FORT MYERS, Fla. — Every team starts the season with a range of possible outcomes: best-case, worst-case and everything in between. Few, perhaps, have a spread as tantalizing as the Minnesota Twins.
Maybe that’s counterintuitive for this franchise, which has spun the same story 10 times in this century: a strong regular season, then a playoff run that stops short of the World Series. It happened again last year, although the Twins, at last, won a round.
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“We don’t have that pressure or that bag of rocks holding us down anymore,” center fielder Byron Buxton said last week, before a game at Hammond Stadium. “So it’s up to us to do our job.”
Three Twins, in particular, can do their jobs better than almost anyone alive: Buxton, shortstop Carlos Correa and third baseman Royce Lewis. All turned pro out of high school as the first or second pick in the MLB draft. All have shown sublime skills and frustrating fragility, often in equal measure.
“I don’t really know what our team is capable of if they’re all out there and playing regularly — but it’s a lot,” Manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It feels like the possibilities are almost endless. And I don’t mind thinking about that.”
He’s spent enough time on the bad stuff. Buxton, who is coming off knee surgery, has played 140 games once. Correa, who was limited last season by plantar fasciitis, has done it twice. Lewis, 24, has played only 70 games in the majors, but he’s had two ACL repairs and missed time last season with oblique and hamstring strains.
Physical betrayal is a special kind of torture for elite athletes, as Baldelli knows well; a high school phenom himself, he was drafted sixth overall by Tampa Bay, in 2000, but physical problems sapped his strength. So he’s thrilled that Buxton, Correa and Lewis are free of restrictions this spring, moving again with uncommon grace.
“Getting full seasons from these guys, it truly changes the endgame — where the team can go, what the capabilities are,” Baldelli said. “I mean, these guys matter so much to where we’re going. It doesn’t mean we can’t succeed; we succeeded last year without these guys out there on a full-time basis. But, my God — these are three of the better players you’re going to find anywhere. And to get everyone back and healthy at the same time, I try to stay within my shoes here, but it’s very encouraging.”
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The Twins went 87-75 last season but still won the AL Central by nine games. They beat Toronto in their wild-card series but lost to Houston in the next round, three games to one.
Lewis had four homers in the six playoff games, capping a .309/.372/.548 rookie season. The Twins chose him first overall in 2017, five years after they took Buxton second, with Correa going first to the Astros. Correa is now the Twins’ centerpiece, entering the second year of a six-year, $200 million deal with no opt-outs.
His painful ordeal last season was inspiring for Lewis.
“Honestly it motivated me to just know like, hey, he’s putting his whole body on the line literally every day, and he’s doing whatever he can for this team,” Lewis said. “The days that he had off were probably huge for him, because he was fighting through a lot to even just walk around.”
Correa injured his left foot crossing first base in late May, but stayed on the active roster and ground his way through 135 games. He hit .230 with a .711 OPS, his lowest for a full season, and led the majors in grounding into double plays, with 30. Many days, he said, he would wake up convinced he could not play, but found his way onto the field.
“I just show up until I can’t even walk,” Correa said. “If I can walk and limp around, I’m OK to go out there and play. Is it the smartest thing? No, but I’ve been around long enough to know how much I can withstand. I played before with my back hurting, in 2018; I wasn’t ready, but I played through it. And the numbers, they suffer a lot, but at the same time, you take some sort of pride that you’re trying to show up for your teammates and not let them down.”
Correa, who treated the injury with platelet-rich plasma injections over the winter, said his foot would require “constant work for the rest of my career.” Even considering that, Baldelli said, Correa seems more settled now than he did a year ago, after the protracted contract saga that led him back to the Twins during spring training.
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In Buxton, the difference is even more pronounced. Last season, the Twins acquired Michael A. Taylor to play center, hoping that Buxton could stay healthy without the rigors of the field. But a rib contusion, a hamstring strain and lingering knee trouble held him to 85 games and an unhappy .207/.294/.438. Designated hitter was an awkward fit for a former Platinum Glove winner.
“One, it’s not who I am, and two, I don’t want to be just a hitter, you know?” Buxton said. “I like the separation of going to play center and coming in to hit. It gives my mind a little bit more balance, because if something’s not going right at the plate, defensively I still can be a part of helping the team in different ways. Cutting the ball off and keeping a guy at first, whatever the situation is, it allows me to clear what I just did on the other side.”
Buxton never did return to the field in 2023, but said he was proud of the mental discipline it took to keep a lost season from bleeding into his home life. He reported to camp determined to reclaim center, and while the job is his, the Twins recently traded for Manuel Margot, an important veteran depth piece.
“I, 100 percent, feel better at spring training this year about Byron’s availability in center than I did last year,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins’ chief baseball officer. “But trading for Manny Margot and having another outfielder who can fit us and play in multiple spots, it was a benefit to us. We have left-handed hitting corner outfielders, Manny’s a right-hander, and it’s a really nice complement from a platoon standpoint. But also he can play center field, and that gives us a little bit of additional protection.”
Part of Falvey’s job, of course, is to mitigate risk for a roster built around three irreplaceable stars. The players’ job is to stay healthy and let their talents take over, which could vault the Twins’ trio into the class of Ronald Acuna Jr., Matt Olson and Austin Riley of the Braves; Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers; and Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker of the Astros.
Those are the players Correa named when asked about the impact the Twins’ group could make if they’re on the field together for 140 games or more.
But he understands what separates the Twins from the others.
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“One thing that they do is they show up every single day,” Correa said. “Every single day, they show up and they’re consistent. If we can show up every single day, I think we can do great things for this team.”
(Top photo of Buxton, Correa and Lewis: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)
