Can you name the 10 players who have played second base for the Minnesota Twins this season? Read to the bottom to see the list. Most of them aren’t very good at it.
To answer the initial question (from the teaser about the last time the Twins had a good defender as their everyday second baseman), I’d have to go with the first half of 2019, when Jonathan Schoop patrolled the keystone daily. Since then, it’s been a mess.
Although Schoop maintained a lion’s share of the work at second in 2019, the Luis Arraez Era started in May of that year, and by the end of the season, Arraez was seeing the bulk of starts at second base (when he wasn’t patrolling left field). Since then, the Twins have treated Arraez (2019-2020), Jorge Polanco (2021-2023), and Edouard Julien (2023-2024) as their everyday second basemen, and it wasn’t pretty.
With the 2021 signing of Andrelton Simmons—who supplanted Polanco at shortstop—the Twins had to make a second base decision between Polanco and Arraez. They elected to stick Polanco at second base every day and allow Arraez to bounce between positions based on need. Technically, Polanco was an upgrade to Arraez, but he was no great asset at second.
In mid-2023, the Twins had to make a similar decision between Polanco and Julien, this time electing the one seen as a poorer defender, Julien, to stay at the position. Polanco added third base to his repertoire. Both had to be in the lineup, and it beat moving Julien anywhere else. Julien stuck there for parts of two years, but his defense was so bad that Kyle Farmer had a full-time job just relieving him at the end of games to provide competent defense. Arraez; Polanco; Julien. All three of them are first basemen or designated hitters, now.
It’s a bit perplexing, given the history of the second base position. Second base has historically been a spot for light-hitting, good-glove, diminutive players. When constructing a defensive spectrum—ordering the importance of defensive competence necessary for the position—second base has generally been ranked in the top half. Sometimes it’s tied for the middle spot with third base, and it’s consistently ranked below catcher and shortstop, but it’s at times either ahead of or tied with center field.
Not so for the Twins in recent years. Instead, they have used the position to stash their best hitters, much like teams often do with left field and first base.
There has been a movement in baseball, over the past decade, to rethink the second base position. Names like Mike Moustakas come to mind: power hitters with questionable gloves who can fake it at second base for a while, as their teams enjoy the benefits of having another plus bat in the lineup. The viability of this strategy was dampened with the advent of the 2023 shift ban, though, making it more difficult to hide a poor defender.
Moustakas also wasn’t a full-time second baseman, only playing there for an entire campaign in the shortened 2020 season. He wasn’t terrible there. In his 613 innings, he was worth -2 outs above average (OAA) at the position. That doesn’t sound good, but compared to the Twins’ primary second basemen, well, you’d be surprised.
Arraez accumulated -15 OAA across 1,248 innings at second base as a Twin, and Polanco wasn’t much better, racking up -16 OAA over 2,273 innings after sliding into the position. At the pace Moustakas accumulated OAA, he would have had -4 with Arraez’s innings and -8 with Polanco’s. Julien has played 1,343 innings at second base and comes in at -9 OAA, about in line with Polanco at half the innings and better than Arraez with about the same number of innings—though still worse than the Moustakas benchmark. And remember, zero is average.
Beyond the quick turnover among the everyday players, the Twins have also gone a year and a half without an everyday second baseman, which again suggests the left-fieldification of the position in Minnesota. Hopefully, the emergence of Luke Keaschall will bring new stability to the position, but he has also looked shaky in the field.
Much of that may be attributed to not playing in the field much over the past calendar year due to a UCL tear and broken arm, so it’s too early to assume he’ll be rough, but in his first 276 innings, he’s already been worth -2 OAA. That’s only about 30 games’ worth of time, so don’t overreact, but if that sort of play continues, so will the shakiness of one of the most important defensive positions for your Minnesota Twins.
Other players to have played the position since 2019 with any level of semi-regularity include middle-of-the-pack (or worse) defenders Willi Castro (2023-2025, 522 innings, -1 OAA), Nick Gordon (2021-2023, 431 innings, 1 OAA), Brooks Lee (2024-2025, 319 innings, -3 OAA), Kody Clemens (2025, 280 innings, 1 OAA), and Donovan Solano (2023, 117 innings, -1 OAA). The only two Twins defenders since Schoop (983 innings, 4 OAA) to show any hint of above-average defense at second were Farmer (2023-2024, 586 innings, 5 OAA) and Marwin Gonzalez (2019-2020, 184 innings, 3 OAA).
Of course, defensive statistics are messy, and you can quibble with them, but OAA’s assessment lines up with the eye test for most (if not all) of the players listed above.
It’s perplexing. For the better part of a decade, the position has essentially been left field 2.0, where defense is often overlooked and players tend to stay for only a short time. Many Twins players have been earmarked as second basemen, which may explain some of the turnover—in part because shortstop and third base have been more locked down this decade—but it’s been a revolving door of poor defenders who can sometimes (actually, I’ll give them this, it’s been most of the time) hit well. They’ve even tried Mickey Gasper there, for crying out loud.
This may speak to an organizational philosophy, downplaying the importance of second base defense, a lack of development of infield skills, poor scouting, or a combination of all three. Who knows? I just saw Austin Martin starting a game at second last week, and it got me thinking about the question in the teaser—when is the last time the Twins had a good defensive everyday second baseman? Maybe the better one is: When will they have one again?
Oh, and to answer the question, here are the Twins to have played second base this year, from most appearances to least: Clemens, Castro, Lee, Keaschall, Julien, Jonah Bride, Ryan Fitzgerald, Martin, Gasper, Ty France. No Royce Lewis, at least not yet. Admit it, though: you’d forgotten Jonah Bride ever existed.