's going to be sad. Wallner has a minor-league option remaining, but once you admit that he can't hit in the big leagues after this long at that level and that you can no longer justify playing him, it's tough to think of any demotion as temporary or edifying. It's getting clearer all the time that Wallner (rather than Trevor Larnach or Austin Martin) will be the first player replaced by a top prospect arriving at Target Field, and the time for that replacement is extremely close. In all likelihood, we're seeing the final days of Matt Wallner's Twins career. That's exciting, because he'll give way to a player with every chance to be better than him right away and much more long-term upside. It's also an uneasy situation, though, and a sad ending for a player who was a key cog on one of the teams Twins fans will remember fondly: the 2023 streak-busters. He was great for that team. He's just not helping this one anymore. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images It's not always a well-received observation. When the fact that Byron Buxton's defensive metrics have gotten steadily worse over the years—indeed, that he's now roughly an average center fielder, and maybe not even that—came up on the Twins TV broadcast on Opening Day, Cory Provus, Glen Perkins and Justin Morneau practically rolled their eyes out loud. For many people who watch Buxton play every day, it's nigh unfathomable that he's no longer an elite defender. The very notion does more to dent their confidence in the endeavor of quantifying defensive performance than to diminish their faith in Buxton. I think some of that is simple allegiance, and an unwillingness to see what's really going on. Some of it, too, lies in the fact that even at his best, Buxton was not the same kind of great center fielder as (say) Pete Crow-Armstrong or Kevin Kiermaier. Those two are exemplars of a version of center field defense that relies on an extraordinarily good first step and read of the baseball. Crow-Armstrong sometimes makes near-miraculous catches, but they don't look like the ones Buxton made at his peak. They tend to look a lot like this one. NHlLcTZfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlFGV0JRVlhBd01BQUZKV1ZnQUhCUUpTQUFNQ1ZBQUFBVlVBQ0FkVUExQlJDRlFF.mp4 That line drive was only in the air for 3.5 seconds. Getting to it required anticipation, exceptionally quick acceleration, and the ability to keep moving fast all the way through the point where his arrow-straight route intercepted the ball. At his very best, Buxton sometimes made that kind of play, but his highlights have always tended to look more like this. QlhSTzlfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWdFQUFBSU5WRmNBQ1ZzTFZRQUFWd1JVQUFNRFZWUUFCMTBOQXdJSEF3Y0dVUWRW.mp4 This play is from June 30, 2019, when Buxton was 25 years old. He played, back then, like a man furious at any barrier that might dare impede him. He had the speed and the strength and the skills to make plays like this one; it seemed arbitrary and capricious to erect walls and permit hamstring strains. He played defense like a man fighting for his very way of life, because he sort of was. Buxton's ethos, back then, was that you have to be willing to run through a wall to earn your place on a big-league field. Being unable to do that is one thing; being unwilling to is another. It wasn't all that uncommon to see Buxton take on a wall at full speed. He did it a few times a year. Here's an especially bone-crunching instance, from 2017. Vk0wWHZfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFCWFUxY0hWQVVBWEZvRlhnQUFBZ05VQUFOVFdsVUFBMU1GVVZCUkJ3c0FDQUlD.mp4 It didn't always end that happily, of course. Here's another ball Buxton chased fearlessly into a fence in 2017, but in vain. eDkxWktfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWdRQ0FWTUVVUUlBQ0FZTEJ3QUFCQUZTQUFBTlV3VUFWd1lBQmdBTkFsSldDVkVE.mp4 As we all know, collisions like that one also contributed to Buxton's major injury issues throughout those early years of his career. Yet, he kept doing it. As late as 2022, he would still tear across the ground like the Road Runner, leaving clouds of dust and throwing himself into walls when needed. dnpBRFdfWGw0TUFRPT1fVXdCWVhBY0JCRmNBV1ZGUUF3QUFBQVVGQUZsWFVBSUFCd2RUQVFOUlV3dFFWZ2NI (1).mp4 Since a nagging knee injury forced him to spend all of 2023 as a designated hitter, though, that version of Buxton has been gone. Since the start of 2024, Buxton has only caught one (1) of the 40 batted balls on which Statcast estimated the catch probability between 0% and 25%. Here's that one catch, from last May. ZU44NmJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQTFOWFZsWUZWRmNBQVZkUkJ3QUhCZ01FQUFNTldnTUFWRlFFQkFvRUIxSlZBQU5W.mp4 That's in the spirit of his old specialties, but it came with a bit less risk—and, again, it was in the air forever. It rated so well because Buxton ran nearly 120 feet to intercept it, rather than because he was extraordinarily quick in breaking for it or showed superhuman acceleration. Buxton has, in fact, never gotten especially good jumps, by Statcast's measurement. Even in 2017, at the peak of his elite athleticism and in what remained the most complete season of his career for a long time, he covered 0.4 feet less than an average center fielder in the first 1.5 seconds after contact. That's a difference so small as to be nearly meaningless, so we can call him average, but bsck then, that was the only average thing about Buxton's defensive game, so it's notable, anyway. He had the speed, explosiveness and acceleration ability to cover a foot or two more than a typical cetner fielder, even in such a short amount of time. He didn't do it, though. Instead, strategically, Buxton has always been a read-and-react fielder. Knowing that he has some of the best pure speed in the game, he prefers to wait a hair longer before embarking on his pursuit of the ball than most fielders would. He only graded out as essentially average, at his peak, because he made up for that partial beat of assessment within that teeny window. That's how quick and long his strides were. That's no longer true, though. Buxton can still get up to nearly an elite spring speed, but it takes longer than it used to. Both his knee and his hip have taken enough damage over the years that he now gets underway a bit more slowly, and turns a bit less easily. Last season, Buxton lost 1.6 feet relative to an average center fielder in that first 1.5 seconds of a ball's flight. This year, it's 1.9 feet. He's become one of the slowest center fielders in baseball off the metaphorical block. In fact, only two outfielders have lost more ground in that crucial first instant: Phillies rookie Justin Crawford, and Buxton's teammate, Twins right fielder Matt Wallner. Crucially, this doesn't mean Buxton is actually a bad center fielder. Part of his defensive decline is a conscious choice. He's been less daring, but another way to say that is, he's been less reckless. He's still presented with the occasional opportunity to plow into the wall; he still has the speed and the sense of how to adjust his body to secure a catch like that if he needs to. He just doesn't do it. bmJsMTlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVZJRVUxd0hBRkFBREZjRVZ3QUhCMUpXQUZoVUFnTUFVQUJUQkZZRkExWmNBUVFG.mp4 That was a relatively important play in the game, back on the first weekend of the season. The Orioles already led, but catching that ball would have significantly reduced the likelihood of an extra insurance run scoring in the frame. Buston pulled up near the wall, though, choosing to position himself to play the ricochet. He's done this several times over the last two-plus seasons, and make no mistake: it's a matter of self-preservation. However, that doesn't mean it's selfish. Buxton has recognized that he's more valuable to the team on the field than on the injured list, and he's adjusting his risk management accordingly when he gets close to the wall. Here's another instance of the same calculation at work. He used to hurl himself into the wall on such plays; those days are gone. WU9rdzlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQmxBSFVnQUdWbEVBWGxFSFVBQUhBRlJmQUZnQVcxSUFCd01GQjFBRENBZFhCVkVI.mp4 Some of Buxton's lost value as a fly chaser, then, is a result of a conscious choice that helps the team in one way, even as it costs them in another. That makes it easy to forgive those non-catches. Even if you're predisposed to demand that a player leave it all on the field, we spent a solid half-decade watching Buxton actually break himself on the ground and against the fenses, and at a certain point, he's earned the right to stop doing so—especially because the team needs him on the field, and he can be on the field more often if he eschews those headlong collisions. What's left is to understand what makes Buxton good, in some ways, even at this relatively late stage of his career—and, in the same moment, to grapple with the real ways in which he's now much less than an elite defender. No one in baseball is better than Buxton at catching everything within the range he can reach. He's been above-average in getting to balls with a Catch Probability of 90% or lower in every season of his career, save 2025, in which he was exactly average. Meanwhile, he hasn't failed to come up with a ball that had a catch probability over 90% in almost exactly NINE YEARS, since getting turned around on this ball on May 4, 2017. ZHpiR0tfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdCVFVnRU5VMU1BQVFCUUF3QUFWRkJYQUZnR0J3VUFVVndHVkZFQVZ3QlFBbEJU.mp4 However, there are balls elite defenders can get to in center that Buxton simply doesn't. Often, they look utterly innocuous. Even the seasoned eyes of ex-players in the broadcast booth don't see them as opportunities, because they (depending on the nature of their experience in the game, or on their relationship with Buxton, or some of each) forgive the slightly late breaks he gets toward the ball, and don't see that if he'd gotten a better one, he could have turned what looks like an inevitable single into a spectacular out. Here, for instance, is a standard-issue hit to center from last April. It looks like nothign could possibly have been done. M3k0b3ZfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWdSVUJ3VURVbFlBQ1ZSV1VRQUhWRmRmQUZnQldsQUFCd2NBVlFZQkNBZFFVUVZX.mp4 However, that play was essentially identical—in terms of the hang time on the ball and the distance Buxton needed to cover, and even in terms of the angle he would have had to diagnose and take—to this play by Crow-Armstrong over the weekend. WnhxWkRfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0J3TUVCUUlCVTFFQUNGWUJVZ0FIQ0FCV0FGZ0hWMU1BQlZFRkJGQUVCVmRUVmdNRg==.mp4 There are wrinkles Statcast doesn't perfectly account for, like wind and field conditions and whether the ball left the hitter's bat with funky spin or was hit much harder or softer than it looked based on the swing, and they might explain the differences between any two given plays. However, there are lots of examples like there. Here's Buxton not quite flagging down a sinking liner in the gap in Kansas City. WU9rM0RfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGxSVUFRVU5CQXNBV1FaVFhnQUhCZ0FIQUFNQ1cxSUFDZ2RSVVFaVFZRWlNVbEZR.mp4 Here's Kyle Isbel making (as nearly as you'll ever replicate such a thing) the same catch in the same stadium. Both even came off the bat of a left-handed hitter. RDFBMnlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlZRRlZWTlhCVkFBWGxvRUJBQUhBUVZUQUFNQlZnY0FBMVVHQUZVRlV3ZFNWQWNE.mp4 The difference is the same in almost any pair of examples you can pull for study: Buxton doesn't get the elite jump off the bat that Crow-Armstrong, Isbel, and several other outfielders do. In fact, he's about as slow to break for the ball as anyone in the league. His routes are better; his body control is better; and he's more sure-handed. Those guys are all, however infinitesimally, more likely to botch a routine play or drop a ball even after they flag it down than Buxton is. It turns out, though, that what they do well is more valuable than what Buxton does well, and when their respective strengths and weaknesses are weighed, the game's top center fielders all come out ahead of Buxton. One reason, I think, why this has proved hard to accept is that it practically inverts our instinctive experience of Buxton as a defender. When we think of him in the outfield, we see in our minds the grace and the surety and the intelligence in his eyes, his gait and his glove. We see the blazing speed. We think, then, that he must be able to stretch the boundaries of a center fielder's range as well as anyone—that whatever he can't get to was ungettable. But it isn't so. As it turns out, Buxton—the guy who got famous by plastering himself on walls and flying like Super-Man to spear liners in alleys throughout the league—is an average-plus defender, but he derives all of his fielding value from his incredibly sound fundamentals. He's gone nearly a decade without missing a must-have ball, but it's been almost that long since he consistently demonstrated excellent range. He shores up his area gorgeously, but he doesn't extend it. He doesn't turn near-certain hits into outs; he just never turns near-certain outs into hits. Things might be different if this older, wiser Buxton were a bit less bruised. He might be better at flipping his hips to chase the ball laterally, especially to his right. He might be more willing to run into a wall now and then, and thus take away one or two doubles per year that he's allowed to fall since coming back to the spot in 2024. Because he's doing everything he can to keep his superb bat in the lineup and be there for his teammates more consistently, though, he lets that bit of value leak away, and because he's aging and was never great at off-the-bat reaction, anyway, he can't make up for that value as well as he might like. This revelation (some of which is new to me, too; I sat a long time with numbers and watched dozens upon dozens of clips to get a sense of how the data and reality interacted) does change some things. I've advocated moving Buxton to a corner spot, in the past. Barring the arrival of a player who shows that remarkable knack for stretching the range of the spot, I no longer feel that's necessary, or even prudent. There's much to be said for a generationally sure-handed center fielder who almost never even takes a shaky route. There's also some reason to doubt that a player who does his best work under high-arcing flies hit a long distance from him will be as good if moved to the corners, where the plays that separate good fielders from bad ones are more often sharp liners. It's a joy to watch Buxton in center field. He's no longer elite, or even close to it, but he's an extremely dignified presence in the center of the Twins outfield. At this and all times, dignity counts for something. So do all of those plays between the routine and the spectacular, where Buxton still does great work and finds his own joy in the game. View full article

Are you asking whether exit velocity correlates with production? If so: yes, very, very much so.

I think that's definitely been true of *some* version of Ryan's fastball. I'm not sure it's true of it right now. He's more dependent on mixing his pitches than ever—which is fine, of course! Just reflects the fact that he can't dominate with that pitch the way he once could. There are numbers for this kind of stuff, but I don't fully back any of them for an at-a-glance eval. I'm talking about a holistic assessment: how the pitch moves, where he can locate it, whether it misses bats without running into barrels when a batter does make contact, how it fits into his arsenal and sets up various sequences. I like Prielipp's slider better than any one pitch anyone else in the active group throws right now, edging out Ryan's and Bradley's fastballs and Ober's changeup. But I'm being subjective—informed by numbers, but ultimately making judgments. I'll happily hear arguments for Ryan's heater or any other pitch someone feels is better; making that assertion was just my way of emphasizing what I see in that pitch for Prielipp.

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images It's only been two starts, but it's not too early to get deeply intrigued by Connor Prielipp's slider. Hell, it's practically too late. Where have you been? Why hasn't this fascination been gripping you for weeks, months, or years already? For now, though, we'll let you slide on that part. Let's focus on the present, and savor what has been an encouraging pair of starts by the young southpaw since his promotion to the majors earlier this month. Though he's run into a couple of rocky spots and given up four runs in his first nine big-league innings, it's felt more like Prielipp might have held his opponents to less than like they might have produced more. On Monday night in Minneapolis, he gave up just two runs in five frames against the Marinersne of them came home when Tristan Gray, struggling to read a foul fly ball not far behind third base but twisting toward the stands, had to accelerate slightly as he ran into the tarp, leaving him unable to get off a throw quickly and strongly enough to retire J.P. Crawford on what became a very shallow sacrifice fly. As it happens, though, that very pitch is a good place to start our discussion of what has made Prielipp stand out so much in these two outings. It was 3-1 on Mariners second baseman Cole Young, but Prielipp went to his slider—because that's what Prielipp does. Of the 166 pitches he's thrown in his first two appearances in the majors, Prielipp has selected the slider 78 times (47%). He is, above all, a slider monster. In the past, that profile—a slider-first lefty—wouldn't work in the starting rotation. Right now, though, it looks like Prielipp can make it work. For one thing, the pitch is really, really good, in a vacuum. Some context might help us see just how good that is. Here are the pitch movement and velocity profiles of three lefty pitchers. Two of them have made the American League All-Star team and drawn serious Cy Young Award consideration within the last half-decade. Prielipp doesn't have the run on the fastball or the consistent depth on the curve that Cole Ragans can boast. He doesn't have the velocity or carry on the heater that Shane McClanahan had at his best, before going through an elbow surgery wringer similar to the one Prielipp went through during an overlapping span. Of these three lefties with similar size, stuff, command and arm slots, though, Prielipp's is the standout slider. The similarities to the best of Ragans's version of the pitch are almost eerie. Here's Prielipp putting away a batter with his sharp breaker. WU8yQTlfVjBZQUhRPT1fQmxVRUFnVldVUUlBREFCVVhnQUhVMU5RQUZoUkFWTUFWQUZVVWdRQ0J3RmRVUXNG.mp4 Here's Prielipp looking very similar in shape, but throwing the pitch harder, with the same result. TzA0VmxfWGw0TUFRPT1fVndGU1VWQUdYZ3NBQ0ZGVUJBQUhBbFZTQUZnR0JsUUFCVklHQWdjQUFBQUJCVkZX.mp4 Prielipp's slider even has a similar spin profile to those of Ragans and McClanahan, but he can achieve a bit more velocity—or, at other times, more movement, at the expense of velocity. That's where he branches off from these two encouraging comparators, but also (perhaps) how he can eventually meet up with them on the high road among junior-circuit lefties. Notice that the distribution of Prielipp's shapes on the slider was a bit wider—the yellow blob a bit bigger—for Prielipp than for Ragans or McClanahan. Now, consider this, too: The above only shows his first start's slider movements. Here's another look at it, with a line drawn through the slider blob to show the orientation along which he manipulated the shape of the pitch against the Mets. Compare that to this chart, which corresponds to the above but for his start Monday against Seattle. The feel he showed for the slider on Monday has a chance to make him special. On a chilly, rainy night, Prielipp didn't throw quite as hard or get quite as much sheer spin as he did in his amped-up debut in New York. He showed the ability to shift the offering east and west, though, which proved important. In the game in New York, Prielipp got seven whiffs on 24 swings on the slider, but he also allowed eight batted balls in play with the pitch. Five of those were hit at least 95 miles per hour; four of them went for hits. On Monday night, he got six whiffs on 16 slider swings. The Mariners put six balls in play on the pitch, but only one was hit hard, and none went for hits. Prielipp's slider is, in truth, two or three different pitches. Pitchers say there are three ways for a good breaking ball to get outs: Strike-to-ball: the good, old-fashioned chase-inducer, aimed at getting a whiff; Ball-to-strike: the one that should freeze a batter, usually with a noticeable early break and more velocity difference from the fastball, prompting them to give up on a pitch that lands in the zone; and The in-zone: a pitch nasty enough to miss bats or induce weak, useless contact even when it both starts and ends inside the zone, with a blend of power and spin that a hitter can't outmuscle. Prielipp has shown all three of these, though it's not yet clear how consistently he can execute each. One thing is clear, though: there's no count in which he won't go to the slider. We saw him use it for a key out on a 3-1 pitch, above. Here are 10 instances of him starting right-handed batters with a slider on an 0-0 count, just in these two games. It's not as simple as one version of the pitch being confined to a given count or to a given matchup. Prielipp will throw a sharp, biting strike-to-ball slider on the first pitch in one at-bat against a given hitter, then take advantage of the fact that they're looking for that pitch by going ball-to-strike the next time. Indeed, he did just that to Julio Rodríguez Monday night. He's eager to get ahead, but doesn't feel any need to use his fastball to do so. That the in-zone slider—the one that slashes across the whole zone but never really threatens not to be within in—works so well to righties is a testament to its viciousness. Now, here are 10 of the whopping 36 times Prielipp has already thrown a slider with two strikes, trying (in various ways) to put hitters away. It's actually not an exceptional out pitch yet. Prielipp has seven strikeouts with it, but a pitch with this much potential can eventually put batters away at a better rate than 19.4%. Hitters are sitting on that pitch in those two-strike counts, though, which has allowed Prielipp to put them away with other stuff at times. He got two strikeouts with his fledgling curveball Monday night, and another with his changeup. Meanwhile, he's showing the capacity to use that slider in multiple forms even within similar counts and situations. The ball-to-strike slider isn't a great option with two strikes, but Prielipp certainly made some hay with the version that stays in the zone the whole time. Even when he leaves the pitch up, its firmness and sidespin make it deceptive. Neither Prielipp nor the slider are finished products. Hitters will adjust; they'll punish his mistakes more often. He needs to find ways to make them respect his fastball a bit more, but the four-seamer lives in the movement dead zone and his sinker doesn't really play to righties. He hasn't stepped into the majors and overwhelmed the best hitters in the world, the way some slightly higher-caliber pitching prospects have over the last few years. However, Prielipp's slider should have your full attention now. It's the best individual pitch in the Twins rotation, and it could become the engine of the rookie's drive for a long-term home in the starting group. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images He's not going to make the All-Star team or anything. Victor Caratini has come back to Earth with a much less gentle splash than the Artemis II crew made earlier this spring. He batted a sturdy .271/.373/.354 through his first 14 games and 59 plate appearances of the season, and came up with a couple of big hits along the way. Since then, though, he's been awful: 3-for-24, with six strikeouts and a double-play grounder. Three times in the last seven games he's played, he's reduced the Twins' win probability by over 10% in his turns at bat. His OPS for the season is now .596. Behind the plate, though, he's turned out to be a genius—or, he's playing pretty well and getting a little lucky, to boot. The choice is (partially) yours. Caratini has been the better of the two Twins catchers at pitch framing, worth 1 run already, according to Statcast. He's also been better in the ABS challenge aspect, though—not just better than Ryan Jeffers, or better than average, but better than all but one other catcher in the big leagues. Taken together, those two skills (or is it three? One? Two and a half?) have made up for most of Caratini's shortcomings as a hitter. When the umpire calls a pitch Caratini catches a ball, he's very good at knowing whether or not to challenge. In 13 tries, he's won nine appeals, nudging his team toward the black by ensuring that the zone is the size it ought to be. Just as importantly, though, Caratini is still getting slightly more calls along the edges of the zone than most catchers do, and when opponents challenge those strikes, they lose. Batters are just 4-for-11 when challenging called strikes caught by Caratini this year. Pitch framing, as we've discussed many times, is a many-layered skill. There's some politicking in it. There's a bit of pitch-calling in it—knowing when to test the edges of the zone, and which edges each umpire is most likely to accommodate. Mostly, it's a physical skill, but the mechanics of good framing have evolved over time. When this part of the game was first quantified (around 2010), the best framers were guys with big, strong bodies, who held very quiet positions and caught the ball with minimal movement after setting their targets. Now, in the era of one-knee-down catching, catchers have changed the way they hunt calls. They stick out their mitts to present a target (which might be the real one, or not), then drop it toward the ground and try to catch the ball with the mitt in motion. It's not about being quiet. It's about making it look like the ball was right in the fat of the zone, whether that's remotely true or not. It makes fans howl a bit more about calls than they should, at times, but when you're on the field, it makes sense. This is how catchers have come to avail themselves of the rising baseline of athleticism throughout the league, which reaches down even into their squats. If you're Caratini, then, the goal is to catch the ball with a movement that anticipates the movement and location of the pitch and smoothly steer it toward the center of the zone, all in one movement. Umpires don't always fall for this, anymore. They've gotten steadily more accurate over the last two decades; the implementation of the ABS system is more about the technology finally being ready to boost the accuracy of the zone than about some pressing need to amend umpires failing at their jobs. They do fall for it sometimes, though, and they rarely punish catchers for being noisy when the pitch really is in the zone. After all, every catcher does this, now. Caratini has succeeded at that very often this year. To get a good look at how, let's focus on one corner of the zone: his glove-hand side, down. These are pitches low and in to righties, low and away from lefties. They look like this. cU93MFFfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndSU1ZsSURWZ2NBWFZWV0J3QUhCQWRSQUZsUVZnTUFBVndIQmxFR1UxRlhDVlFG.mp4 That's a good, solid catch on a pitch from Taylor Rogers that nailed its spot. It was a strike, and it was probably going to be called one, anyway. Caratini was actually a hair late, here, jerking the ball upward—ah, but maybe that was a good thing, rather than a bad one. As you can see at the tail end of the clip, Reds hitter Dane Myers challenged this call. He wrong to do so, and the choice to challenge was a dubious one, given the count and the location of the pitch, but Caratini's slightly late move might have fooled him (even if Caratini didn't really mean to do so) into costing his team a challenge for later in the game. Here's another instance of the same thing, only different. TzA0VmxfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFOU0FRRlhWZ2NBRGdaVVZ3QUhDQTVTQUFBRVYxTUFVQVpSQXdGUVZWSmNBZ05m.mp4 This is a picture-perfect modern frame job by Caratini. The orientation of his body gives the umpire a good look at the pitch as it slants across the zone. His catch anticipates the ball trying to work its way off the corner, and he brings it up and holds it on the edge of the zone nicely. However, because the matchup here was left-on-left and the pitch was a slider, Juan Soto was fooled. Lefty batters make very bad decisions about challenging against lefty pitchers and on pitches along the outer edge; they do especially badly when both things are true. Soto's head turned slightly to follow the ball to the mitt, and maybe he saw the move from Caratini out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he just thought that pitch had to be a ball, given the angle of its movement away from him. Either way, he challenged this call, too, and was wrong again. Caratini isn't always as clean when catching the ball in that spot, but unlike Soto and Myers, he sees the ball exceptionally well when it's thrown there. He knows, for instance, when he's let a Taj Bradley fastball beat him to its spot and lost a call on a pitch that really nipped the zone. In the past, there would have been nothing to do but rue that loss, but now, he has a recourse—and he takes it. ckR3NW9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFaWkJnRlJCUUFBWEFRREFBQUhCUUpVQUZrQ1dsSUFWMUJRQWxZRVZBTUhCUVlE.mp4 In fact, this exact thing has happened with Bradley's heater three times this year: the pitch zips in on the high side of 97 MPH; Caratini can't quite catch it with a good enough frame to earn the call; but he challenges the call and earns the strike, anyway. Something slightly different happened here, with Mick Abel throwing a changeup. ZU53T0FfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFBQVhRRUFVQVFBQUZCWEJ3QUhVbFZUQUFNQ1ZRUUFCUUFEVlZVSEFRdFZCd29B.mp4 This pitch tailed a bit more than Caratini thought it would, and he stabbed out toward the edge of the plate more than he'd expected to need to. However, even as he did that (and then brought the ball back to the zone), he knew it had been a strike, so when the call didn't come, he had the confidence to challenge it—even though it was the first inning. All told, relative to the expected challenges for and against him and the success rates of each, Caratini has earned the Twins 11.6 extra calls via the ABS system this year, according to Statcast. Only Cal Raleigh has earned more, mostly by fooling batters with his own noisy catching style: hitters are 2-for-18 when challenging Raleigh's calls. Put together framing and ABS-related value (which are distinct; Statcast's model grades framers based on the initial call to keep the two separate), and Caratini is one of the most valuable catchers in baseball. He often gets the calls on the edges, and when he doesn't, he's good at knowing whether he should have. In that low, mitt-hand corner of the zone, alone, he's earning a called strike rate of 38.3%, relative to the league's average of 30%—and he's added four more calls to that by challenging, while hurting the other team by prompting misbegotten challenges three times. That's a lot of value in a small amount of real estate. Statcast estimates that Caratini has been worth 3.1 runs relative to an average catcher, combining these two skills. He's on pace to be worth over 15 runs in that department, despite playing less than half the time behind the dish. That pace probably won't hold, but Caratini is a genius of the modern art of catching—of both crafting the zone and enforcing it, and tricking some opponents into self-defeating behavior. To whatever extent this skill proves real, it's enormously useful, especially for a Twins pitching staff that won't miss many bats and needs to steal strikes to survive their poor defense. View full article

Image courtesy of © Nick Wosika-Imagn Images Since 1986, 19 different players have started an MLB season with an OBP of at least .515 in their first 23 games, with at least 60 plate appearances in those contests. As you'd guess, it's mostly superstars. Barry Bonds did that three times. Jason Giambi, John Olerud and Mike Trout did it twice each. The worst player to do so in the last 40 years is either Von Hayes or Wally Joyner, and even they were awfully good at their peak and never better than in the year they started that hot. That's the company Austin Martin is keeping now, after reaching base four times in Thursday night's game in New York. Martin is, of course, being shielded from some right-handed pitchers, and the Twins have faced an extraordinary number of lefty starters early on. Still, the numbers Martin is now putting up—.347/.515/.469, in 68 plate appearances—are remarkable, and the team is starting to take notice. Martin's start Thursday night came against a right-handed starter, at the expense of slugging teammate Matt Wallner. What's working so well? As you would guess, Martin is getting on base so much more by walking often, and he's walking often because he's swinging less than in the past. He's down from swinging just over 40% of the time to being under 32% this year—but when we break things down even further, the truth of the situation comes even more clearly into focus. Late last season, I talked to Martin about how he handled the high pitch, as a hitter with a steep bat path but not much bat speed. His answer was simple: try not to swing at it. Force pitchers down into the middle of the zone, if at all possible. He was decent at that, too. Naturally, this season, his swing rate in the top third of the zone has... risen, while his swing rate along the bottom third has dropped considerably. Wait, what? Martin is being much more patient, but not in the segment of the zone you'd expect to see him take that tack in. Instead, he's reaching down to the bottom of the zone much less often, despite a swing seemingly geared to get on plane with those offerings. What gives? Well, firstly, you need to know that the strike zone isn't where it was last year. That's the biggest driver of Martin's change in approach, and well it should be. This season, with the ABS challenge system in place, the top and bottom of the zone are no longer set by the umpire's best estimate of the height of the hollow of Martin's knee or the halfway point between his belt and his shoulders. Martin was measured before the season, and a strike on him should now be between 27% of his height (around 19 inches) and 53.5% of his height (around 37.5 inches) above the ground. That's a short zone. The 5-foot-10 Martin ends up with almost a perfectly square zone, whereas in the past, we've always thought of most players' zones as being noticeably taller than they are wide. Umpires don't enforce these top and bottom lines perfectly, of course, but the league changed the tolerances of umpire grading last season to force them to be more accurate, in anticipation of exactly this dynamic. They've been very observant of each player's new rulebook zone, as best they can be, and Martin has the challenges themselves to help ensure that. He's 3-for-4 on ABS appeals this year, always using them to question the top and bottom of the zone. Opponents, meanwhile, have tried to find the top rail by challenging called balls up there twice, with no luck. So, when we see Martin's swing rate in the top third of the zone rising, that's not really what's happening. Instead, the vertical thirds of the zone are getting smaller, and any increase in swing rate is happening in what used to be the middle of his strike zone. He's also dedicated himself to not chasing low pitches, because even though his swing tilt gets him in position to touch those balls easily, he can't drive them. He doesn't have the bat speed for that. He's chosen, instead, to lock in on things the opponents leave up a bit, where the lift is done for him and he can just hit the center of the ball. An altered zone means Martin can safely ignore what used to be the top third of his zone. Here's a side-by-side look at the results of pitches at which he didn't swing that came in at least 2.9 feet off the ground, for both 2025 and 2026. The raw height of the pitch when it got to home plate cuts off at the same point (34.8 inches) for both seasons, but look how many of those balls were in Martin's old zone and called strikes last year. This year, almost none are. It's hard to convey just how valuable being able to cut off that extra five inches or so at the top of the zone is, except by restating Martin's numbers. He's getting on base more than half the time, and hitting a ton of line drives in the process, because he has pressed a newfound advantage. He's not chasing down and out of the zone, and the top of the zone now seems to be much lower than it was in the past. That leaves a nice, squat square for him to defend, and his excellent hand-eye coordination is more than up to the challenge. That doesn't mean, of course, that his new true talent level is to hit .350. The matchups will even out; Martin will get less lucky; and the league will figure out how to pitch to the newly shrunken zone. For now, though, Martin's approach change—probably informed, via his coaches, by the installation of the ABS-influenced zone—suits his swing brilliantly, which has produced brilliant results. For a player who already had plenty of baserunning and defensive value, this could be the key to becoming a regular in the majors—or even a star. View full article

No player chooses to be platooned, is the thing. Everyone wants to play every day. Platoons aren't tools to optimize the performance of individuals. They optimize team production at the *expense* of individuals.

Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images After 22 games, the Minnesota Twins have six batters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Catcher Ryan Jeffers and fourth outfielder Austin Martin are just off that pace, with 65 and 62 plate appearances, respectively. Just below those eight players, there's a tier of three guys who have been part-timers this season, with between 40 and 50 plate appearances despite being active all year. For Kody Clemens and Tristan Gray, that's to be expected; these are the roles they're meant to play. For Trevor Larnach, though, 47 trips to the plate in 22 healthy games reflects the strangeness of the team's early schedule. Through a series of matchup coincidences, the Twins have faced left-handed starting pitchers 13 times in their 22 games. Larnach, a lefty batter who's had little luck against southpaws during his career, has therefore started only half of the 22. He's been in there all nine times against righties, but only twice in the 13 games against lefties—and then, partially because of injuries to other players. Normally, players hate having the routine of playing every day disrupted. Only good players get the privilege of assuming they'll be in the lineup for each game, and those clinging to the fringes of the majors are happy to fill in wherever and whenever they're needed, but Larnach has long been able to plan on playing at least five times a week, at least when he's been healthy enough to do so. This pattern of (dis)use is extremely unfamiliar to him, and it's begotten a very weird version of Larnach so far in 2026—but weird in a good way. Larnach is batting .265/.468/.412. In his 47 trips to the plate, he's drawn an eye-popping 13 walks, to go with three extra-base hits and just seven strikeouts. He's still whiffing at a catastrophic rate against everything but fastballs, and by now, fans know better than to expect anything else. Against fastballs, though, he's only whiffed once, and more importantly, he's been extremely patient. His swing rate was around 41% in both 2022 and 2023. It rose to 44% or so in 2024 and 2025. So far this season, he's swung at 33.8% of the pitches he's seen. Thence come all those walks—though also lots of questions. Generally, that low a swing rate isn't viable in the big leagues. That goes double for someone who swings and misses as much as Larnach does against anything offspeed or breaking. It's a recipe for too many strikeouts, even if it does come with a fair number of walks. It's also, certainly, not what Larnach is trying to do. The Twins are a slightly more patient team than they were last year. New hitting coach Keith Beauregard has them trying to wait for the right pitch a bit more. The difference isn't huge, though, and no one is telling Larnach to swing barely a third of the time. He's just not in enough of a rhythm to swing any more often. He can't get off his 'A' swing consistently enough to justify swinging at all, given not only the plan he's taking to the plate but the years of practice and programming that have gotten him this far. It doesn't help that, after being strictly a platoon guy in 2023 and 2024 and getting only partial exposure to lefties last year, he's seen them in 11 of his 47 trips so far this season. In this small sample, though, Larnach has benefited from being forced to behave bizarrely at the plate. Swinging much, much less is working for him, not only because he's not getting himself out, but because the strike zone is smaller this year and pitchers aren't throwing as many strikes. A more patient approach might suit him, after all. This level of selectivity will probably never profit such a whiff-prone slugger, but unless and until Larnach can get his swing ranged and start producing the power he only intermittently accessed last year, waiting hurlers out is a good plan. He might have tried a bit more of this, no matter what. Because he's not playing especially regularly and is seeing some tough matchups, though, he's had to lean into it—and the results are as peculiar as this stretch of lefties on the schedule was. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images The Twins suffered a major loss on an off day Monday, as they're set to place right-handed starter Mick Abel on the 15-day injured list. Dan Hayes of The Athletic broke the news on Twitter. The initial diagnosis—inflammation in his throwing elbow—isn't the worst news you could hear about a player hitting the injured list between starts, but it's awfully close. The extent of Abel's injury won't be clear until the team provides further updates about any imaging taken on the arm, but right away, one must worry about a long-term absence. Inflammation isn't an injury in itself; it's a symptom of fatigue and/or damage, which has some cause. Finding out the cause of the inflammation will tell us whether Abel will be out a few weeks, the rest of the season, or somewhere in between. No matter what, though, it hurts the team badly to lose him now. Abel, 24, has a 3.98 ERA and a 24.7% strikeout rate through his first four appearances of the season, but that undersells what has been a thrilling upward trend over his last two outings. His dominance of the Red Sox last week at Target Field (7 innings, 4 hits, 10 strikeouts, no walks) felt like a step toward legitimate mid-rotation status, and Abel came out of that outing feeling great. Abel was scheduled to start Tuesday night in Queens. The team could turn, instead, to left-handed pitching prospect Connor Prielipp, who was on the taxi squad for the trip, anyway. Barring that, it's likely to be a bullpen day, but the team's roster isn't built for that right now. Short-term and long-term, this is a daunting disruption of the team's plans. They can only cross their fingers while they (and we) await more news on Abel's prognosis. UPDATE: Simeon Woods Richardson will start in Abel's stead Tuesday night, Hayes reports. Woods Richardson moves up a day to fill the gap for now, taking advantage of the off day for the team, but that doesn't answer the question for the longer term. To give a sense of how long an absence we're likely to be looking at, though, Baseball Prospectus's Return to Play tool shows that pitchers sidelined with elbow inflammation (that specific diagnosis, not surgery or a documented strain or tear, even if that later turned out to be the cause of the inflammation) in the months of March, April, May or June over the last three seasons missed an average of 72 days, with a median a bit lower. Abel is as likely as not to miss at least two months; the Twins need to find a long-term replacement. If Abel avoids elbow surgery and comes back at full strength, that's a win, from here. Doing it quickly would be a minor miracle. It's time for the young arms (be it Prielipp, Zebby Matthews, Andrew Morris or someone else) to step into the breach. View full article

I.... think you're massively overreacting to what is basically a short-term logistical maneuver that just happens to involve two high-upside arms.

Image courtesy of © Jim Rassol-Imagn Images Top left-handed pitching prospects Kendry Rojas and Connor Prielipp will travel with the Twins to New York this week, as the team takes on the New York Mets in Queens. Rojas, 23, will officially be added to the team's roster to replace fellow southpaw Kody Funderburk, according to Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Funderburk will go on the paternity list, and could meet the team in St. Petersburg for their weekend series against the Rays. Prielipp, 25, is on the taxi squad, a COVID-era invention still utilized by teams to keep fresh players ready during road trips when there's some belief that they might need them. For Twins fans who mentally entered rebuilding mode as soon as the team undertook a selloff at the 2025 MLB trade deadline, Rojas and Prielipp have taken on outsized significance as symbols of the team's future. Rojas, at least, now looks to be part of their present, though his stay on the roster could be brief. The Twins have a travel day Monday before taking on the reeling Mets beginning on Tuesday. Some chance exists, of course, that the addition of Rojas (or even that of Prielipp, which isn't yet a true call-up but puts him at the ready for one) will prove permanent. A few weeks in, it's become suddenly clear how much the Twins need to upgrade their bullpen if they hope to remain competitive. After climbing to 11-7, they've lost four straight, and on Saturday and Sunday, they lsot consecutive games which they led by multiple runs after six innings. Justin Topa, Funderburk, Eric Orze and Cole Sands—the closest thing the team currently has to an 'A' bullpen—blew their lead one run at a time over the final three frames on Saturday. In Sunday's series finale, manager Derek Shelton tried to get a two-inning save from rookie Andrew Morris, who went to pieces in the second of those frames, giving up three runs to flip the score in the top of the ninth. Shelton hadn't trusted Garrett Acton enough to turn to him until the horses left the barn in the ninth, but he then stuck with Acton (amid a defensive meltdown) rather than turn to Anthony Banda against a left-handed batter in the Reds' three-run 10th. The Twins face a major deficit of trustworthy, bat-missing relievers. At their best, Rojas and Prielipp are eminently capable of ameliorating that. Rojas sits on the high side of 97 miles per hour with his fastball. If he makes his debut amid an electric New York atmosphere, he could touch 100 MPH. He also has a changeup and a slider that could be plus, if he can locate them well enough. So far, consistency—in location, for sure, but even in shape and broader execution—has proved too much to hope for with Rojas, but his arm is one of the system's most electric. He was the co-headliner of the Louis Varland trade with the Blue Jays last summer, and is certainly the higher-upside of the two prospects the team acquired in that deal. Prielipp is homegrown, and though he's older and doesn't throw quite as hard, he might have an even higher ceiling. Even on the other side of multiple surgeries, he flashes a top-of-the-scale slider. The two-plane curveball he's added to the mix this spring shows tremendous promise. In the long run, the Twins would like both Rojas and Prielipp to stick in the starting rotation. However, their track records with regard to both health and performance suggest that their best roles could be in the pen. For now, Rojas will be asked to reinforce a bullpen that hasn't garnered much confidence from Shelton. How long that remains his job might depend not only on when Funderburk returns, but on how Rojas and several of the incumbent arms in the pen perform in the days ahead. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images It looks pretty innocuous. Garrett Acton isn't notably big or small. He doesn't have a funky arm angle or a complicated delivery. He just kicks and delivers, and it's not like his fastball hums in at 100 miles per hour. On the contrary, in his two appearances with the Twins so far this season, he's averaging just 94 MPH with the fastball. He's only thrown fastballs and sliders, so far. It's not an elaborate or an overwhelming operation. That's probably why Acton has always been below the prospect radar. He was a 35th-round pick by the White Sox in 2016, coming out of a high school in Chicago's southwest suburbs. Instead of signing, though, he went to junior college at Parkland College in Champaign, Ill. From there, he moved on to Saint Louis University and the University of Illinois-Champaign, but he went undrafted in 2019, and again in the COVID-shortened 2020 event. He signed as an amateur free agent, with the Athletics. He stuck with the Oakland organization for almost three years, even making a brief debut in 2023, but he then became a 40-man roster casualty. He wasn't claimed on waivers at the time, and didn't find a new home until signing with the Rays that December. He underwent Tommy John surgery and missed all of 2024. Last year, he pitched just well enough at Triple-A Durham to earn one appearance with a forgettable Rays team. He didn't morph into a relief ace, or anything. Somewhere in there, though, he became an in-demand asset. The Rockies claimed him on waivers in November, and the Marlins plucked him from Colorado the same way in early February. If you're hearing the words 'Rockies', 'Marlins' and 'waivers' and thinking this guy doesn't sound all that in-demand, you're not entirely wrong, but remember: waiver priority is determined by team quality. He did end up on the waiver wire repeatedly, even though he was passing through the hands of some bad teams, but then again, he got claimed by bad teams who had good spots in the line for such players. The Twins became the third team to scoop him up, this time via a trade, at the beginning of this month. It was a minor move, for a minor arm, but it could end up making a more significant impact than you'd guess. There's a reason why Acton has become a buzzier name lately: his stuff is sneakily good. In the image above, the distributions on the left show that all four pitches Acton throws (though he hasn't yet shown his splitter or curveball in the bigs) are above-average. His fastball-slider combination, in particular, rates well on Baseball Prospectus's StuffPro model. Why? Look at how high that heater rides, on the right. It sets up the tight slider gorgeously, and vice-versa. Again, Acton's delivery is unremarkable—but that's to his advantage. The way the ball spins and carries out of his hand is unexpected, to the batter. Taj Bradley (to choose a familiar name, especially at the moment) gets lots of carry on his heater, but he does it with a very high arm slot, so hitters expect a bit more of that movement. When a pitcher's vertical movement doesn't quite match their slot, though, it creates more deception. ZFh2d2pfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFSVVVWd0dYZ0VBWEZvTFVBQUhBMVVEQUZoVVVsa0FCbElFQXdvQkJsWUFBZ05V.mp4 Stereotypically, fastballs with that extra vertical hop achieve swings and misses at the top of the zone, as in the pitch above. It's less obvious, but this extra carry also helps at the bottom of the zone, when a pitcher locates and sequences well. It can earn you called strikes, because a hitter expects the pitch to dip low, only to see it hold on for a strike on what should have been a hittable pitch. ZFh2d2pfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFFQ1YxeFJWbFFBRGdGVFZRQUhDUWRWQUFNQld3VUFCd1FNQUFBRVZBWlVBRkJm.mp4 For those reasons, this is a trait the Twins hunt. Bradley's rising heater appealed to them, but so do pitches with much less raw movement, like the heaters of Mick Abel, Bailey Ober and Eric Orze. Plot pitchers by arm angle and vertical movement, and you can see how unusual the movement some of those hurlers achieve really is, based on how they throw. Unlike Ober, Orze or Abel, though, Acton's fastball does something else: cut more than expected based on the arm angle, too. That cut-ride action is a shape the Twins like, and a very rare one. Most pitchers whose arm slots are low enough to allow for unexpected vertical ride have a hard time achieving that while still getting around or behind the ball enough to give it relative cut. Not Acton. In this chart, the lower a pitcher's point appears, the less arm-side movement their heater has. That characteristic is especially valuable for setting up the slider. Because the batter will struggle to distinguish the two pitches from one another out of the hand, he can miss bats with the slider even when he misses his spot with it—but it's especially devastating when well-located, moving out of the same tunnel as the fastball. ZU53T0FfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFnRVhWZFJYMVFBWFZSV1ZnQUhWQTVYQUFNRFZBY0FCRklGQmxGVEFBSlJCQWNB.mp4 This is plus stuff. Acton didn't suddenly show up with it this spring, either. In his longish career in Triple-A, he struck out over 28% of opposing batters. The reason it's taken him until age 27 to find any lasting foothold in the big leagues is exactly the one you'd guess, given everything we've discussed so far: he struggles to throw strikes. Acton has walked roughly 10% of the batters he's seen in Triple-A. That humming fastball often rises above the zone, and his command of the slider isn't great. To be a useful big-league reliever, he has to find the zone more consistently. He might be en route to making that crucial adjustment, though. Last year, he had a bit more of a high front side, slightly increasing deception but taking some stability out of his delivery. eUxNeHdfVjBZQUhRPT1fQUFCVVZ3SUVVZ3NBRFZjRVZnQUhCVmRYQUZoVVVWQUFVMVlIVWdVR0JWY0VDQU1D.mp4 This season, he's quieted that down. A simpler delivery might beget just enough more control to allow Acton to turn the corner and establish himself as a good reliever—and if he does, for this Twins team, he'll simultaneously establish himself as a solid setup man, or more. He's one of the highest-upside arms in a bullpen with a lot of journeymen but few who still have his ability to generate whiffs. Acton has minor-league options remaining, so he doesn't have to depart the organization if the team needs his roster spot. He might have to ride the Green Line a time or two this year, but he's showing enough to make it relatively likely that he sticks with the Twins organization for a while. He might even emerge as an important cog in a pen the team will count on to keep them from collapsing into non-competitiveness as the season wears on. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images In a boxing match, you don't spend your time waiting and hoping for the chance to land one haymaker. If the other person in the ring were ready to go down and never get back up on the strength of one solid blow, they wouldn't be in the ring with you. Pugilism feels outdated in the 21st century, but there's a reason it was once called the "sweet science": the challenge within it is intricate. You do want to wait and build toward something, but it's the opening to deliver six or seven telling blows, not one. That's how the Twins are turning in a devastating offensive effort so far this year, and especially during the sizzling nine-game heater on which they enter the final game of their series against the Boston Red Sox. They're patient, but they're also opportunistic—and that doesn't just mean hitting mistake pitches out of the park. "Well, I don't know if I expected, you know, multiple seven-run innings or whatever they've been," said manager Derek Shelton on Tuesday. "I think the thing that has been the most impressive is how we've done it. It hasn't been just a homer, a hit, a hit, a hit. There's walks mixed in, I mean, hit by pitches, you cannot control, but the cadence to how we're doing it and to be able to sustain innings, I think has been what's the most impressive thing." Shelton is right. When the Twins scored three runs against former Twin Sonny Gray Tuesday night in the fourth inning, the tallies came on four straight hits to start the frame. One of those was a homer, but it was just the opening volley. They hammered away at Gray while he was reeling, with three more hits. In the first inning Monday night, they scored four times on Garrett Crochet without a home run, and they already had three runs on the board against him in the second before crushing two long homers to put the game away. This is not to decry home runs, which remain a focal point of every modern offense, including the Twins'. As Shelton noted, though, it will have to be more than that, if the team wants to sustain the success they've enjoyed over the last fortnight. "We have to manufacture runs," Shelton said. "Home runs are sexy, but they don’t sustain." He went on to say that his focus within each inning is to get a runner to third base with less than two outs, however that has to be done. He believes the team can apply much more pressure to the pitcher and open holes in the defense by consistently creating those situations within innings. Vital to that endeavor is a shared focus, and lots of communication—both in the dugout, and around the batting cage. Shelton believes new lead hitting coach Keith Beauregard has prepared his charges brilliantly, and that they're able to feed off one another because they've learned to speak the same hitting language and pass information quickly. "The greatest indication is, watch our dugout for two innings [Monday]," Shelton said. "Just the enthusiasm, the excitement, the conversation. I think the thing that is imparted is, you see young players now, Keaschall, Lee, coming back, having conversations with guys on deck, guys in the hole. This is what the pitch does. That comes when you have veteran hitters and they have the ability to communicate. And we were fortunate that we were able to add some guys to our group that really have a good way about them." He's talking—everyone around the Twins is talking—about Josh Bell and Victor Caratini. Luke Keaschall and Brooks Lee are polished, smart, self-possessed hitters, and Byron Buxton and Ryan Jeffers have been leading by example for years, but Bell and Caratini have been welcome additions to a mix of hitters who had underachieved over the past two seasons. When information flows freely through the lineup, so does confidence; so does conviction; and so does production. Some of this is technical, rather than merely a vibe. The Twins have five of the biggest bat speed decliners in the sport so far this season, according to Statcast: Caratini, Bell, Buxton, Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner. In reality, though, those guys are capable of swinging as hard as ever. As Jeffers began doing more frequently last year, they're merely modulating their swings more—not cutting them down, but changing how they start them and how they visualize finishing them. Under Beauregard's tutelage, these guys are anticipating and preparing with a greater sense of surety, which has them starting earlier and knowing what they're looking for in the box. If they get it, they're already on their way to it, and they don't have to rush their barrel, thus losing accuracy with it. If the pitch isn't what they expected, they have the faith in their preparation and in one another to either take it or whiff on it, rather than making an emergency adjustment that leads to weak contact. Bell was a perfect addition, because he was already doing that before he arrived. "They really haven't asked me to do anything different," Bell said of his approach and his mechanics. "We just talk about what we're looking for and being ready when we get it, and I have no problems with that because the results have been great." For other Twins, the adjustment has been bigger, but the rewards they're now starting to reap make it all feel worthwhile. Kody Clemens gave back the swing speed gains he made in 2025, which allowed him to hit 19 home runs in his first extended playing time in the majors. Unlike Bell, he has ugly numbers so far this year, but he's reached base five times (including hitting a home run) in his last 13 trips to the plate, as he's gotten more used to the marriage between preparation and execution under Beauregard and company. "it’s hard. It’s hard for hitting coaches," Shelton said of his staff's fight to stay on message and keep the hitters onside when the season began with more frustrating days. "And that’s the frustration of hitting coaches. Because players want immediate results. They want immediate success. So the commitment, the conversations, the communication when you’re in the cage is vital. And that’s where that trust is built. And that trust is not built easy." Clemens, at least, had the spring to implement the alterations Beauregard, Rayden Sierra and Trevor Amicone prescribed for his timing. Buxton had no such luck. "For the most part, my swing feels good [now," Buxton said, after breaking out in a massive way Tuesday night after slowly warming for the previous week. "Still a few things to figure out here and there—three weeks, eight at-bats will set you back a little bit." He's referring to his time with Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, where he only played sparingly. That also denied him time with Beauregard, Sierra and Amicone, and he admitted to trying to "rush my swing back" in the first days of the season. Now, Buxton is very much in the middle of the Twins' offensive outburst. He not only hit two long homers Tuesday night, but scored the team's first run in the style Shelton seems to prefer. He was on second when Keaschall hit a flared liner to center in the first inning. He initially froze, but saw that Red Sox center fielder Jarren Duran got a late break on the ball and turned on the jets. He scored, albeit on a close play after a highly aggressive send. Shelton called the decision to try it "elite," and both the manager and his star chuckled after the game about a shared moment in the dugout later. Buxton asked Shelton whether he thought he should have stayed at third on the play. Shelton said he trusted Buxton, and that he was the one on the field, reading it in the moment. That's the level of trust between the skipper and his offensive leaders, and the level of ownership and energy the lineup is taking, in turn. It won't always be this rosy, but for now, the Twins are rolling, thanks to a corps of hitters playing to their potential under a shaken-up coaching staff and a nice balance of new and old veteran leadership. They have patience, but once the opening comes, they want to land five knockout punches, not just one. View full article

I never knew they existed, either, and honestly, sports fashion and collectibles are both far from my radar most of the time. Video games, equally so. And I STILL think these are cool as hell. Appreciated Cody educating me about them. Haha.