The Minnesota Twins only have about two weeks left of Spring Training before they pack up their things and fly north for the summer. After a 10-7 win on Saturday vs the New York Yankees, the Twins’ spring record moved to 6-7… which means absolutely nothing.
What does mean something is that Byron Buxton is still playing in center field, and today, he went 3-for-3 with two triples and a homerun at the plate. The homer came first, but unfortunately, only one of his three extra base hits was caught on tape; a triple he nonchalantly jogged out.
Jury still out on Byron Buxton but today was a good sign
Buxton finished the game on Saturday 3-for-3 with 4 RBI, moving his batting average to .417 in the exhibition season. There’s no doubt the Twins are still being extremely cautious as they ease Buck back into the lineup.
The Twins have played 16 games already this spring, if you include their opener vs the Golden Gophers, but Byron has taken part in just 5 of those contests, including Saturday. Entering the day, his batting average was .222 and his OPS just .586.
That’s not the case anymore, though. The newly-turned 30-year-old‘s big time Saturday makes the entirety of his spring look fantastic (.417/.500/1.000). When in reality, we will have no idea what we have in 2024 Byron Buxton until we get at least 25 games into the regular season.
Even then, we won’t know. It’ll be more like a temperature check. If he has played in only 10 games, there’s probably a lot to be worried about. If he plays 20, we’d all be feeling pretty good. Anything in-between will be up for interpretation.
But the first step is to prove he can still hit the baseball. So in that regard, it was a very successful day at the ballpark. Would it calm the nerves of those who need it if I point out that Carlos Correa, who went 2-for-3 with 2 RBI of his own on Saturday, has played in only one more 2024 spring training game than Buxton.
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