{"id":731852,"date":"2026-06-21T15:30:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/731852\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T15:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:30:22","slug":"its-time-to-see-more-ryan-kreidler-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/731852\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to See More Ryan Kreidler – Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSince Opening Day, the Twins\u2019 shortstop position has been in flux. The club has already had four players play shortstop more than 10 times this season: Brooks Lee<\/a>, Tristan Gray<\/a>,\u00a0Ryan Kreidler<\/a>, and Orlando Arcia<\/a>. Lee was the team\u2019s Opening Day shortstop, but he played his way off the position and has not appeared there for over a month.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGray, Kreidler, and Arcia have been fighting for time there since, though Arcia has been designated for assignment and returned to St. Paul, effectively creating a timeshare between Gray and Kreidler at the position. The two inexperienced, though not young, form a natural platoon\u2014Gray is a lefty and Kreidler is a righty\u2014and the Twins have held firm to that setup. They have played Gray at shortstop in every game a righty started since May 23, a game he missed on paternity leave.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m not one to call for sweeping changes, but is it time to end this type of usage?\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGray is not playing like an everyday shortstop. Kreidler probably isn\u2019t an everyday shortstop either, but he can at least defend like one.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May, Lee was moved off the position he had held since last July (when Carlos Correa<\/a> was traded) due to his defense. And rightly so\u2014Lee was, by some metrics, the worst defensive shortstop in baseball. Even if you don\u2019t trust defensive metrics, which is justifiable, watching him told you that, at a minimum, he was not a good defender.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time of his move off of shortstop, by defensive runs saved (DRS), he was a league-worst -7. His outs above average (OAA) and fielding run value (FRV) told a similar story, -6 and -5, respectively. The average is 0 on these metrics. In 44 games, he\u2019d only committed two errors, but there were head-scratching plays galore, and many balls he simply could not get to because of his range.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGray has played 24 games at shortstop this season (184 innings), and wouldn\u2019t you know, after Friday night\u2019s game, he\u2019s accumulated -8 DRS, -6 OAA, and -6 FRV. Those figures are as bad or worse than Lee\u2019s, but they\u2019re counting stats. He would be on pace to have accumulated -17 DRS, -13 OAA, and -13 FRV by the time he reached Lee\u2019s 390 total innings (that\u2019s not exactly how it works, but you get the point). If you\u2019re an errors person, he\u2019s already racked up six this season, committing one for every four games he plays at shortstop.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of the reason Lee was moved to third base was that he isn\u2019t a long-term shortstop, so it was sensible to move him to a place that better suited his skillset. Another part of that move was to help improve the team\u2019s defense today.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd they replaced Lee with an even worse defender at shortstop.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tKreidler is clearly the superior defender out of the group of four Twins shortstops. He\u2019s made a couple of mistakes defensively this season, including miscommunicating on a pop-up that resulted in Luke Keaschall<\/a> knocking the ball from his glove, but he remains an at minimum average defender.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s had only 61 innings at the position this season, but he has been an average defender by DRS and has accumulated 1 OAA and 1 FRV. He came to the Twins with a reputation for excellent play in the field, and compared to Lee and Gray, it\u2019s a night-and-day difference.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe issue with Kreidler is his hitting, though.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOr, at least, that was the issue with his reputation.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tKreidler has not played terribly often this season. He\u2019s only accumulated 80 plate appearances. But he\u2019s hit well enough in that time, slashing .243\/.338\/.486 (.823), about 20% better than league average. A lot of that is buoyed by his four home runs and 10 walks, and his .383 OPS (yes, OPS, not OBP) casts a cloud over anyone who wants to believe that he\u2019s a competent hitter.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he\u2019s hit enough to at least give him a look at more regular playing time.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tKreidler has been slightly better against lefties than righties this season (.821 vs. .809 OPS), though his performance against righties is a bit inflated because three of his four home runs have come against same-handed pitchers (he has a .256 OBP but a .553 SLG against right-handed pitchers). In reality, he\u2019s probably meaningfully better against lefties than righties, which isn\u2019t great for an everyday shortstop candidate whose performance against southpaws also probably isn\u2019t sustainable.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, it\u2019s not as if Gray has lit the world on fire in his platoon-aided appearances.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGray has 126 plate appearances against righties this season, and he\u2019s slashed .252\/.294\/.365 against them. He had a hot start to the year and was one of the early-season fun stories, slashing .269\/.316\/.462 (.777) overall through the end of April with three home runs and 13 RBI in 58 plate appearances. Since then, though, he\u2019s cooled off considerably, slashing .222\/.261\/.296 (.558) overall, and his performance against righties has been just higher, his .608 OPS about 35% below league average.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTwins fans (and managers, and front office members) should be under no impression that either Gray or Kreidler is a good hitter, or even an average hitter over a full season. But if neither of them is going to be good, why not play the only player on the team who wouldn\u2019t be in competition for the worst defensive shortstop in baseball?\n<\/p>\n

\n\tShortstop is an incredibly important defensive position, and the Twins have largely played poor defenders there. At some point, you have to give the guy who can field the position a shot. Of course, hopefully at some point within the next month, Twins Daily\u2019s #2 prospect, Kaelen Culpepper<\/a>, will be in that spot. But for now, I feel like I speak for a lot of people when I say that I\u2019m growing weary of watching what\u2019s going on at shortstop.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGray could have a role as a utility infielder, giving the Twins\u2019 bevy of right-handed infielders a day off against same-sided pitching, but we\u2019ve probably seen enough from him as the primary shortstop.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPlease, just play the sure glove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Opening Day, the Twins\u2019 shortstop position has been in flux. The club has already had four players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,1391,822,60,3190,4,1131,13629,30756,148],"class_list":["post-731852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-twins","tag-baseball","tag-brooks-lee","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-minnesotatwins","tag-mlb","tag-orlando-arcia","tag-ryan-kreidler","tag-tristan-gray","tag-twins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116788817022784051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731852","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=731852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}