How the Twins lineup heated up after a cold start: Adjustments, strikeouts and Royce Lewis

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s been a frustratingly frustrating start to the season for the Minnesota Twins roster, which collectively hit just .195 through the first 20 games as the team stumbled out of the gates to a 7 record. -13.

Since then, however, the Twins have played at a 100-win pace, going 34-21 for the third-best record in the American League, and their roster has been one of the most productive in baseball.

Only the New York Yankees have scored more runs than the Twins since the team’s lowest point on April 21. And over that two-month span, the Twins rank top three in the AL in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs and extra base hits.

Carlos Correa 🤝 Royce Lewis

THE #MNTwins hit jacks back to back!!! pic.twitter.com/qwOagH4oTr

– Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) June 16, 2024

Those early losses count the same, and ignoring a three-week slump is going to make any hitter’s overall numbers better, but it’s illuminating to see that all eight Twins hitters with at least 125 plate appearances since April 22 were eliminated. -produces league average OPS and wRC+.

Each of the eight most-used hitters in the lineup has outperformed the league average OPS by at least 20 points since April 22, which would have seemed absolutely absurd and impossible to anyone on April 21. And that doesn’t even include Royce Lewis. , who hit .353 with eight homers and an absurd 255 wRC+ in 14 games since joining the lineup on June 4.

“Our team, from top to bottom, is doing a great job,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We have a lot of guys who stick well and we can’t have them all in the lineup every day. It’s a really interesting good thing for us.

Carlos Santana sitting at the top of this post-April 22 ranking is extremely unexpected. He got off to the slowest of the Twins’ many slow starts, hitting .133 through the team’s first 20 games, raising questions about whether the 38-year-old was washed up. Instead, he’s hit .276/.356/.524 in 51 games since, leading the Twins with 11 homers and 35 RBIs.

For the second straight season, Willi Castro went from an undefined opening day bench role to an indispensable part of the daily lineup. Castro has played in all 55 games since April 22, including stints as starting third baseman, shortstop, center fielder and now second baseman, hitting .299/.378/.482 in a total of 222 plate appearances, a team high.

Max Kepler started the year with a 1-for-20 funk, then went on the injured list for three weeks, but came back to hit .277/.337/.470 in 47 games. And even that strong line understates its full impact, as Kepler leads the Twins in win probability added since April 22, slotting into clutch positions with several game-changing hits.

No longer limited by last season’s debilitating heel issues, Carlos Correa has hit .310/.358/.517 in 45 games since leaving the IL on April 29. He ranks third among AL shortstops in OPS since April 22, and over the same period. Ryan Jeffers (.791) ranks fourth among receivers and Byron Buxton (.726) ranks fifth among center fielders.

Replacing Matt Wallner with Trevor Larnach two weeks into the season may have seemed rushed, but it turned out to be the right decision. Larnach worked his way into the Twins’ plans by providing some much-needed scoring punch from the left side of the plate. Likewise, the return of José Miranda, healthy again after a lost 2023, provided a huge boost to the middle of the order.

YES JOSÉ WAY!!!!!!!#MNTWINS // #MLB pic.twitter.com/qBkMyim2Tt

– Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) June 20, 2024

Perhaps most shockingly, Twins hitters have the fifth-lowest strikeout rate in the AL since April 22, after setting the all-time MLB record for strikeouts at bat last year and continued to rack up whiffs in early April. Overall this season, the Twins’ team-wide strikeout rate is 21.8 percent, down from 25.1 percent in 2023, the biggest decline in the league.

“We’re putting together some great hitters,” Lewis said. “Which leads to more competitive singles and hitters, instead of going for a big swing every time. When you get to two strikes, I’m not going to go for a home run every pitch. Two shots in particular I’m just trying to shoot (the other way).

Asked about the team-wide decrease in strikeouts, Baldelli noted that personnel changes are responsible for part of the increase in contact. Last season’s most strikeout-prone Twins hitters, Joey Gallo (42.8%) and Michael A. Taylor (33.5), have essentially been replaced by veteran high-contact bats Santana ( 15.5) and Manuel Margot (16.7).

They also parted ways with Donovan Solano (22.2), one of the Twins’ least strikeout-prone hitters last season, but even he was essentially replaced by a hitter with higher contact in Miranda, whose strikeout rate of 15 percent is the lowest on the team. Last season, Solano had the second-lowest strikeout rate on the Twins. This year, the team’s overall strikeout rate (21.8) is lower than Solano’s.

Personnel changes can only explain part of this, as trading Gallo, Taylor and Solano for Santana, Margot and Miranda wasn’t a massive lineup overhaul. But when combined with the fact that many of the Twins’ key hitters have reduced their strikeout rates compared to last season, the stylistic difference has been substantial.

“You can see it,” Baldelli said. “You can visually see what’s happening in front of you. I think we are making better adjustments. And a lot of times, “better adjustments” are just trying to hit a line and shortening it, not trying to win the game with a second, fourth, or sixth inning swing.

Of the 11 hitters with at least 100 plate appearances for the Twins in 2023 and 2024, all but two have struck out less frequently this season.

Also worth noting: Edouard Julien and Alex Kirilloff are the only two survivors with higher strikeout rates, and they are no longer in the lineup.

“I think you see a lot of guys recognizing the situations that come their way when they take over in a different way than they did in April,” Baldelli said. “Not just two-step adjustments. Some early adjustments, some later adjustments, shortening some swings.

Three bad weeks were followed by two good months, and the overall result is that the Twins rank fifth in the AL in OPS and runs scored.

That’s similar to last season, when they finished fourth in OPS and fifth in points scored despite scoring below average in both cases during a tough first half. After a series of headline-grabbing team meetings where Baldelli stressed the importance of making adjustments, last season’s Twins roster scored more points in the second half than any team in the AL, with the exception of the Houston Astros.

After going through that experience last year, with the same trio of hitting coaches (David Popkins, Rudy Hernandez, Derek Shomon) working with a virtually unchanged group of hitting players, the Twins were convinced another turnaround was coming . Correa made it his almost daily mantra in April, but he also constantly stressed that they couldn’t wait until the second half.

Correa on April 4: “We don’t want it to be like last year, where the first half it was a disaster. We want to be able to make these adjustments much sooner.

Correa on April 6: “There is a lot of work to do on our side regarding the collective approach. We don’t want to be here half a season and trying to figure out when we know we’re capable of doing it a lot sooner.

Correa on April 8: “We know we are capable of doing it. We just don’t want to waste an entire half season before we find a solution.

They were indeed capable of it, but this season, the Twins’ offensive turnaround began in their fourth week instead of their fourth month. The challenge will now be to maintain this activity for more than three months.

“It’s still early and I don’t want to make too many statements, but we played well with the bats,” Baldelli said. “I’m happy with what we did and the adjustments we made. I think our offensive potential is exceptional.

(Top photo of Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)