3 early red flags for the Minnesota Twins that must be addressed before it’s too late
Things are going well for the Minnesota Twins right now. They have already built a 3.5 game lead (as of 5/5) in the American League Central and the rest of the division is ranging from underwhelming/mediocre to, well, whatever the Royals are doing.
Some good news is that the pitching staff has been handling their business in ways fans didn’t see last year, and looks to be in a great position for the long haul.
However, there are some things about this team that are a bit concerning. Nothing here is immediately damning, but there are real reasons to have some concern about this Twins team. At the end of the day, the baseball season is long and some of these trends, if uncorrected, could be costly for the team down the road.
Here are three early red flags for the 2023 Minnesota Twins.
The offense is failing to help out stellar starting pitching
On the surface, nothing stands out about the Minnesota Twins offense and that is kind of the problem. They currently rank 18th in fWAR in the league and amongst all teams that currently lead their divisions, they rank last in runs scored and run differential.
While one of the extreme bright spots early in the season has been the stellar performance of the pitching rotation, the squeaky wheel has been the utter lack of run support coming from the offense. For as outstanding as the starters have been, their success is being eroded by poor offense that it’s dragging everything down.
Offensively Minnesota profiles more favorably to a second or third place team in a decent division to a team headed to the playoffs.
A closer look at the Twins' offensive pieces reveals some some depth issues as while they currently have five players with a wRC+ at 110 or higher (Bryon Buxton, Joey Gallo, Ryan Jeffers, Max Kepler, and Jorge Polanco), the rest of the roster does not have anything better than 97 (that is not good).
They don't steal bases, rank in the bottom third of the league in team OBP, and have been pretty reliant on long balls off the bats of Buxton and Gallo who can both be a bit streaky/have issues staying healthy.
Carlos Correa is struggling
The Twins' marquee move from this past offseason was to bring back Carlos Correa on a six year deal worth $200 million and it is probably safe to say that they hoped he would get off to a better start to the 2023 season. Through 28 games, Correa has slashed .206/.289/.383 in 121 plate appearances which adds up to an 87 wRC+ for 2023 (again, not good).
To be clear, Correa is too good of a player for this to linger for too long. Moreover, historically Correa has typically performed worse in the first month of the season than any other month of the season although it usually isn't quite this rough. Hopefully he can match his career 133 wRC+ and 165 wRC+ for the months of May and June respectively.
If not, we can start wondering if the Mets and Giants' doctors may have been on to something.
Infield defense is leaving something to be desired
When you lose a guy like Byron Buxton in the field, you would hope that the rest of the defense would pick up the slack.
Unfortunately, that hasn't really happened as the outfield has accounted for zero Outs Above Average so far in 2023. Michael Taylor has done his job in center field, though, and Trevor Larnach and Max Kepler are bat-first guys to be sure, so we shouldn't be super surprised there.
However, the bigger issue is in the infield.
Carlos Correa has underperformed a bit defensively in addition to his offensive struggles, but he hasn't been a problem at shortstop. However, between Nick Gordon, Willi Castro, Kyle Farmer, Joey Gallo, Edouard Julien, Donovan Solano, Jose Miranda, and Jorge Polanco, the infielders have accounted for a total of -7 Outs Above Average with Solano, Miranda, and Polanco being the worst offenders.
Given that the pitching staff is the team's current strength, giving the other team free outs on the regular in the infield seems like a bad idea if sustained success is the team's goal.
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