The Minnesota Twins don’t jump off the page as an offensive juggernaut. The team is hitting at a league-average rate but sitting at 25th in the majors in scoring. A respectable .734 team OPS ranks just outside the top third of the league, but the Twins’ 37 home runs is just 21st.
Things haven’t gone exactly as hoped for the 15-17 squad that surprised last year en route to an American League Wild Card berth. But there is reason for optimism, especially considering that the team hasn’t gotten much from expected lineup stalwarts like Brian Dozier, Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton thus far.
Two Twins hitters are actually raking right now and worthy of attention in the fantasy realm — with the possibility of the Twinkies firing on all cylinders sooner than later.
The left fielder broke out in a big way last year, hitting .290/.328/.507 over 589 plate appearances with 27 home runs, 78 RBI and nine stolen bases. Why weren’t we talking more about a 25-year-old mashing like this over 152 games? Rosario’s minimum pick in March per NFBC ADP was 89. Someone snagged him at 226.
Rosario is right back at it with a .291/.313/.551 line so far, on pace to significantly beat last year’s counting stats. Through 32 games, the lefty swinger has seven home runs, 25 RBI and 23 runs with four bags to boot. Conservatively projecting these numbers over the rest of the season — we’ll multiply by four even though the Twins are only 20 percent through their season — yields 92 runs, 28 homers, 100 RBI and 16 steals.
Rosario has been the third-best Fantrax performer over the past two weeks and 45th best year-to-date. Here’s how he compares to breakout darling Tommy Pham, who shares Rosario’s short track record but is four years older with some sort of looming eye issue (and he’s banged up now).
Rosario: .291/.313/.551 23/7/25/4
Pham: .323/.442/.535 24/5/14/7
The major difference in these two players is walk rate, which is also Rosario’s biggest red flag right now — 3.0%, down from 5.9% last year. But so far the Twin is hitting the ball hard more often this year (37.5%) than last (31.7%) and pulling it more (51.0% versus 39.3%). His 14.6 HR/FB% is reasonable and actually down from last year (16.4).
It might be hard to pry Rosario loose from an owner surely enjoying the fast start, but it’s always worth checking in on a guy before he becomes a household name.
The Twins’ switch-hitting shortstop/third baseman checks a couple of the same boxes as Rosario: short resume of top production, lightly valued heading into the season. Escobar was actually headed for a utility role before Jorge Polanco’s 80-game PED suspension in March.
Escobar hasn’t missed a beat from his surprising 2017 campaign, wherein he went .254/.309/.449 with 21 home runs, 73 RBI, 62 runs and five steals over just 377 plate appearances. The jump in production coincided with year-over-year bumps in both hard hit rate and flyball rate that have actually ticked up yet again this year.
2016: 26.1 Hard% / 37.4 FB%
2017: 31.4 Hard% / 45.3 FB%
2018: 38.0 Hard% / 47.8 FB%
Escobar’s .341 BABIP suggests that his (obviously high) .313 batting average will regress, but the .279 and .280 BABIPs he put up in 2016 and 2017 were both below league average. Let’s say he settles somewhere between last season’s .254 average and the .313 so far this year — we’re looking at a .270s hitter who increased his walk rate (from 6.6% to 8.6%) in his age 29 season and looks to have legitimate double-digit HR/FB% power.
After going undrafted in most 12-team leagues, Escobar is currently batting fourth for the Twins with a .313/23/7/21/1 line over 128 at bats. He’s the 17th ranked fantasy performer over the past two weeks on Fantrax and just outside the top 100 for the year. There’s still time to squeeze Minnesota’s Swiss Army Knife (2B/SS/3B eligible in Yahoo) into a deal before he hits the mainstream — and the Twinkies offense returns to full strength.
Follow Danny @_dannycross_.
