Brooks Lee’s bat is starting to look a lot more dangerous from both sides of the plate, even if the split still comes with a few head-scratching wrinkles.
In Saturday’s loss in San Diego, the Twins infielder was one of the bright spots in a night when Minnesota coughed up a 5-1 lead. Lee missed the cycle by a triple, and he did it with damage from each side of the box, including an opposite-field blast off Casey Mize from the left side.
That homer pushed him to a new career high of 19, a sign that his first full season in the majors is still moving forward even as the results have swung wildly depending on which side he’s batting from.
The split tells the story. Against right-handed pitching, Lee hit .220/.278/.365 over 349 plate appearances in 2025 before jumping to .264/.312/.481 over 337 plate appearances in 2026. Against lefties, the numbers moved the other direction, from .266/.298/.379 over 178 plate appearances in 2025 to .208/.279/.313 over 159 plate appearances in 2026.
Lee pointed to pitch selection as the biggest difference.
“I think pitch selection, “ Lee said regarding what’s changed in his results. “Definitely was expanding more right-handed.
[I] have done a better job left-handed this year, getting better pitches to hit. I think every year is going to be different.
It can be good one side, bad the other.”
The challenge is baked into switch hitting itself, especially for a player who doesn’t get equal exposure to every kind of pitching. Derek Shelton said that makes consistency tough, particularly from the right side.
“It’s extremely hard,” said Twins manager Derek Shelton on Lee’s switch hitting. “It’s hard, man. Switch hitting is probably one of the hardest things to do in sports, and hitting right-handed if you’re a switch hitter, because you don’t get a ton of at-bats, to be consistent there is extremely challenging.”
Even with the uneven splits, Lee has started to settle in during August. He’s hit .265/.296/.456 this month with three home runs and 10 RBI, a step up from July, when he posted a .218/.292/.356 line with two home runs and 11 RBI.
Lee said he felt good early in the season when the Twins were seeing more left-handed starters, but he’s still searching for balance as the year moves along. He knows the swings can come in waves.
“Maybe next year I’ll be good in both, or I clean it up right-handed, and I will be,” Lee said. “But I think either side, on any given day, I can have a good stretch, like the first 30 games versus lefties, then I cooled off pretty good. So just looking to get hot again.”
His overall numbers suggest real progress, not just a hot streak. Lee has cut down on the wild swings from earlier in the year, trimming his strikeout rate from 17.5% to 16.3% while nudging his walk rate up from 5.9% to 6.7%.
Then on Sunday afternoon, he kept the momentum rolling against the Padres. In the fifth inning, Lee worked a 10-pitch battle against Walker Buehler from the left side, fouling off five straight pitches before turning the at-bat into his 20th home run of the season.
Lee said he doesn’t expect a perfect year every season, only steady growth.
“I don’t expect myself to go out there and put a career year together every single year, and I know I’m so early in what it’s hopefully of what is a long career,” Lee said. “Yeah, just keep building as good as I can each year, build off what I did the previous year, and if I play better, I play better.”
Shelton said the work required to keep improving from both sides is no small thing, especially for a player in the lineup every day.
“It’s hard to work on it because you have to work on both sides; it’s a ton of reps,” Shelton said. “And in Brooks’ case, he’s playing every day.
So we’re at Aug. 22 or Aug. 23, so the amount of volume there is something that comes into play. But it was good to see him have good swings on both sides of the plate last night.”
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