If all you've seen of Ty France in his career is this spring, you could be convinced he's the greatest hitter of all time. He's gone 11-for-20 to start spring training and is slashing a ridiculous .550/.591/1.050.
But he's kept his best skill quiet this spring.
So what is it exactly? I'm glad you asked.
France gets hit by pitches. Well, not yet this spring. But trust me. He gets hit by a LOT of pitches. Since his debut in 2019, he's been hit by 105 pitches — an average of 24 over 162 games.
For instance, consider the following and the fact that it's nearly 13 minutes (of your life that you'll never, ever get back) long:
Let's add a little context.
Since France's rookie season, only Mark Canha (113 times) has been hit by more pitches. France is one of three batters hit by 100-plus pitches in that time frame, along with Canha and the currently unsigned Anthony Rizzo (104).
No other batter has been hit more than 86 times.
No player in Minnesota Twins history has been hit by 24 pitches in any season, let alone average that mark. In fact, Willi Castro set the single-season mark for the Twins last season with 21; more on that later.
Here's a different way to look at it with France: he's been hit 105 times in 10,473 pitches faced. That comes out to once every 99.7 pitches faced. For Canha, that mark is once every 106.7 pitches faced, and for Rizzo it's once every 104.8 pitches.
In perhaps a more digestible way, France has been hit once every 26.8 plate apperances. If you assume four plate appearances in an average game, that's getting hit once a week, more or less.
That's a tough rate with the neighborhood bully, let alone fastballs averaging 93.3 mph like they did last season, when the average fastball reading has stayed the same or increased over every single season since the data became available in 2009 (2020 excluded for, um, reasons).
Or to say it differently, fastball velocity has never declined for as long as it has been measured and cataloged (by Fangraphs, anyhow).
I don't have every player's records all-time, but I feel reasonably sure that France is one of a select few — maybe just him — who've been hit at least once per every 100 pitches faced over any appreciable sample size.
This has helped France post solid on-base percentages despite a mediocre career walk rate of 6.5 percent. If you convert all of his times hit by a pitch into walks, it's been as though he's walked in 10.2 percent of his plate appearances. In fact, oddly enough, he's been hit by 105 pitches in 2,819 career plate appearances and has walked 182 times.
That's a lot closer that I was expecting.
Obviously, adding being hit by a pitch to walks is not remotely scientific, but getting hit by a pitch is functionally the same as being walked — black-and-blue boo-boos excluded.
But why are we talking about this anyway? I'm glad you asked.
Last year's Twins were hit by 101 pitches. That's not really easy to compute or compare to, but it's the eighth-highest mark in the modern era (since 1901). In baseball history, a few teams had some anomalous seasons of getting hit by pitches before the turn of the century — the 20th century, I mean — but in general, the groundswell of drillings has been a reasonably recent phenomena.
Last year's Mariners set the single-season record (modern era, again) with 116 beanings. The 2023 Mariners also hold the third spot on the list (111).
Adding France to a Twins team that was already hit by 101 pithes last season is downright diabolical.
Restated: the Twins have a very real chance of breaking the modern record set last season by the Mariners and their secret weapon might be a Seattle castoff.
Also, funnily enough, in addition to the Mariners leading MLB in batters hit by pitches with the Twins finishing second, the Cincinnati Reds were tied for fourth with the Guardians. They're the club France finished the 2025 season with.
For the 2025 Twins, the rest of the gang is back, for the most part.
Last season's leaders on the Twins were Castro (21), Matt Wallner (16 in just 261 PA!), Ryan Jeffers (14), Byron Buxton (11) and Jose Miranda (six, tied with the departed Carlos Santana and Kyle Farmer).
So this means the Twins are adding one of the all-time HBP demons in France, are angling for hopefully twice as many plate appearances from Wallner this season compared to last and could very easily see more Jeffers in the lineup than last season. The team leader is still back in the picture and likely to play a lot, too.
After all, we know that getting hit by pitches is a skill.
That's it. I don't have any more of a theory other than to get out in front of this and see if it's any sort of storyline this season. I don't think teams are seeking to drill Twins hitters like they're Tommy Pham, and the Twins made a fantasy football faux pas.
...but if it ends up being a thing in 2025, make sure you tell 'em your old pal BW sent ya.