Twins are a power-hitting team, but base-stealing could be valuable this year given past success

FORT MYERS, FLA. – Pick your spots. When you can.

That’s generally been the Twins’ assessment on stolen bases.

They’ll take them, but they don’t rely on them. This roster is built for power, not base stealing.

Their 55-home run increase last year— tied for the AL lead with 233 homers — drove in 85 more runs than in 2022, more than accounting for the total scoring increase.

They scored 82 more runs in 2023 than the previous season, but the 48 additional steals they produced had little to do with it. The team had a MLB-low 38 stolen bases in 2022.

For the Twins, base stealing has value, but it’s not essential.

“On teams that are power-oriented, [base stealing] has less impact. It’s maybe a little more of a weapon because the success rate went up,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations. “But when you look at what drives run-scoring on the whole, it’s still isn’t anywhere as impactful as power production. In building your roster, you don’t set out to find base stealers. You wouldn’t sacrifice power production to add base stealing.”

Center fielder Byron Buxton sees value in stealing bases, though, even in just the threat.

“Maybe now when I’m on first base, the [next] hitter gets more fastballs and it puts him in good position. If everyone knows I’m healthy, maybe they’ll be thinking I’m going to run,” said Buxton, who with an 89.6% success rate has been the toughest stealer to catch in baseball history among players who have stolen as many bases (86) as he has. “It’s an option for me again, and I can use that. Like, OK, go ahead, have a high leg kick. See what happens.”

Said Falvey: “That’s a cool way to think about it. Our guys got really good at picking the right spots, the right situations. We definitely looked at it last year, especially in advance of the season. The rules were encouraging it, and we explored what it might mean.

“But it’s very player-dependent, right? We added Willi [Castro] and Michael A. [Taylor], and had a roster a little better suited to run. We don’t want guys that aren’t really predisposed to being base stealers to suddenly decide, ‘Let’s go for it.’ ”

Castro definitely intends to try.

“Every year, I try to get more,” said Castro, whose 33 steals in 38 attempts (86.8%) last year were the most by a Twins player since Ben Revere’s 40 steals in 2012. “I love it. It’s fun. If you’re confident you’re going to steal the base, you’ll make it. Confidence makes you faster, I think. It’s one of the keys.”

With the direction the league is going, the Twins could steal more than 100 bases for the first time in over a decade this upcoming season.

Last year, Major League Baseball incorporated a pitch clock and limited pitchers to two pickoff throws per batter. The changes yielded the highest league-wide success rate in baseball history, with runners safe on 80.2% of their tries. Like several other teams, the Twins set a franchise record for base-stealing success, making it safely 82.7% of the time.

Add a healthy Buxton; a full season of Royce Lewis, who had three minor-league seasons of 18 or more steals (albeit before a pair of knee surgeries); and a surprisingly effective newcomer in Carlos Santana, and the Twins are on par for their best base stealing season since 2012. Santana stole six bases last year and hasn’t been caught stealing since 2018, a streak of 13 in a row.

“Santana has a really good feel for that, even though he’s not considered a stolen-base guy. But he’s watching for his spots, and he’ll go steal one along the way,” Falvey said of the veteran first baseman. “That has some value, finding the right spots.”

Legend has it Buxton was once thrown out while trying to steal a base. As the story goes — and it involves the Cubs, so judge for yourself whether it’s fact or fantasy — aging Cubs catcher Robinson Chirinos somehow threw the ball to second base, way back in August 2021, before the fastest-ever Twin could get there .

Sounds a little far-fetched, doesn’t it, Buck?

“It still bugs me,” Buxton said. “I’m still mad about it. It ruined what I had going, and I’m not even sure I was out. Don’t. Get. Thrown. Out. That’s my entire mentality on the bases.”

Oh.

Well, at least Buxton has been extraordinarily successful at reaching that goal. He hasn’t been thrown out in two and a half years and is riding a consecutive steals streak of 19, which would be the longest such streak by a Twin in the past half-century, if not for Buxton’s 33 consecutive steals from 2017 to ’19.

And here’s the best part for the Twins: Buxton begins the 2024 season healthier than he has been since 2021 — and he will play in the most steal-friendly era in more than a century.

“It’s definitely something I plan to reincorporate back into my game,” Buxton said. “Whether I run or not, I can be a disrupter out there.”