2023 Twins Turkey of Year

November is flying by. The World Series is over, the GM meetings are behind us, the Hot Stove league is starting to heat up, the newly hired managers are all excited about how good their new teams are, the 2023 MLB award season is in full swing, free agents players and their agents are starting to count their money, the weather is cooling off and Thanksgiving is upon us one more time. The NFBC site is already accepting players for the 2024 Fantasy season and drafts for the 2024 season are already underway (If you think you know baseball and have some extra money then this is the place for you). Black Friday sales have been on-going for some time and yes, the entire baseball world will once again be getting together for the Baseball Winter Meetings (Dec 3-6, 2023) and this year they are back in Nashville.

The Minnesota Twins broke their long losing streak in post-season play and even won a post-season series in 2023 but unfortunately the Houston Astros were waiting for them once again and sent the Twins home early to heal what ails them and to sharpen their golf skills. Hey, they were 3-3 in the post-season but they still have a ways to go and they obviously had some Turkey’s on their roster this season that we can roast. A team that has seven batters that struck out 100 or more times and another that fell just one KO short of 100 along with a $33 million dollar player that hits into a team record 30 double-plays must have some fowl players for us to chose from.

So let’s open the oven door and see what we got. First we start out with some candidates that were in contention but dropped by the wayside. The pathetic hitting we saw from many of the Twins hitters this past season, particularly in the first half has to bring the Twins hitting coach trio of David Popkins, Rudy Hernandez and Derek Shomon to the forefront. This hard charging trio was in the lead early on but as the Twins hitting improved in the second half they slowly faded from TOY contention.

Reliever Jorge Lopez started the season like a house afire but as April faded so did Lopez and by mid-June the Twins had put Lopez on the IL for a mental health break. Lopez returned to the mound on the fourth of July but after eight appearances he was traded to Miami for reliever Dylan Floro who didn’t do much better.

Alex Kirilloff the Twins 2016 first round pick was coming off a wrist injury in 2022 in a season in which he played in just 45 games. He rehabbed until early May before he was recalled by the Twins and looked better for awhile but then a shoulder injury took its toll and Kirilloff no longer looked like the player and first baseman the Twins were hoping he would become. The future for Kirilloff is hazy right now.

24-year-old Jose Miranda was a rookie in 2022 playing first base and third base and looked like an up and coming star. In 125 games he hit .268 with 15 home runs and 66 RBI and seemed to have the knack to get key hits at the right time. 2023 was a totally different story and he didn’t look like the same player. After 40 games with just three home runs and 13 RBI in early July he was sent to AAA St. Paul and didn’t play for the Twins again in 2023. Fair or not, he is going to have to fight his way back into the Twins plans.

Derek Falvey and Thad Levine as leaders of the Twins organization have to be in the running for this years TOY simply because of the positions they hold. The decisions they made or didn’t make, the players they acquired or traded played a huge role in what the Twins looked like and played like in 2023. How they handled the Byron Buxton situation in 2023 alone could have qualified them as one of the three 2023 TOY finalists but their leadership took the Twins to a Division championship, their first since 2020 which allowed them to get their first post-season win(s) since 2004 so they get a bye this time around. These guys have already won this award twice but the final table just eluded their grasp this time around the Sun.

Just missing the medal platform was catcher Christian Vazquez who was a free agent brought in to be the number one catcher and to mentor Ryan Jeffers. Unfortunately for Vazquez he had an off year with the bat and by early May his average was in the low .200’s. That alone wouldn’t be that bad but his catching wasn’t as good as expected and he finished the season with nine errors and had a lower caught stealing percentage than Jeffers. Vazquez and Jeffers pretty much split their time behind the plate but Vazquez earned $10 million for his work and Jeffers made just over the minimum. When the season came to an end, Jeffers had a WAR of 3.3 and Vazquez had a -0.3 WAR.

That brings us to the final three, the three studs that “earned” their medal platform status.

First we have the second runner up Carlos Correa, the Twins shortstop that fell into the Twins hands twice in two years. The 2015 Rookie of the Year and two-time All-Star had a very disappointing season at the plate but his play in the field remained stellar in spite of the fact that he played a good part of the season with plantar fasciitis. Correa’s hit just .230, his OBP was .312, and he finished the season with a WAR of 1.4, all were career lows. Throw in a team record 30 GDP and these are scary numbers for a 28 year-old embarking on a guaranteed six-year deal with the club. The six-year deal is worth $200 million, but can max out at $270 million over 10 seasons; if he can remain on the field.

This years runner-up for the Twins TOY is none other than another Falvey/Levine free agent signing, Joey Gallo. Gallo was was represented by the Boras Corporation and he got a one-year deal with the Twins for $11 million. Why? Who knows, maybe it was as a favor to Steve Boras for sending Correa to Minnesota after he “failed physicals” in San Francisco and New York. Gallo, an outfielder/first baseman by trade is a two-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner but he didn’t add to his honors for his play in Minnesota. No one in Twins history had as low a batting average with over 300 PA’s than Gallo did with a .177 with 142 strikeouts in 332 PA’s. Next lowest on that list is Logan Morrison with a .186 average with 80 strikeouts in 359 PA’s. WAR? You said you want to know his WAR? That would be 0.5. A nice guy but not the answer for what the Twins need at his price tag.

This years Twins Turkey of the Year winner in a landslide is DH Byron Buxton shown here in a 2022 picture when he played in the field. Shocking? You shouldn’t be. I would have liked to show him wearing a glove this past season but the only glove he wore in 2023 was a batting glove and many wondered why he needed that. The Twins 2012 first round pick and 2022 All-Star continues to have injury issues in 2023 and batted in just 80 games, with no appearances in the field. In nine big league seasons Buck has averaged 74 games a season but yet the Twins signed him to a seven-year $100 million extension in December of 2021. A heavily incentive-laden structure with a full no-trade clause thru 2026 and then he can be traded during his last two seasons to five teams he approves. Hard to know who (Buxton or the Twins FO) hatched the plan to have Buxton strictly as a DH in 2023 until he was healthy enough to play in the field. But for some reason it did not work for Buxton and then adding Buxton to the roster in the final postseason series was just plain dumb. Just for fun I did a Stathead comparison for Buxton and Gallo. Looks to me like they are basically the same player. Congratulations to our 2023 Twins Turkey of Year Byron Buxton, you earned it Buck. I this song is an appropriate way to end it for Byron and the Twins.