Twins' Matt Wallner close to living major league dream that started in Forest Lake

FORT MYERS, FLA. – Big-league baseball is a game. The path there is a journey.

Matt Wallner's began at Forest Lake High School, where he proved to be a late bloomer as a pitcher and power hitter who was named Minnesota's Mr. Baseball in 2016.

The Twins drafted him in the 32nd round. He had signed with North Dakota, which then dropped its baseball program for financial reasons.

So Wallner signed with another school that feels Minnesota-adjacent: Southern Mississippi.

That's where former Vikings (and Packers) quarterback Brett Favre played football and former Twins star Brian Dozier played baseball. In three seasons in Hattiesburg, Wallner set the program record for home runs, and then the Twins drafted him with the 39th pick in the 2019 draft, adding another potential bomber to what that year became the Bomba Squad.

After playing with nine different teams since starting college, Wallner made his big-league debut with the Twins in September, hitting .228 with two homers and a .709 OPS in 65 plate appearances, and adding to the team's stockpile of promising young lefthanded hitters.

His minor league OPS is .890. His college OPS was 1.113. At 25, he is in Twins spring training camp as one of the many talented young players in the clubhouse who could wind up playing at Class AAA St. Paul, or playing a sporadic role with the big-league team, or emerging as a middle-of-the-order force.

The presumed starting corner outfielders, Max Kepler and Joey Gallo, are excellent fielders who have struggled offensively. Alex Kirilloff should be the Twins' Opening Day first baseman but is recovering from a sore wrist. Trevor Larnach was the Twins' first-round pick a year before Wallner and has shown promise. That's four lefthanded hitters and potential sluggers who may be ahead of Wallner, but also have much to prove.

As a Minnesota native who was drafted twice by his home-state team, Wallner is driven to get back to Target Field.

"It's awesome to play there," he said. "It's so cool to have your family around. My grandma has had season tickets forever. I got to play in front of her a couple of times. To get to play at Target Field is fulfilling."

A favored spring training cliché is that "The ball sounds different" coming off a power hitter's bat. Wallner's bat made that kind of sound when he hit his two home runs for the Twins last year, and when he took batting practice on a back field on Sunday.

"The thing that I think I liked most about Matty — he has good ability, he has good general ability, he's a big strong guy who hits the ball as anyone, he's got a cannon in the outfield — is that he showed that he has the actual, real ability to make adjustments," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "There are a lot of players that don't. Even guys that play for a while. They might be talented, and they might be able to do certain things well, but they don't change what they do based on what's going on around them.

"What you find is that most players have to find a way to do that. He did that. We heard that about him — they said he'll show you something, but then four innings later, six innings later, the next day, the next week, he'll identify something that he wants to change, that he wants to do a little better, and then he'll bring it into the game, which is not easy to do at the highest level.

"He did that. He showed us that, taking swings against a particular pitcher in the early innings, then later hitting that same pitch into the seats. He has a lot of work to do. He knows that. And I think he's ready to do that work."

Wallner didn't think he had a chance to be a pro until he gained weight and started producing power with his arm and bat as a senior in high school.

Like so many Minnesota-born players before him, he wondered if he was "thousands of at-bats behind" players from warmer states. And like so many successful Minnesota-born players before him, he has proved adaptable, and perhaps avoided the physical and mental burnout that can occur when someone plays one sport year-round.

"That's definitely one way to look at it," he said.

He wintered in Mississippi and headed to Fort Myers early this spring, to continue his journey. "I just want to have the best spring I can," he said, "and hope for the best."