It’s no secret that the 2023 Minnesota Twins hitters are struggling. But that may be putting it mildly. They’re hitting is abysmal, to say the least. So poor that they’re on pace to break a franchise record that has stood since the franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961.
While batting average isn’t held in high regard by fans or baseball scribes like it used to be, it’s still essential, especially when evaluating where a team is in the divisional standings.
As a team, the Twins are currently 25th in the league in batting average (.230), an all-time low in franchise history. Only once have the Twins had a season where they batted below .240 as a team since they moved from Washington, D.C. That was in 1968, the year of the pitcher. It was also a lineup featuring three future Hall of Famers: Rod Carew (.273), Harmon Killebrew (.210), and Tony Oliva (.289).
All three of these men and five of their teammates qualified for the batting title with their number of at-bats in 1968. This year’s Twins only have two men qualifying for the batting title, and their numbers on the season are much closer to Killebrew’s in 1968 than they are to either Carew or Oliva.
Carlos Correa is hitting .217, and Byron Buxton is at .205. It’s a bad sign when two qualifying hitters worth $300 million combined are closer to the Mendoza line than .250. None of this should come as a surprise when the Twins are chasing the all-time team strikeout record this year, set only two years ago by the Chicago Cubs who swung and missed 1,596 times at the plate.
Currently, the Twins have struck out 742 times this season, almost 50 more than the next closest team – the Oakland Athletics have 695. The combination of high strikeouts and very few hits has been the source of frustration for Twins fans all season long, and Sunday’s game didn’t show any sight of it ending soon.
There are no Twins on the active roster right now with a strikeout percentage on the season below 20%. Only one Twins hitter even has his strikeout percentage on the season below 23%, Donovan Solano at 22.1%.
Solano may be the saving grace in this lineup when it comes to batting average and strikeout percentage. As disappointing as it may be to some fans, he could be the only Twins player this year to hit above .280, qualifying or not. Donnie Barrels has made his living in the Majors by hitting for average and currently sits at .284 on the season in 169 at-bats.
Fortunately, Alex Kirilloff and rookie Royce Lewis still could have a shot at hitting over .280 on the year. Lewis has shown great strides since returning from the injured list, hitting .281 in 57 at-bats. But his strikeout rate is just as worrisome as the rest of his teammates (34%). On the other hand, Kirilloff is much closer to Solano than the rest of his teammates with his eye at the plate. His strikeout percentage is only 24% on the year.
At any rate, there’s reason for concern when only two of the 13 hitters on a team are managing to strike out less than 25% of the time. While Miguel Sanó has left the team, it seems everyone else has picked up where he left off when it comes to striking out all the time and barely hitting for contact.
Minnesota’s lineup has managed to become the definition of three-true-outcome in the first season the league has implemented rules to move hitters away from that type of hitting. The fact they’re still in first place while chasing the worst batting average in team history along with the most strikeouts is almost miraculous.
The Twins have fallen into a team version of what the New York Mets were for Jacob deGrom during his 2018 and 2019 National League Cy Young seasons. The starters carry the team with dominant pitching, but the lineup cannot muster three runs to help their starters share the load in getting wins.
After dropping three out of four games to the 29-40 Detroit Tigers and managing only 11 runs across those four games, doubts about this team winning more than 83 or 84 games and still winning the division are reasonable. Three-true-outcome hitting for an entire season may get you across the finish line and into the postseason. However, it can’t save a team when the season falls on a best-of-three series to continue onward.
Whatever the team approach has been for these Twins hitters 72 games into the season has to change. They don’t want to set new records for two categories in franchise history that don’t reflect well on how this team projected as an offensive juggernaut before the season.
