Minnesota Twins baseball is back!
The beginning of a season always brings hope for any squad. The optimism for the Twins to bounce back and compete for the postseason in 2022 is real. It energizes a fanbase that is ready to see how far this team can go.
It also means fans can overreact after the first taste of action. Small sample sizes, whether positive or negative, open the door for fans to get a little overzealous. Here are three from the opening weekend series with the Seattle Mariners to keep in mind.
Minnesota already won and lost the Rogers-Paddack trade
The Twins traded top reliever Taylor Rogers and outfielder Brent Rooker to the San Diego Padres for starting pitcher Chris Paddack and reliever Emilio Pagán and received mixed reactions among the fanbase.
On the one hand, Rogers was unlikely to come back to the team next season due to his expiring contract, so getting value for him was ideal. Paddack is a young team-controlled starter, and Pagán is another bullpen option with upside who the Twins can pair with their young pitching prospects. Pagán had a couple of strikeouts and an average fastball velocity of 95 MPH in his Twins debut, while Paddack will make his first start on Wednesday.
Some can look at the value Minnesota got in this deal and say that this move was a no-brainer. The value of having multiple young pitchers under team control greatly outweighs keeping Rogers for one more season.
But trading your All-Star bullpen arm when you’re trying to make the postseason seems a bit odd on Opening Day. Saturday was the first time the Twins were in a situation where they could have used Rogers to close out a one-run game in the ninth inning.
Tyler Duffey came in and allowed a trio of doubles to cough up a lead in a game they would lose 4-3. Meanwhile, Rogers has been perfect in his first two innings of relief for the Padres for a pair of saves. Rogers was eventually going to be missed late in games, but it stings just a bit more for it to happen so quickly. It will continue to linger in the back of fans’ minds until a new high-leverage starter emerges.
Trades don’t always have a winner and a loser. When it does happen, it’s rarely seen this early. Twins fans might need to wait until Paddack makes a start or two before we can decide if the team was right to trade Rogers.
The Twins lineup is too reliant on home runs
Most of the 2019 Bomba Squad is gone, but that didn’t stop the Twins from hitting 228 home runs last season, fifth-most in baseball. However, last year’s offense was too reliant on those home runs because the same lineup was tied for 14th with 729 runs scored and ninth in total bases with 2300.
The 2022 Twins lead the league with nine home runs through the first weekend. Seven of those home runs have been solo shots, and all but one of the team’s first 14 runs were scored via the longball. Someone who only looks at these numbers could conclude that Minnesota’s offense resembles the one from a season ago, especially when the team has feast-or-famine hitters like Miguel Sanó and Gary Sánchez in the lineup.
Even though the Twins have some all-or-nothing bats in the lineup, they will still have a solid hitting core. Luis Arraez is the perfect counter for big-swing type hitters, giving the lineup someone who can work the count and make contact with a 9.1 percent career strikeout rate and a .374 OBP clip.
Consider the top three hitters in the Minnesota lineup: Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Jorge Polanco. Buxton has recorded a .326 OPB and .302 BABIP since the start of the 2020 season. Polanco has a career .332 OBP and .306 BABIP, while Correa has racked up a .355 career OBP and .314 BABIP. All three of these hitters bring more than just power to a lineup. They can put it in play and move runners around the bases.
The Twins aren’t going to be a home run or bust lineup, but they could be one of the most powerful in all of baseball. That power can’t carry the Twins alone, though. This team has to lean into a hitting core that is multi-faceted enough to score multiple ways.
We need to be worried about Alex Kirilloff
Hopefully, Alex Kirilloff made the first of many Opening Day starts for the Twins last Friday. A wrist injury set back his rookie campaign, but it was still promising. Kirilloff had a .251/.299/.423 slash line with eight home runs last season in 59 games. The Twins were hoping for him to pick up where he left off to add a left-handed hitter to the lineup.
The first series of 2022 has been a struggle for Kirilloff. He recorded seven strikeouts in his first 15 at-bats with no walks drawn and only one hit. At-bats for Kirilloff have been rough in the first handful of games, and lack of hard contact has been a big reason why. He had a whiff rate of 48 percent.
These are not good numbers to start your season. With Minnesota’s riches of prospect talent in the outfield, Kirilloff could see himself losing out on at-bats to other guys like Trevor Larnach if he doesn’t figure things out. Some fans could be worried about a sophomore slump as well.
However, there are a couple of reasons that could also explain the slow start. One is that Kirilloff is coming off of wrist surgery the year before, so there should be some time for him to get used to swinging a bat against live pitching again. Another is that even though he isn’t squaring the ball up, Kirilloff remains disciplined. Small sample size, but he does have a 42.9 percent hard-hit percentage and 35 percent chase rate that is relatively the same as his first year. This could be a timing issue that just needs to get resolved with more at-bats.
Kirilloff has been touted as a natural hitter in the minor leagues. We have already seen a little bit of what he can do at the big-league level. He still only has a relatively small number of at-bats in the majors, so hopefully, it won’t be long before he finds his swing again.
Twins baseball is underway again in 2022. Win or lose, the season will be an entertaining ride through the summer. But baseball’s season is a 162-game marathon, not a sprint. There will be time for players and teams to show who they can be. So let’s just watch some games before we make any big judgments.
