MINNEAPOLIS — It was a frustratingly feeble start to the season for the Minnesota Twins’ lineup, which collectively hit just .195 through the first 20 games as the team stumbled out of the gates to a 7-13 record.
Since then, however, the Twins have played at a 100-win pace, going 34-21 for the third-best record in the American League, and their lineup has been one of the most productive in baseball.
Only the New York Yankees have scored more runs than the Twins since the team’s April 21 low point. And during that two-month span, the Twins rank among the AL’s top three in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs and extra-base hits.
Carlos Correa 🤝 Royce Lewis
The pic.twitter.com/qwOagH4oTr
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) June 16, 2024
Those early losses count just the same, and ignoring a three-week slump is going to make any hitter’s overall numbers look better, but it’s illuminating to see that all eight of the Twins’ hitters with at least 125 plate appearances since April 22 have out-produced the league-average OPS and wRC+.
| HITTER - SINCE APRIL 22 | PA | OPS | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|
191 | .880 | 150 | |
222 | .861 | 148 | |
193 | .875 | 144 | |
185 | .807 | 130 | |
169 | .798 | 126 | |
175 | .791 | 123 | |
138 | .763 | 118 | |
126 | .726 | 110 | |
.703 | 100 |
Each of the lineup’s eight most-used hitters have out-produced the league-average OPS by at least 20 points since April 22, which would have seemed absolutely absurd and impossible to anyone on April 21. And that doesn’t even include Royce Lewis, who has hit .353 with eight homers and a preposterous 255 wRC+ in 14 games since rejoining the lineup on June 4.
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“Our lineup, up and down, is doing nice work,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We have a lot of guys who are swinging the bats good and we can’t get all of them in the lineup every day. It’s a really interesting, good thing for us.”
Carlos Santana sitting right at the top of that post-April 22 leaderboard is wildly unexpected. He got off to the slowest of the Twins’ many slow starts, batting .133 through the team’s first 20 games, which raised questions about the 38-year-old possibly being washed up. Instead, he’s batted .276/.356/.524 in 51 games since, leading the Twins with 11 homers and 35 RBIs.
For the second straight season, Willi Castro went from having an undefined bench role on Opening Day to being an indispensable piece of the everyday lineup. Castro has played all 55 games since April 22, including stints as the starting third baseman, shortstop, center fielder and now second baseman, hitting .299/.378/.482 in a team-high 222 plate appearances.
Max Kepler started the year in a 1-for-20 funk and then went on the injured list for three weeks, but he’s returned to hit .277/.337/.470 in 47 games. And even that solid line understates his full impact, as Kepler leads the Twins in Win Probability Added since April 22, coming through in clutch spots with several game-changing hits.
No longer limited by last season’s debilitating heel problems, Carlos Correa has hit .310/.358/.517 in 45 games since coming off the IL on April 29. He ranks third among AL shortstops in OPS since April 22, and during that same stretch Ryan Jeffers (.791) ranks fourth for catchers and Byron Buxton (.726) ranks fifth for center fielders.
Swapping out Matt Wallner for Trevor Larnach two weeks into the season may have seemed hasty, but it’s proven to be the correct move. Larnach hit his way back into the Twins’ plans by providing some much-needed thump from the left side of the plate. Similarly, the return of Jose Miranda, healthy again after a lost 2023, was a massive boost to the middle of the order.
YES WAY JOSE!!!!!!!#MLB pic.twitter.com/qBkMyim2Tt
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) June 20, 2024
Perhaps most shockingly, Twins hitters have the AL’s fifth-lowest strikeout rate since April 22, after setting the all-time MLB record for strikeouts last year and continuing to pile up whiffs in early April. Overall this season, the Twins’ team-wide strikeout rate is 21.8 percent, compared to 25.1 percent in 2023, the largest decrease in the league.
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“We’re putting great at-bats together,” Lewis said. “Which leads to singles and more competitive at-bats, instead of going for the big-time swing every time. When you get to two strikes, I’m not going for a home run every pitch. Two strikes especially, I’m just trying to shoot it (the other way).”
Asked about the team-wide decrease in strikeouts, Baldelli noted personnel changes are responsible for one slice of the increased contact. Last season’s most strikeout-prone Twins hitters, Joey Gallo (42.8 percent) and Michael A. Taylor (33.5), have basically been replaced by high-contact-veteran bats Santana (15.5) and Manuel Margot (16.7).
They also parted ways with Donovan Solano (22.2), one of the Twins’ least strikeout-prone hitters last season, but even he’s basically been replaced by a higher-contact hitter in Miranda, whose 15 percent strikeout rate is the team’s lowest. Last season, Solano had the Twins’ second-lowest strikeout rate. This year, the team’s overall strikeout rate (21.8) is lower than Solano’s.
Personnel changes can only explain part of that, because swapping Gallo, Taylor and Solano for Santana, Margot and Miranda was hardly a massive lineup overhaul. But when combined with many of the Twins’ key holdover hitters lowering their strikeout rates compared to last season, the stylistic difference has been substantial.
“You can see it,” Baldelli said. “You can visually see it happening in front of you. I think we’re making better adjustments. And a lot of times, ‘better adjustments’ is just trying to hit a line drive and shortening up, not trying to win the game with a swing in the second or fourth or sixth inning.”
Of the 11 hitters to log at least 100 plate appearances for the Twins in both 2023 and 2024, all but two have struck out less frequently this season.
| HITTER - STRIKEOUT RATE | 2023 | 2024 | DIFF |
|---|---|---|---|
34.0 | 18.8 | -15.2 | |
27.8 | 22.0 | -5.8 | |
22.6 | 18.1 | -4.5 | |
23.3 | 19.5 | -3.8 | |
31.4 | 29.1 | -2.3 | |
21.6 | 19.4 | -2.2 | |
15.8 | 15.0 | -0.8 | |
24.2 | 23.8 | -0.4 | |
23.1 | 22.9 | -0.2 | |
25.1 | 26.4 | +1.3 | |
31.4 | 34.0 | +2.6 |
Also of note: Edouard Julien and Alex Kirilloff are the only two holdovers with higher strikeout rates, and they’re no longer in the lineup.
“I think you’re seeing a lot of guys recognizing situations in front of them when they step up to the plate in a different manner than what they were doing in April,” Baldelli said. “Not just two-strike adjustments. Some early adjustments, some later adjustments, shortening some swings.”
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Three bad weeks have been followed by two good months, and the overall result is the Twins ranking fifth in the AL in OPS and runs scored.
It’s similar to last season, when they finished fourth in OPS and fifth in runs scored despite being below average in both during a rough first half. After a series of headline-generating team meetings, and Baldelli emphasizing the importance of making adjustments, last season’s Twins lineup scored more second-half runs than every AL team except the Houston Astros.
Having gone through that experience last year, with the same trio of hitting coaches (David Popkins, Rudy Hernandez, Derek Shomon) working with a largely unchanged core group of hitters, the Twins were convinced another turnaround was coming. Correa made it his near-daily mantra in April, but he also consistently stressed they couldn’t wait until the second half again.
Correa on April 4: “We don’t want it to be like last year, where the first half was a mess. We want to be able to make those adjustments a lot earlier.”
Correa on April 6: “There’s a lot of work to do on our end when it comes to approach as a collective group. We don’t want to be here half a season and trying to figure it out when we know we’re capable of doing it a lot earlier.”
Correa on April 8: “We know we’re capable of doing it. We just don’t want to waste a whole half of a season before we figure it out.”
They were indeed capable of doing it, but this season the Twins’ offensive turnaround started in their fourth week instead of their fourth month. Now the challenge will be keeping it going for the next three-plus months.
“It’s still early, and I don’t want to start making too many statements, but we’ve been swinging the bats well,” Baldelli said. “I’ve been pleased with what we’ve been doing and the adjustments we’ve been making. I think our offensive potential is exceptional.”
(Top photo of Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa: Adam Bettcher / Getty Images)