Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Matt Krohn-Imagn Images The whole has always been a bit less than the sum of the parts for Griffin Jax. Now, that's the problem of the team who loves great parts (and summing them) more than anyone else: the Tampa Bay Rays. Jax, 30, was the Twins’ 3rd-round pick in the 2016 MLB Draft. He scaled the ladder of the system as a starting pitcher, but his stuff never popped in that role. After debuting as an extremely forgettable starter in 2021, he converted to the bullpen in 2022—and almost immediately, he flashed dominant stuff. His results and his situation management have been inconsistent ever since, but his combination of plus control and newfound, high-end movement has turned him into one of the game’s most exciting and (occasionally) dominant relief arms. He’s under team control through 2027, and is making $2.3 million as a first-year arbitration-eligible arm this year. As a non-closer, he’s unlikely to hit the jackpot during his arbitration-eligible years, which has made him even more appealing than his extraordinary strikeout and walk rates already did. In exchange for their co-relief ace, the Twins acquired starting pitcher Taj Bradley, whom the Rays recently optioned to Triple-A Durham—but who has spent significant portions of the last two seasons in the rotation for Tampa. Bradley, 24, has four more years of team control remaining after 2025, two more than Jax. He's an intriguing arm, who has shown good velocity but too often found the heart of the plate with it in his brief time in the majors. Minnesota will try to unlock an arsenal that appears to hold real promise, but which has never translated to consistent success for Bradley. They've had good luck doing this with former Rays hurlers a time or two, but getting only Bradley for the relatively accomplished and metrically beloved Jax is a surprise. View full article

Image courtesy of © Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images Though Jhoan Duran was part of the organization longer and Carlos Correa's expatriation is more significant, for many Twins fans, this will be the trade that hurts most. Willi Castro endeared himself to teammates, management and the fans, with a blend of great tools, a hustling style, versatility and affability. Now, he'll pack his many gloves and his bats (just the one set, though; I asked, and Castro said he's not one of the switch-hitters who swings different sizes or shapes of lumber from each side of the plate) and try to make an impact on the pennant race. Castro, 28, will be a free agent at the end of this season. In the final year of his arbitration eligibility, he’s making $6.4 million this year, which means that just over $2 million remains to be paid. That’s a small price to pay, though, for a switch-hitting utility man who offers a modicum of both power and speed. After hitting a career-high 12 home runs last year, Castro already has 10 in 2025. In 336 plate appearances, he entered Tuesday batting .252/.343/.418. The Twins scooped Castro up off the scrap heap before the 2023 season, signing him to a minor-league deal after he’d been non-tendered by the Detroit Tigers. Since then, he’s been the Swiss Army knife for the team, playing all over the diamond and slotted in all over the lineup card. His defense has declined sharply the last two seasons, perhaps because he’s been moved around so much, and this year, he’s mainly played second base and the corner outfield spots. However, his versatility (in both halves of innings) made him appealing to multiple teams. One of those teams turned out to be the Cubs, whose struggles to cobble together a functional bench this year have held them back as the grind of the season has caught up to some of their everyday players. To add Castro to their positional rotation, Chicago sent Minnesota Double-A arms Ryan Gallagher and Sam Armstrong, according to Jesse Rogers of ESPN. Gallagher is the headliner here. He's been an arm on the rise throughout the season, climbing the ranks of the Chicago farm system after being the team's sixth-round pick in the MLB Draft last summer. In 84 innings at High-A South Bend and Double-A Knoxville, Gallagher has a 3.43 ERA and 96 strikeouts, against 20 walks. He's exactly the kind of arm with whom the Twins do well, and he's already found some success in Double A. Armstrong, 23, has also held his own in Knoxville, but he was a 13th-round pick in 2023 and doesn't have Gallagher's impressive peripheral stats. He looks like more of a candidate for a quick move to the bullpen, where his stuff might tick up and play better. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images No player in the Twins clubhouse looks less like a big-leaguer when they walk through the door, but Danny Coulombe carries himself so much like one that any doubt gets pulverized quickly. Certainly, whenever he took the mound, he left no doubt—across multiple tenures with the Twins. Now, he'll bring that swagger and that brilliance—with a hefty dose of matchup value to boot—to a playoff hunt. The Texas Rangers looked like sellers for much of this month, but the muddle of the American League and a well-timed charge had them hunting for ways to get a bit better without spending any more money. Jeff Passan was first with this news. Coulombe, 35, ends his second stint with the Twins having somehow managed to pitch even better than he did in his first. He's made 40 appearances on the year, totaling 31 innings. Using the loophole in the three-batter minimum rule whereby a pitcher isn’t required to return to the mound the next inning if they finish the one they enter, Rocco Baldelli frequently brought in Coulombe to face a dangerous left-handed batter in a middle-innings jam. Coulombe had eight appearances in which he faced just one batter, and three more in which he faced just two. Across those 11 outings, he inherited 15 runners and didn’t allow any to score. In fact, he’s only allowed four of 24 inherited runners to score all year. With a very high arm slot from his very short stature, the southpaw gives opponents an exceptionally difficult look. That elevated his trade value, almost as much as his superb performance and his affordable contract. He signed a one-year deal worth $3 million in early February, which will end up being roughly $3.2 million as he hits incentives based on games pitched. That leaves only about $1 million to be paid for the balance of the year. Coulombe has not allowed a home run this year. Left-handed relievers are always in demand at the deadline, and Coulombe is no exception. The Rangers, much in need of bullpen help and with no extra money to spend as they flirt with the competitive-balance tax threshold, were a perfect fit for him, and the two sides found each other with about 100 minutes left before the deadline. In exchange, the Twins will receive Texas's 6th-round pick from last year's MLB Draft, Garrett Horn. Mark Feinsand broke that news. Horn was recovering from Tommy John surgery when selected last summer, and has made just nine starts in Low A this year. He's moderately promising. One might have dared hope for a player with either more upside or more proximity to the major leagues, but he's not entirely without merit. It's unfortunate that the Twins couldn't dervie more value from having been so right to reinvest in Coulombe, but that's the nature of one-year deals with middle relievers. The way to derive big value from it would have been to win this year and have Coulombe keep getting big outs into October. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images The Minnesota Twins are trading Carlos Correa back to the Houston Astros, according to multiple reports. The deal will involve, principally, the cash-strapped Minnesota front office getting out from under most of the contract to which they re-signed Correa after his star-crossed free agency in the winter of 2022-23. Brian McTaggart of MLB.com had the news first. Correa is in the third of six guaranteed years on the complicated, team-friendly deal the Twins struck with him in January 2023. He’s making $36 million this year, which means there’s $12 million left for 2025 alone. After that, though, his pay gradually decreases. He’ll earn $31.5 million in 2026, $30.5 million in 2027 and $30 million in 2028, all guaranteed—then, there are four club options, with the value stepping downward in $5-million increments each year. Those options can vest based on playing time, but the Astros can manage his playing time in whichever of those seasons they’d like. This trade is, effectively, a salary dump—and, as such, a sad and embittering end to a once-promising Twins tenure for a player who joined the team when he was on a Hall of Fame career trajectory. Plantar fasciitis and other injuries have eroded his skills and curtailed his production, but as much as anything, this divorce became necessary because Correa’s deal was struck by a team anticipating a steadily increasing payroll, which then had the rug pulled out from under it by an ownership group now running for the door. Correa, for his part, has done whatever he could to foster a winning atmosphere, and will continue to do so as he returns to the organization that took him first overall in 2012. He's sliding to third base for the Astros. The full extent of the deal is still far from clear, but while the Twins are eating a portion of the nine-figure sum still owed to Correa, they've offloaded the lion's share of it. There will be a prospect coming back to the Twins. That's not really a surprise. It's unlikely to be an especially high-echelon talent, though—and that leaves more questions to answer, too. As it turns out, though, "prospect" is rather a strong word. The hurler the team will receive is Matt Mikulski, a 26-year-old organizational arm who had been pitching at High A in the Houston system. Meanwhile, according to multiple reports, the Twins will eat $33 million of the remaining money owed to Correa, so they're getting off the hook for about twice that much. In theory, the upside of a trade like this is to open space for young players and to free up money to make it easier to retain up-and-coming pieces who look like the foundations of a new core. In practice, at this moment, it looks as though the benefits of this deal redound mostly to the Pohlad family. Reinvestment of the money saved seems unlikely, in the short term, and the team certainly didn't acquire an impactful player to balance the one they're losing. On the other hand, Correa's age and recent performance remind us that the uglier half of this contract is likely ahead, not behind. The greatest source of frustration, perhaps, is that the situation arose where this measure was even considered. Once it did, making this trade was logical. Most baseball fans just don't follow the game for the logic of it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images Brock Stewart was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and made his big-league debut for them. Now, he returns whence he came, with plenty of team control for his new, old team to play with. Stewart, 33, has a 2.38 ERA in 39 appearances and 34 innings pitched this season, his third with the Twins. Injuries have marred his professional career and long delayed his emergence as a successful reliever, but he’s tapped into some nasty stuff since coming to the Twins and dedicating himself to the bullpen. This year, enjoying the longest stretch of good health he's had in years, he's striking out 29.5% of opposing batters and walking just 7.9%. Opponents have a meager ,612 OPS against the man Twins fans came to know, affectionately, as Beef Stew. Though out of options (and therefore always in some danger of hitting the waiver wire, should his performance wobble), Stewart is under team control through 2027 via arbitration. He's making just $870,000 in 2025, scarcely over the league-minimum salary. Between the control years and the low financial cost, the trade value on Stewart should be significant. He was one bellwether, coming into this week, of how far the Twins would go in reshaping and restocking their system. Under Derek Falvey, the Minnesota front office has (correctly, for the most part) treated even highly effective relievers as essentially replaceable. Though Stewart has been great, the team suffers from a dearth of leads for him to help protect, rather than from an inability to protect the leads they do get. Trading him to a bullpen-needy team highly adept at creating leads, like the Dodgers, is the club's way of trying to find more durable and scarce assets. For Los Angeles, though, a sturdy middle reliever is a godsend—and so much the better that he's a familiar and friendly face. Ravaged by their annual spate of injuries, the Dodgers have spent much of this week stalking the relief market. They were in on Jhoan Duran before the Twins found a match with the Philadelphia Phillies on him; Stewart figures to help stabilize a pen that will be without erstwhile relief ace Evan Phillips all year (elbow surgery) and that has had to make do without big-money offseason signing Tanner Scott for a chunk of this summer. In return for Stewart, the Twins acquired outfielder James Outman, as first reported by ESPN's Alden Gonzalez. Outman, 28, still has (theoretically) four years of team control remaining after this one—but he's spent the majority of this season in Triple A, and has a .487 OPS in the majors. Outman is a lefty batter with a great glove, even in center field, and he had 23 home runs in a very impressive rookie season in 2023. He has plus speed and plus power. He's been such a wreck at the plate, though, that it's a bit odd to hear that this is a 1-for-1 deal. Outman was a late bloomer, so the career setback he's gone through over the last year and a half has him rushing toward 30 without having proved he can consistently handle the best pitching in the world. His tools—especially the power, if he can get to it the way he did two seasons ago—sets him apart from DaShawn Keirsey Jr., but broadly, he offers a similar profile. The Twins are rolling the dice on their own player development and betting that they can turn around the struggling ex-slugger. View full article

Image courtesy of © Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images The Minnesota Twins continue to spin off impending free agents ahead of the 5 PM Central trade deadline, and they continue to make moves with the highly aggressive Philadelphia Phillies and top executive Dave Dombrowski. This time, it's Harrison Bader joining Jhoan Duran in the City of Bortherly Love. Jeff Passan was first with the report; Twins Daily's @John Bonnes was able to confirm the trade independently. Bader, 31, is a New Yorker by birth but attended the University of Florida. Drafted by the Cardinals, he spent seven years in that organization, before being traded to the Yankees in 2022. Since, he’s bounced to the Reds and Mets, and he signed a one-year deal worth $6.25 million with the Twins just before spring training. Some $1.5 million of that is in the form of a buyout on a mutual option for 2026, so one intriguing question when looking ahead to this deal was whether the Twins would send money to offset some or all of that payment. Bader batted .258/.339/.439 in 307 plate appearances for the Twins, with 12 home runs and 10 stolen bases. After he’d traded some patience to put the ball in play more often over the previous half-decade, Bader has drawn more walks this season and is enjoying his best offensive campaign since 2021. He’s lost a step in center field, but remains elite in either corner. While he was a Twin, he earned high praise from Rocco Baldelli for the unique energy he brought to the clubhouse and the dugout. In return for Bader, the Twins will get outfield prospect Hendry Mendez and right-handed pitcher Geremy Villoria, as reported by Phillies writer Matt Gelb. Mendez, 21, is a tall, lanky, left-hitting outfielder, performing well at Double-A Reading this season. He's batting .290/.374/.434 there, with eight home runs and six stolen bases. (It's worth noting, though, that Reading is a notoriously hitter-friendly environment.) Villoria, who won't even turn 17 until next month, signed with the Phillies via international free agency this winter. Superficially, Mendez looks good, but there are lots of good athletes like him with enough feel for contact to climb this high in the minors. His biggest flaw—too many ground balls—is the one that holds them back at the threshold of the majors, and fixing it is often difficult enough to force changes in a player's game that have negative knock-on effects. Bader didn't command a premium haul, but that's no surprise. He did bring back two pieces who offer upside, giving the Twins four promising ex-Phillies farmhands accumulated in the course of less than one full day. Since Bader was due to hit free agency at the end of the season (and neither side had felt good about the likelihood of a reunion thereafter), this rates as a nice return for a player who will be much more valuable in his new organization for the rest of the summer. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images The Twins are moving on from the mountain of a man, the Autocorrect- (and barrel-)defying splinker., and the electrifying ninth-inning entrance. They're trading Jhoan Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies for a package of high-end prospect talent, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Twins Daily has confirmed Rosenthal's report. Minnesota will receive catching prospect Eduardo Tait and rookie pitcher Mick Abel. Duran, 27, is under team control through 2027. The Twins promoted him on Opening Day in 2022, rather than game his service time, and he’s rewarded that faith. His triple-digit fastball was the first thing to open eyes throughout the league, not least because referring to it that way undersells him: Duran often topped 103 miles per hour in his rookie campaign. He rapidly matured into the team’s closer, and even as he’s seen some occasional velocity dips and struggled with an imperfect fastball shape, he’s found ways to thoroughly dominate opposing batters. Much of that is attributable to Duran’s secondary pitches, which are even more valuable (and more indispensable) than the heater. His curveball and splinker are devastating, and this year, he’s added a sweeper to that arsenal. His strikeout rate has eroded slightly each year, but the .553 OPS opponents have managed against Duran in 2025 is the lowest of his career. He’s morphed into an elite ground-ball hurler, and his entrance production for save opportunities has been one of the delightful features of evenings at Target Field over the last two-plus seasons. The lone constraint on Duran’s trade value, perhaps, is the likelihood that he’ll be one of the highest-paid relief pitchers in baseball for the next two seasons. He’s making $4.125 million in 2025, and given the season he’s having, that figure should rise considerably for 2026. Nonetheless, he’s been the trade chip teams have clamored for most in talks with the Twins, so when a move happened, it was sure to be a big one. Tait, 18, is the headliner here. A left-handed batter and catcher, he's played almost the whole season at Low-A Clearwater, where he's hitting .251/.322/.436. He was promoted earlier this month to the Phillies' High-A affiliate, at a very young age. He'll turn 19 next month. His bat is his carrying tool; scouts view him as a hitter who can make enough contact to get to plus power at maturity. What is far less clear is whether he can stick as a catcher, but even without knowing for sure in that regard, Tait ranked third on Baseball America's midseason update of the Phillies' top 30 prospects list. He'll be slightly lower-ranked in the Twins system, but they'll hope to develop him into their catcher of the future. Abel, 23, provides the immediate juice in the deal. He was Philadelphia's top pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, and has already made it to the majors for a brief look as a starter. He profiles as a pitcher who can stay in the rotation, though perhaps more as a third or fourth starter than as the frontliner the team envisioned when they drafted him. He figures to pitch for the big-league Twins for much of the final two months of this season, unless they have specific things they want to tweak with a stopover in St. Paul. Bob Nightengale was first to report that the return will be Tait and Abel. This move signals the degree of aggressiveness the Twins have elected to take at this trade deadline. They sought two high-end potential contributors in any deal for Duran, and they got them here. There's risk associated with both prospects, but the team is ready to shift gears and reshape their core for 2026 and beyond. Tait and Abel begin that process, by moving resources from the bullpen toward the positional core and the starting rotation. View full article

Wednesday has seen a barrage of trades involving relief pitchers, but if reports are to be believed, the Twins might be about to raise the stakes on that substantially. Several reports (some of which we at Twins Daily can independently confirm) indicate that Jhoan Duran is expected to be dealt by the end of the day, and that the Dodgers and Mariners are especially aggressive in pursuit of him. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com has one such report. Joel Sherman has a very similar set of conjectures to share. Our sources suggest that the Dodgers are in the lead for Duran, but there's still time for Seattle to up their offer. The timeline of a deal is not clear, but it does look likely that Duran will be moved before the deadline—and maybe even within the next few hours. View full rumor

Carlos Correa's contract is team-friendly. That's an important thing to keep in mind. The salaries might be too high to accommodate for many teams, but the structure of the deal—front-loaded, with team options of diminishing values beginning in 2029—makes the terms favorable to the team. That's why the Twins were willing to jump back in and sign Correa, after he nearly agreed to deals with the Giants and Mets in the winter of 2022-23. Keep that in mind today, because Bob Nightengale of USA Today has a report this morning that the Astros are pondering a reunion with Correa, via trade. Correa has a full no-trade clause in there, too, but Nightengale says that he would waive it to go back to Houston. The other key detail of the report is that the Astros would demand that the Twins pay a significant portion of the remaining money on Correa's deal. Therein lies the rub, it seems. There's a case to be made for that position, but if the Twins aren't getting either huge savings or a significant prospect in return for Correa, it would seem like a massive mistake to trade him this summer, at a nadir in his value. We'll see what (if anything) comes of this. View full rumor

Image courtesy of © Brad Rempel-Imagn Images You wouldn't guess it at a glance, but the Twins starter with his feet planted deepest in the beloved soil of the game's history—sometimes, even digging in his heels against the sweeping influence of data and technology as it overtakes the art of pitching—might just be Simeon Woods Richardson. Despite Chris Paddack's sheriff persona and Joe Ryan's laconic tenacity, they'll each switch smoothly into talking about themselves in terms of key movement markers, spin rates, or sequences informed by analytically derived game plans. For Pablo López, no switch is even required; that's his default form of self-description. Woods Richardson could speak that language, too, to some extent, but he's not especially interested in trying to. For instance, if you ask him why he adds and subtracts on his fastball within a start more than most pitchers do, the answer will only bounce off the notion of analytics once—and then, more like a wall to push off of, rather than a door to plunge through. "It's just old-school baseball; I call it being a pitcher," Woods Richardson said Sunday. "I know we get lost in modern-day baseball, with numbers, analytics and everything else, [but] the human eye still can't differentiate speed." In other words, as Warren Spahn knew, hitting is timing, and pitching is upsetting that timing. As Greg Maddux knew, hitters can spot differences in trajectory and spin, but not in speeds. Woods Richardson is special, in part, for the way he approaches his own job as a student of its history. Few players in the modern game consider the greats of the previous century to be relevant touchstones, but Woods Richardson does. "That's something that's been going on for 100 years, you know what I mean?" he said. "People have been doing it since way back when. I guess I modeled my game after Nolan Ryan—you know, he had the changeup, but he'd also actually add and subtract. Bob Gibson, with the slider: add and subtract. Satchel Paige: add and subtract." Though it was hardly his most successful outing (it was a tough assignment he drew), Woods Richardson's last start is as good an example as any of his willingness to reach back for a little extra at one moment, but then throttle back into the low 90s at others. Notice the error bars around each point, denoting average velocity for that pitch type within that game. Those error bars are set at one standard deviation from their average for that appearance. In the Dodgers game, there were roughly 3.5 miles per hour separating the ends of that range for Woods Richardson; he's often around 3 mph. Ryan, to choose a teammate at random, has never had that wide a practical range within a start. For some pitchers, that might indicate a mere tendency to misfire occasionally, failing in an honest effort to throw it as hard as they can. For others, it could (at least in abstract theory; it's not something most teams actively implement or recommend) be an analytics-informed, premeditated way to mess with certain hitters based on their swing path or contact point. For Woods Richardson, it's a matter of watching, sensing, and responding, based on feel and varying from pitch to pitch. "Oh, for sure. It's always been that way," he said. "And depending on who is up, game situation, count leverage, all that kind of determines what goes into that." He's sensitive to the situation, and tries to manipulate it in a way that makes rational sense, but it can't all be rational. As a former hitter himself, Woods Richardson can't turn off the part of his brain that used to fight to read pitches—and he doesn't really want to. "Some guys are a little different, but I played two-way, so it was kind of easy for me," he said. "As I'm pitching, I'm kind of multi-tasking. That's just how I operate. Some guys can, some guys can't. Some guys are completely different. But the way I attack it is, I'm analyzing the swing, reading the swing—reading everything that I could have seen in that 15 seconds, to kind of gauge for that next pitch." Making use of what he sees in a hitter's swing (or take, or body language, or anything else) requires Woods Richardson to be adaptable within his own mind and his game plan, and to have great (usually non-verbal) communication with his catcher. That's a challenge he savors. "That's the beauty part about pitching. I believe, for so long, it was a feel thing," he said. "We didn't have computers and numbers to tell us what we were doing; we had to use our eyes. So use your eyes. Trust your eyes." Some of this might make him sound cranky, himself, like one averse to the tools of the modern trade. It's not like that, though. He knows how to use those tools, and listens to his coaches when they make suggestions. It's just not that aspect of the game that fills him with joy and passion. When he talks about being on the mound and making infinitesimal adjustments based on what he sees and senses, it's not defiance in his tone; it's the vociferous joy of a craftsman. He doesn't disdain the way others do it, but he feels an instantly visible conviction in his own methods, perhaps because they run back through the generations. One of the ostensible dangers of not embracing analytics lies in a pitcher missing opportunities to improve and evolve. The craftsman mindset leads one to the same eagerness to improve, though; a great cabinetmaker doesn't make the same, slightly flawed cabinet over and over. Thus, Woods Richardson has switched from a straight changeup to a splitter this season, and lo, even the numbers say the new way to change speeds is now his best pitch. Being a student of the game and a lover of the feel for it means both learning from the masters and experimenting with ways to emulate them. Woods Richardson believes he's found a better way to do so via his change in offspeed offerings. "I think it just goes down to pitching. I think really good pitchers are able to throw every single one of their pitches for strikes—any count, any situation," he said. "So I just work to model my game after that. It's just being able to pound the strike zone consistently with each one of my pitches. That's what all of us are trying to do in the big leagues; that's the main goal. So I guess we'll just keep chopping that tree down." View full article

If you're anything like me, you've found yourself pleasantly surprised a couple of times this year, when Matt Wallner really caught hold of a ball. The first time I noticed it was June 7, when the Blue Jays were in town. Wallner blasted a ball from Toronto starter Kevin Gausman down the right-field line. He's hit balls much harder, but though it was launched 41° upward at less than 100 miles per hour off the bat, it carried out of the park for a homer. It didn't surprise me that the ball cleared the fence. Off the bat, it was clear that he'd gotten enough of it for that, given the cozy dimensions of the corner and the way he barrels the ball when he gets off an 'A' swing. I assumed, though, that the ball would turn foul. It was hit close to the line, but instead of the spin pushing it foul as it traced its steep parabola, it stayed true. In fact, it seemed to drift slightly away from the pole. MTZxbjNfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFRQ0J3QURBQUFBQ3dNQkFBQUhCZzllQUFOWEFBTUFWZ2RYVXdwWEFGRlFWQWRV.mp4 In this particular case, there's some reason to credit Wallner for keeping it straight enough to get a home run instead of a foul out of a mistake pitch by Gausman. His swing is slightly under the ball, to be sure (hence the very high launch angle), but he keeps his hands in and gets to the ball very directly. It's a 96-mph fastball from Gausman, so far from being early, Wallner is right on time. His steep attack angle gives the ball backspin, but his attack direction at impact is just 6° to the pull side, so he doesn't impart much sidespin on the ball (the way most swings that result in long, pulled flies do). A compact, on-time swing can help keep that ball fair. The Statcast readout of the swing tells that story. He didn't catch the ball quite on the sweet spot, but the arc of his swing and the timing made it easy to maintain true ball flight. Two weeks later, though, Wallner did get a little bit lucky—or did he? More on that later. For now, consider this ball, the first hit Jacob Misiorowski gave up in his big-league career. b0daZDlfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdnRlZGd0dVd0FBWGxzTEJ3QUhCUVZWQUZsWFYxVUFVVnhUQTFWV0JBRUJWZ3ND.mp4 This is an 0-1 slider, and Wallner is a hair earlier on it. He would have been way early, but because Misiorowski is who he is, the ball was coming in at 93 miles per hour. Thus, Wallner's last-minute adjustment didn't need to be a major deceleration of the bat; he just had to dip slightly to find the lower half of the ball. It's fascinating, in watching this pitch's equivalent of the Statcast visualization above, to see the differences in the swing he got off. Again, he catches it just up the bat from the sweet spot, this time with more hook on it. Reading slider late, you can see him flatten his swing and go straight through the lower half of the ball. Doing that took some sidespin off the ball, too, relative to what we'd normally expect when a ball sails down the line. Because I couldn't see him doing that in real time, though, I was even more certain that this ball would twist foul—and when you see the overhead visualization of the trajectory of the ball, you can see how reasonable that belief was, and how strangely the actual flight of it defied that belief. Almost any ball hit down the lines will spin toward the lines. That's an axiom of baseball, because of the kinds of swings and contact that generate such batted balls. We've now seen two examples of Wallner's swing helping kill that sidespin, but even accounting for that, the ball should have had enough spin to push closer to (or beyond) the pole. Fast-forward another three weeks with me, though, because we're about to find the most extreme example of this phenomenon. In the bottom of the second inning on July 9, Wallner got into a 2-1 slider from Cubs starter Cade Horton. OHl3ajJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWxVQ0FGY0NCVk1BWGxZRFVRQUhWRklIQUZrTlV3SUFVUU5VVkFWWENBUlNCUVFI.mp4 The swing tells us the most interesting story yet about this one, because unlike Misiorowski, Horton had Wallner sitting on a fastball, and unlike Misiorowski, Horton has a big speed differential between his heater and his breaking ball. Wallner was ready for 96 mph, but he got 85. As a result, you can see him actually throttle back from his maximum bat speed before contact. When baseball people talk about the value of raw strength in generating power, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Not many hitters are strong enough to slow down their own bat after reaching a speed just under 80 mph, while maintaining enough speed to do damage when they catch the ball flush. Unlike the homer against Gausman (7.2-foot swing length, 6° attack direction) and the one against Misiorowski (7.4 feet, 16°), though, this is a long swing on which Wallner was way out in front (8.1 feet, 20°). He gets the sweet spot here, which is why the ball leaves his bat at 113 miles per hour, but he's way around it and working steeply uphill through it. The 43° launch angle sends the ball soaring. It's right down the line. This ball should go foul. Again, though, it didn't. Again, it moved away from the line. We have to acknowledge that Wallner is capable of unique, freaky contact. His blend of bat speed and swing plane can generate fly balls down the line with less sidespin than most of them have. That's one factor in these (and a few others, which we'll leave out here in the name of brevity) balls going for extra bases. Fascinatingly, though, another factor might be Target Field's architecture itself. Having seen a few of these balls turn improbably toward the plaza, I reached out to Weather Applied Metrics's Ken Arneson. A long-time baseball writer, Arneson now plays in the sandbox of the endlessly complex, idiosyncratic interactions of weather (especially wind) with sports, and baseball is one major subject of study and analysis for the company. "Target Field has a gap between its roof and the top of its upper deck," Arneson wrote. "The top of the upper deck is about 122 feet above the field and the roof is about 150 feet above the field. As the wind tries to squeeze through that 28-foot gap, it will accelerate." That's true; it's the result of the Venturi Effect, which describes the way pressure is reduced when speed increases as a fluid moves from a larger space to a smaller one. "So if you have a southwest wind blowing perpendicular to the first base line ... and you have a fly ball with an apex around that height (122-150 foot apex), you're going to get a kind of perfect storm to push the ball back towards the field, and counteract the spin that wants to hook the ball foul," Arneson continued. "Under those conditions, the wind will push the ball back towards fair territory about 5-6 feet with a 10 mph wind." Batted balls even to right-center will be unaffected by this microatmosphere. The Venturi Effect wears off quickly once any wind passes through the aperture between roof and stands, petering out not far beyond the right-field line. If a player is strong enough to consistently hit the ball up into that space far down the line, though, it can make a substantial difference—especially if that player has an unusual swing that results in balls down that line not having as much sidespin as most hitters' similar shots would. Arneson notes that the wind pattern needed to create this phenomenon is relatively rare, at least as a prevailing wind on a given day. With the right momentary gust or buffet, though, it doesn't have to be blowing that way the whole day. Wallner clearly got some help from the elements on these homers, even if it was neither the sole nor the decisive factor in their staying fair. Baseball is wonderful, because it's so hard to apply any rule too broadly. It's not just the deep right-field corner at Target Field; each batter and pitcher is a microenvironment of their own. Wallner's special skill set begets a special set of batted balls, which can benefit from a special effect of the home park in which many of them are hit. It's a bit of serendipity—a tiny hometown advantage for a Minnesota native who plays for the home team. Next time he hits a long drive down the line, allow yourself to hold onto more hope for the ball to stay fair than you normally would—and if it does, say a little baseball prayer of thanks to the Wallner winds of Target Field. View full article

This is becoming one of my favorite daily edits. :D You have all these interesting anniversaries that start a thread in my brain, and then I can't help but wonder something, so I look it up and add what I find. It's delightful.

Y'all are why so many organizations used to keep a 'Do Not Comp' list. Luis Arraez is not a person you should ever be comparing a prospect to, but you CERTAINLY shouldn't do it with a right-handed batter who's whiffing more in this, his best season by far, than Arraez ever has at a stop of any length anywhere in professional baseball. Get it together.