MINNEAPOLIS — Unfortunately for the Minnesota Twins’ sagging lineup, other teams are pretty observant.
Despite breaking the all-time strikeout record last season, the Twins scored the fifth-most runs in the 15-team American League, including ranking second to the Houston Astros in runs scored after the All-Star break. They had an above-average lineup overall, and it improved during the season, but Twins hitters had a huge gap in 2023 production versus fastballs compared with off-speed pitches.
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They led the AL with a .487 slugging percentage off fastballs, which includes four-seamers, sinkers and cutters. But they were just 11th with a .351 slugging percentage against off-speed stuff, which includes sliders, sweepers, curveballs, changeups and splitters. Basically, the Twins hit the hard stuff hard last season but too often flailed away versus slower stuff with lots of spin and movement.
Predictably, the rest of the league noticed those lopsided numbers and reacted by not throwing the Twins fastballs. Twins hitters saw 54.3 percent fastballs in the 2023 regular season, slightly below average among AL lineups. But then in the playoffs, they saw an MLB-low 48.9 percent fastballs, including below 50 percent from both the Astros and Toronto Blue Jays.
That trend from last October has continued this season. Through their first 20 games, including matchups facing six pitching staffs, Twins hitters saw 50.5 percent fastballs, the lowest rate in the majors and the lowest fastball rate for any team in any year since Statcast began tracking the data in 2015. There’s no mystery about the scouting reports teams have on the Twins at this point.
And the Twins have been helpless against the steady diet of off-speed pitches, producing an MLB-worst .163 batting average and MLB-worst .229 slugging percentage. They’ve whiffed on 40.1 percent of swings versus off-speed pitches, more than every MLB lineup except for the lowly Oakland Athletics. It’s only going to get worse, too, because opposing teams smell blood in the water.
“There are going to be fewer and fewer (fastballs) coming our way; that’s just a fact,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We have got to compete against all pitches, not just fastballs in the middle of the zone. We have got to be able to do things with those other pitches and have good, competitive at-bats.”
Jack was dialed in. pic.twitter.com/SXHMDBvRy9
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 20, 2024
Of the 407 total pitches Twins hitters saw in last weekend’s three-game series with the Detroit Tigers at Target Field, just 44.5 percent were fastballs. Overall this season, opponents have thrown fewer than 50 percent fastballs to the Twins in 11 of 20 games. Unless the lineup proves it can do damage on off-speed stuff by waiting back and using the whole field, the fastball drought will continue.
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“We can’t go up there and swing at off-speed stuff below the zone consistently,” Baldelli said. “If we do that, it’s going to be a long season. Competing against off-speed pitches isn’t just about hitting them over the fence. That’s great if you can do it, but that’s not the point. The point is you have to know what you’re swinging at, and you have to swing at strikes.”
That’s easier said than done, especially when the Twins have an abundance of hitters for whom off-speed pitches are a career-long weakness. Improvements and adjustments are necessary and possible, but many of the players in the lineup assembled by the front office, last year and this season, are stylistically similar as fastball-oriented hitters who struggle to handle spin, movement and changes in speed.
It’s an even longer-term issue. Dating to 2020, the Twins have the AL’s third-worst batting average and fourth-worst slugging percentage against off-speed pitches. Meanwhile, during that same five-season period, they lead the AL in slugging percentage versus fastballs. That’s not a coincidence; it’s by design or at least the result of bigger-picture organizational philosophies.
It’s important to note MLB hitters, as a whole, are much less productive versus off-speed pitches, slugging .366 from 2021 to 2023. But during that time, Max Kepler, Carlos Santana, Alex Kirilloff, Kyle Farmer, Manuel Margot, Trevor Larnach and Christian Vázquez — seven of the 11 members of the Twins’ current group who played in all three of those seasons — slugged below .366 versus off-speed stuff.
And only Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Ryan Jeffers slugged above .400 on off-speed pitches from 2021 to 2023, with just Correa exceeding the league-wide mark versus off-speed stuff in batting average and slugging. Crushing fastballs is an essential skill, and all teams try to develop and acquire hitters who do so, but the Twins have had a hard time balancing that with off-speed competency.
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This offseason’s biggest lineup addition, Santana, hit .182 with a .318 slugging percentage against off-speed stuff over the previous three years. Given that glaring lack of recent production from a 38-year-old nearing the end of his career, the front office knew Santana wouldn’t be an off-speed asset when it added him to a group that already struggled with those pitches.
Santana is 3-for-28 versus off-speed pitches while whiffing on 42.6 percent of his swings against them, by far a career high. And off-speed stuff accounts for a career-high 52.0 percent of the pitches he’s seen, because pitchers can spot and exploit a weakness. Margot, the Twins’ only other offseason lineup addition, is 1-for-23 with a career-high 38.1 percent whiff rate versus off-speed pitches.
After a 2023 season in which the Twins crushed fastballs but ranked among the AL’s worst lineups against off-speed pitches, the front office brought in just two new hitters, a 38-year-old first baseman and a backup outfielder, both of whom have poor track records with off-speed stuff. Considering the hitting personnel at Baldelli’s disposal, shouldn’t bad off-speed production have been expected?
“That could be the case, but that’s not an excuse to struggle or be easily pitched to,” Baldelli said. “Teams that make the best adjustments are gonna be the best teams. What do you do well? What parts of the game do you need to improve on or simply change or switch it up? And how do you attack those things? If it takes us half a season to figure this out, we’re not going to be good enough.”
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(Photo of Carlos Santana: Duane Burleson / Getty Images)
