Minnesota Twins pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers for Spring Training on Feb. 13. When the players left TwinsFest last month, it seemed like there wouldn’t be many unfamiliar faces in Florida. However, a day after signing Danny Coulombe to the 2025 squad, the Twins have pounced on Harrison Bader. The right-handed hitting outfielder reportedly agreed to a deal with the Twins Wednesday afternoon.
According to Dan Hayes of The Athletic, the contract is a one-year, $6.25 million deal with a $2 million mutual option for 2026. Many Twins fans were excited that the team showed some life this winter.
However, signing Bader isn’t a flashy move. Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner will likely remain the primary corner outfielders in Minnesota to start the 2025 season. However, he will still likely fill an essential role on the Twins in 2025 in Manuel Margot’s old role. Bader will be the right-handed hitting outfielder who can platoon on the corner spots against left-handed pitchers with the ability to fill in at center field.
It’s the same one the Twins envisioned when they acquired Michael A. Taylor, but he became the primary center fielder and hit a career-high 20 home runs in 2023. Margot was unable to maximize Minnesota’s initial plans for him. In 2024, Margot slashed .238/.290/.337 with a .713 OPS against lefties with a recorded 79 wRC+ (100 is league average) with a minus-0.2 fWAR over 129 games.
Taylor is the ceiling of outcomes for Bader, while Margot is closer to the floor.
Bader doesn’t have a high bar to clear offensively compared to Margot. Last year, Bader slashed .236/.284/.373 with 12 home runs, an 85 wRC+, and a 1.3 fWAR in over 143 games for the New York Mets.
He has a career .776 OPS against lefties. With the New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds in 2023, he posted a .936 OPS against left-handed pitchers. However, last season, he had reverse splits with a .681 OPS vs. right-handed pitchers and just a .612 OPS against lefties in 2024. If he can find a way to hover around his career OPS against lefties, he can have a good season in 2025.
Like Margot, Bader is a contact-first hitter who values contact over power. His 21.7 percent strikeout rate was the highest in four years but was still below the 22.2 percent league average strikeout rate.
Teams will pound the strike zone against Bader. Opposing pitchers have a 49.9 percent zone rate in his career, so he will need to hit the ball hard to make opposing pitchers pay consistently. Margot couldn’t do that outside his .839 OPS in June. The positive for Bader? He had an 87.2 MPH average exit velocity, his highest since 2019. Still, that’s below the 88.5 MPH league average exit velocity.
Bader can play center field, which makes him a defensive improvement over Margot. The Twins thought Margot could initially play center field before limiting him to 20 appearances in 2024. Bader was a 2021 Gold Glove winner in center field, and he was a 10 outs above average (OAA) center fielder for the Mets last season and 9 OAA in 2023 for the Reds and Yankees.
Minnesota’s depth behind Buxton on the center field depth chart was more unsure before Bader. Michael Helman, Willi Castro, and Austin Martin hadn’t established themselves as a trustworthy long-term replacement in center if Buxton got hurt. Bader can start in long stretches and provide solid defense like Taylor did in 2023. However, Bader hasn’t played in a corner outfield position since 2018.
Contributing on the bases will add to Bader’s value. Since 2019, Minnesota’s 285 stolen bases over the last six seasons are the least stolen bases in all of baseball. Margot swiped 5 bases in 2024 for the Twins. Bader likely won’t steal many more bases. However, he has 94 stolen bases over 8 seasons and double-digit stolen bases every season since 2022.
Still, there is more to baserunning than stolen bases, and Bader’s value can fluctuate on the basepaths. His baserunning values and sprint speed were in the 86th percentile in 2023. However, that meaningfully declined last year when Bader’s sprint speed dropped from 28.8 ft./sec. sprint speed in 2024 to 28.2 ft./sec. sprint speed in 2024. That was the 74th percentile and the biggest dip in his career.
While it seems small, that loss in speed meant he got caught stealing a career-worst eight times in 2024. Bader has lost some speed, but he still is a good enough career baserunner to figure out how to manage his declining foot speed.
Margot’s average sprint speed went from 28.3 ft./sec. in 2023 to 27.5 ft./sec. in 2024, a drop of 20 percentile in a year. There is never a magic number when players lose speed, but it can happen as players age. Bader is 30, so he may start declining from his career averages.
These are the areas where Bader will have to be better than Margot to make a meaningful improvement in his old role. The Twins are gambling on a player in Bader who offensively hasn’t put together an above-average season in three years. Bader was 0-for-10 as a pinch hitter in 2024. That’s nowhere near Margot’s record-breaking 0-31 in that same role last year, but not far away from the infamous stat.
Adding Bader feels like a standard depth signing. It gives Rocco Baldelli a veteran right-handed hitter who can platoon on the corner outfield spots while backing up Buxton. He can do all that while being able to come off the bench if they need him to hit or pinch-run. Margot had this role a season ago with mixed results.
Bader has a similar skill set to Margot but can improve upon Margot’s 2024 production for the Twins next year. If Bader can be a solid backup option in center with better offensive numbers than Margot, he will be a valued member of Minnesota’s platoon.
