\n\tLast season, the Minnesota Twins ranked 23rd out of 30 MLB teams in runs scored and 18th in OPS. The offense was once again a major letdown, and an area where significant improvement will be needed in order to turn around this wayward franchise.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tTo that end, the Twins made some key changes to their coaching staff, which were at least partially aimed at revamping the team’s hitter development at the big-league level: they dismissed their hitting coach for a second straight year, replacing Matt Borgschulte with Derek Beauregard, and they hired a new manager in Derek Shelton<\/a> with a deep background in hitting instruction.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThese changes are all well and good, but it’s the players on the field who will determine whether the lineup can finally find some life and score enough to be competitive. On that front, their offseason additions have been … quite uninspiring.\n<\/p>\n \n\tTo their credit, the Twins did make a move to add some legitimate veteran offensive firepower in the form of Josh Bell<\/a>, who signed a $7 million deal last month. He’s got a track record. That’s a good start. But since the offseason started, the Twins have added four other position players \u2014 via trades, waiver claims and minor-league signings \u2014 and to say they’ve been unproductive at the plate would be an understatement.\n<\/p>\n \n\tAdmittedly, there are some selective endpoints and thresholds being used below, but I don’t think any of them are unfair. I’m trying to provide context about how these hitters have performed compared to their major-league peers over recent timeframes. It’s not pretty.\n<\/p>\n \t\tEric Wagaman<\/a>: Ranked 132nd out of 146 qualified hitters in OPS in 2025<\/p>\n \t\tOrlando Arcia<\/a>: Second-worst OPS among MLB hitters with 700+ PA since 2024<\/p>\n \t\tRyan Kreidler<\/a>: Ranks dead last in OPS among MLB hitters with 200+ PA since 2022<\/p>\n \t\tAlex Jackson<\/a>: Ranks 588th in OPS\u00a0out of 592 MLB hitters with 400+ PA since 2021<\/p>\n \n\tYeah, you can make some points in favor of each of these guys. Jackson and Kreidler are a backup catcher and utility infielder respectively, so the bar for hitting is low. Wagaman has shown some promise in the minors and against left-handed pitching. Arcia was an okay hitter prior to the last two years.\n<\/p>\n \n\tBut these numbers speak for themselves. Desperate to upgrade their offense, the Twins have been taking flyers on players who were given up on by previous organizations largely because of their bats. And this comes on the heels of a trade deadline that saw Minnesota bring in two MLB-ready hitters: Alan Roden<\/a> (ranked 376th in OPS out of 393 players with 150+ PA last year) and James Outman<\/a> (ranks 409th out of 417 players with 300+ PA since 2024).\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\tOn top of that, you’ve got two key returning players in Royce Lewis<\/a> and Brooks Lee<\/a> who are also looking to bounce back from bottom-tier hitting performances in 2025. Among 215 players to make 400+ plate appearances last year, Lewis ranked 180th in OPS and Lee ranked 194th.\n<\/p>\n \n\tAgain, there are reasons to believe some of these guys can be better than they’ve been, especially those like Roden and Lee who are relatively young and have crushed in the minors. But when you take a step back and look at the totality of talent the Twins have brought in to try and rejuvenate a lagging offense, it’s bleak.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\tThese haven’t just been bad hitters, they’ve been atrocious, and there’s a good chance they are going to be populating a majority of the Twins’ roster in 2026. Beauregard is getting dealt a hell of a hand in his first go as primary hitting coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last season, the Minnesota Twins ranked 23rd out of 30 MLB teams in runs scored and 18th in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[15758,5,1392,822,60,3190,4,1131,13629,148],"class_list":["post-511646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-twins","tag-alex-jackson","tag-baseball","tag-eric-wagaman","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-minnesotatwins","tag-mlb","tag-orlando-arcia","tag-ryan-kreidler","tag-twins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115860748615981674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}