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Since he hit his stride in the middle of 2023, it has been up to Max Kepler to deliver a certain element of opportunism and danger to the Twins lineup. When Royce Lewis has been available and when Byron Buxton has been within a Sunday drive of healthy, they've added to that dynamic, but Kepler quietly became the centerpiece of the Minnesota attack late last season, precisely because he made opposing pitchers pay for coming into the meat of the strike zone against him. The Twins have grinders and they have sluggers, but they're short on pure hit tool even on their best days. With Kepler down, they're woefully short on it.
At a surface level, bringing in Carlos Santana this winter made sense. It was even one way to ameliorate the problem outlined above. I praised that move at the time, on the premise that Santana (who has a long and decorated service record in the big leagues and has nearly always found ways to get on base and fatten up the heart of a team's batting order) would balance the team's strikeout-besotted, subtly sclerotic collection of bats. Santana not only draws walks at one of the best rates in baseball, but avoids strikeouts surprisingly well--at least, that's been the story throughout that long career, stretching up even to last season.
It might be turning from a news story to a fairytale, though, fading into memory and legend before our very eyes. Santana still knows better than to expand his strike zone, but he's losing the ability to adequately defend it when pitchers come right after him. Given that he just turned 38 years old, it's fair to wonder whether he'll ever recover that capacity.
Consider a fistful of players, based on how often they swing at pitches that are well within the strike zone (those having a 99-percent or higher called strike probability; basically, every bit of the zone except edges and corners) and how often they make contact on those swings.
These aren't borderline pitches, so there's extremely low utility in watching them go by. Maybe you're holding out for a pitch in your preferred part of the zone, or were sitting on a particular pitch type and are willing to wait and see if you get it next, but in a vacuum, the more you swing at these pitches, the better. Obviously, it's not good to whiff on pitches in this zone, either. Whiffing at stuff outside the zone can be ok; it spares you weak and unproductive contact. But when the ball is thrown where all the ones considered in this data set were, you should always want your swing to connect. Corey Seager swings the most at these pitches. Mookie Betts whiffs the least often. That, alone, should tell you where you want to be on this chart: lower, and farther right.
Hey, look, there's a friendly face there! Kepler didn't watch strikes go by during the second half last year, and when he swung, he hardly ever missed. That's a sign of a hitter who's locked in, and who is ready to do damage. It's the combination of proactive and skilled that Kepler worked toward for years, as he followed his breakout in 2019 with some frustrating campaigns. He's keeping good company on that part of the chart, including old friend Luis Arráez.
Being in the lower left quadrant is second-best, because the less you whiff, the more selective you can afford to be. There, I've highlighted a few players who were free agents this winter. but whom the Twins didn't bring in, for one reason or another--or a few million others, as the case might be in places. Justin Turner, Tommy Pham, and Randal Grichuk all nestle into the lower left side of the graph. Grichuk might have some big strikeout problems, but they don't come on pitches in the zone. When he gets his pitch, he rarely misses it, either by not offering at it or by not making contact.
Matt Wallner is the most whiff-prone hitter in baseball, on pitches inside the zone, but he does mimic Kepler in his eagerness to attack them. The rest of the Twins, though, reside in a medium-sized cluster just on the wrong side of average. Carlos Correa is good at making contact on these pitches, but he's more the relentlessly patient, exacting type than the pouncing slugger the good version of Kepler can be. Meanwhile, in this particular way of looking at things, Santana doesn't bring anything especially new to the team. He's strikingly similar to both Willi Castro and Edouard Julien.
To fully understand what we're looking at, though, we have to know not only how often a batter swings and how often that swing finds its target, but how cleanly that's done--in other words, how much value he generates when he does make contact. This time, we'll only highlight Kepler and Santana.
Oh no. This time, the top right is definitely the best quadrant to be in, and Kepler is there again. He hits the ball hard with above-average frequency, and keeps it in the most productive possible launch angle band in the process. When he's swinging at pitches well inside the zone, he does damage.
Santana? Not so much. The league hammers these pitches, because they're pitches with plenty of the plate. The standard is very high, but the fact is that Santana isn't meeting it. His ability to drive the ball is deserting him in old age, leaving him open to pitchers pounding the strike zone without fear.
Absent Kepler, the Twins will need Santana more than ever, but he hasn't looked up to the task so far this season. His bat looks slow. He's only going to deliver a fairly empty (though creditable) on-base percentage, unless and until he finds some way to unlock the power and productivity he's enjoyed within the zone in the past. Last summer, he traded some of his previously inviolate bat control to get to a little more power, and it worked. Now, he'll need to assess whether he can make the same trade twice, or whether some other adjustment is due. In either case, don't expect things to be smooth while Kepler is gone.
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- Wizard11, DJL44 and Cory Engelhardt
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