As July arrives, the Twins are looking at a lineup that feels a whole lot sturdier than the one that opened the season. The early months were messy at the plate, with runs hard to come by and innings dying before Minnesota could build anything meaningful. Lately, though, the offense has found a rhythm, and that’s happened even with Ryan Jeffers out behind the plate and Matt Wallner spending time at Triple-A.
The difference has been spread across the roster. Veterans have settled in, younger players have taken on bigger roles, and the lineup has shown a depth it didn’t always have in April and May. June brought several strong individual performances, but four hitters clearly stood above the rest.
Victor Caratini was the biggest surprise, and the most productive. With Jeffers injured, Caratini was asked to handle a much larger load at catcher, and he responded with the best offensive month of his career. In 20 games, he hit .338/.429/.631 with 5 home runs, 4 doubles, 9 walks and 12 strikeouts, good for a 1.059 OPS and a 189 wRC+.
What makes that even more striking is where he started the month. Caratini entered June with a .475 OPS, then turned around and reached base almost 43% of the time over the next few weeks.
Among catchers with at least 70 plate appearances, he posted the highest wRC+ in baseball for June, and his 1.1 fWAR ranked second among American League catchers. Minnesota needed him to keep the catching spot afloat; instead, he became one of the hottest bats in the league.
Byron Buxton wasn’t far behind. He came into June already in the middle of one of the best stretches of his career, and even after cooling a bit in the final week, he still looked like one of the American League’s most dangerous players. In 23 games, Buxton slashed .287/.330/.596 with 8 home runs, 5 doubles and a 153 wRC+.
He led the Twins in home runs for the month and also paced the team in stolen bases while finishing second in runs scored. That all-around impact helped him pile up 1.0 fWAR, second on the roster in June.
His OPS fell 68 points from May, but he also trimmed his strikeout rate by more than six percentage points. For a hitter with Buxton’s ceiling, that kind of contact improvement matters.
Trevor Larnach kept building on a season that has become one of the more interesting offensive stories in the clubhouse. The power hasn’t fully matched expectations, but he made up for it by becoming one of the most reliable hitters on the team. In 23 games during June, Larnach hit .341/.405/.513 with 2 home runs, 7 doubles, 7 walks and only 10 strikeouts, good for a 158 wRC+.
The biggest change was his bat-to-ball work. After striking out more than 23% of the time in May, he cut that rate to 11.8% in June.
More contact meant more balls in play, more line drives, and more chances to drive the gaps. His 0.8 fWAR came almost entirely from the offense, which says plenty about how effective he was even without a big home run total.
Josh Bell rounded out the group after shaking off another slow start. That’s become a familiar pattern with Bell, and this year was no different. He closed May with a .562 OPS and a 29.4% strikeout rate, numbers that didn’t look much like the middle-of-the-order presence the Twins had in mind when they signed him over the winter.
June told a different story. Over 27 games, Bell hit .295/.343/.547 with 7 doubles, a triple, 5 home runs, 6 walks and 18 strikeouts, good for a .891 OPS and a 145 wRC+.
He finished third on the team in slugging percentage and led the club with a .405 expected weighted on-base average. Just as important, his strikeout rate dropped to 17.6%, almost exactly in line with his season average of 18.8%.
The swing-and-miss issues from May looked more like a blip than a warning sign.
The Twins still have a lot to sort out in the second half, but offense is no longer the first issue staring them in the face. Bell has settled into the middle of the order, Larnach is showing a more complete profile, Buxton is still the lineup’s biggest game-breaker, and Caratini has delivered one of the most unexpected breakout months of the season.
If that group keeps rolling anywhere near this level, Minnesota has a real chance to stay in the mix through July.
In Other News...
Twins Farm Gets One Needed Boost Amid Another Concerning Update
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Kaelen Culpeppers addition to the Futures Game roster added a brighter note to the systems midseason outlook, giving Minnesota another prospect to track on a bigger stage. But the update also came with a setback elsewhere in the pipeline, a reminder that depth in the minors can change quickly even when one player is moving back into the mix and another is earning a spotlight. [Read more 🡒]
Twins May Finally Have A Real Opening For Kendry Rojas
Kendry Rojas has given the Twins enough to dream on since arriving from Toronto, even if the picture is still blurry. The left-hander brings real velocity and a slider that can miss bats, but the command has not always matched the stuff, which is why Minnesota has been shuttling him through a hybrid mix of starting and relieving without settling on a firm lane.
Now the Twins have to decide whether the best path for Rojas is to keep stretching him out or narrow the job and let the arsenal play up in shorter bursts. Louis Varland has become the obvious reference point from the same trade, and that kind of bullpen conversion is at least on the table as Minnesota weighs what Rojas can be long term. [Read more 🡒]
Two Unexpected Twins Could Be In Real Deadline Danger
The Twins have spent much of the season in that uneasy middle ground where neither path is fully closed off. At 42-46, they are still close enough to the playoff race to justify staying patient, but not so far ahead that the front office can ignore the possibility of shifting directions if the next few weeks go sideways.
If Minnesota does end up leaning toward a sell-off, two unexpected names could surface in the conversation: Kody Clemens and Ryan Kreidler. Both have been useful this year and bring the kind of defensive flexibility teams like to target at the deadline, which makes them more than simple depth pieces even with years of control still attached. For a club trying to balance the present against its next wave of talent, that kind of value can become hard to overlook. [Read more 🡒]