Minnesota Twins – Byron Buxton
Byron Buxton is not only the biggest x-factor for the Twins in 2017, he’s the biggest x-factor for the next 15 years of the franchise. The former no. 2 overall pick (2012) and former no. 1 overall prospect in baseball (2013), the time is now for the 6’2” center fielder from Baxley, GA.
Buxton made his debut in 2015, a 46-game debut in which he slashed just .209/.250/.326 but still had a positive net value thanks to his strong defense in center. In 2016, Buxton started the season at the big-league level, but he was hitting just .156 by April 24, when the team sent him to the minors for the first of several yo-yoing trips between the majors and minors. Buxton never seemed to get a feel for the bigs, in part because of the perpetual threat of being sent back to the minors. When he was finally called up to the big leagues for good when rosters expanded in September, Buxton slashed .287/.357/.653 over the final 29 games.
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Of course, the “he finally succeeded because he knew he couldn’t be sent back to the minors” theory is just one way of explaining Buxton’s successful September. The less generous way to explain Buxton’s September success is that a player who has shown flashes of being a “Quad-A” player finally got to hit some of that Quad-A pitching after the rosters expanded in September and every team had their semi-major leaguers on their roster.
So which theory is the right one? The answer is a bit of both, of course.
I have written this before when dealing with Buxton as a fantasy player, but here are the pitchers off of whom Buxton hit his nine September home runs: Jose Quintana, James Shields (2), Anthony Ranaudo, Kelvin Herrera, Danny Salazar, Hansel Robles, Justin Verlander and Chris Sale. Sure, Shields is a bit washed and no one has ever heard of Ranaudo or Robles, but those other five names are a veritable who’s who of the best arms in baseball. It’s no joke taking the quadrumvirate of Sale, Verlander, Salazar and Quintana deep – those were four of the best non-Kluber pitchers in the AL Central last year.
Next: 2017 X-Factors - AL East
Buxton knows he’s not going to be bumped around from Triple-A to the bigs and back in 2017. The new front office knows that it’s now-or-never time with Buxton, and in the paraphrased words of Dido, they will go down with this ship if they need to.
Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Jobu, the doll from Major League, as “Goju” by accident.