By Brandon Warne
There’s a Minnesota Twins player who has quietly turned himself into one of the best players in the American League at his position, and it might be time the team takes notice financially.
It’s not Joe Mauer, who is still signed to that hotly-contested deal through 2018. It isn’t Brian Dozier, who inked a four-year, $20 million extension just before the season started.
No, it’s third baseman Trevor Plouffe, whom many in Twins Territory regard as flyover country geographically speaking. But while most weren’t watching, Plouffe outperformed the following third basemen last year in wOBA (a Fangraphs metric that takes all hits and properly weighs them before scaling them to on-base percentage for ease of consumption):
Pablo Sandoval
Evan Longoria
David Freese
David Wright
Xander Bogaerts
Nick Castellanos
Now that’s a who’s who of third basemen in a couple different respects. Of course, a number of those guys had down years, but it’s worth noting that with offense down league wide, Plouffe bucked that trend to have easily his finest big league season — finishing 11th among 24 ‘qualified’ third sackers. Plouffe batted .258/.328/.423, good for a .331 wOBA. For some context, the league-average AL third baseman batted .254/.314/.397, good for a .314 wOBA that places Plouffe a solid 5ish percent above average.
It wasn’t just offensively where Plouffe made strides either, as defensive metrics ranked him somewhere between the third and fifth best fielder at third base in the AL last year. And even if defensive numbers leave you feeling confused — quite frankly, that’s probably accurate — think about this: do you still find yourself catching your breath before each of his throws across the diamond? If that isn’t sign of improvement, nothing is.
So how did Plouffe reinvent himself? Well, a couple ways offensively, actually. A walk rate spike up to 9.1 percent certainly helped, and he’s up around 10 percent so far this year. For some context, uber-patient Joe Mauer is around 12 percent for his career. And while Plouffe didn’t completely emulate Mauer, another thing he did was expand his batted-ball repertoire to go to the opposite field. It’s not much, but it’s been a steady increase for him as a big leaguer, bumping his OPS the other way from .481 as a rookie to .560 last year. Like most non-Mauer hitters, pull power is Plouffe’s game, but not being dead to right works in his favor, too. Plouffe had eight opposite field doubles in 2014, and already has two this year as he’s hit a certainly unsustainable .444/.444/.667 to right field in early-season action.
Another thing Plouffe did last year was hold his own against righties. Same-sided pitchers have given Plouffe trouble over his career, and the splits still flesh that out even after last year:
LHP (career): .272/.342/.466
RHP (career): .235/.296/.394
Plouffe narrowed that gap a bit last season, however:
LHP (2014): .278/.353/.430
RHP (2014): .249/.318/.420
So as you can see, adding walks, better competence against a vast majority of pitchers faced, as well as defense, can help a player turn the corner in a hurry. But there is a proverbial and somewhat literal elephant in the room too: Miguel Sano.
But Sano is a prospect, and even if fans wish to wring their hands about what to do with him after signing Plouffe to a long-term deal, it’s not terribly worrisome for the Twins brass. For one, Plouffe has been a wearer of many gloves in his career, and if he’s willing to move to the outfield or move around à la a poor man’s Ben Zobrist, that plays a big part. Still, as an established major league player on a team that has lost 90 games for four years running, let’s not lose sight of the fact that there aren’t exactly a ton of sub-30 aged chips on this team. When you find them, you keep them — à la Phil Hughes’ new deal.
Even if you don’t find Plouffe amenable to playing left field or as a super utility that still plays every day, you have first base, DH and maybe even right field as options for Sano, should he force your hand before the end of the season. And again, that continues a domino effect that might push someone out of the lineup, but for an organization in its current position, that would be a nice problem to have.
Essentially, Plouffe has turned himself into this era’s Michael Cuddyer in some senses. He gives you a capable right-handed bat, and he’s started putting together some really nice plate appearances over the last year or so. That appears to have continued into this year, as his strikeout rate has continued what is now a four-year tumble. That’s encouraging.
Now the other thing to wonder is what a deal for Plouffe might look like. I’m admittedly not good at those sorts of things, but here’s a stab: Four years, $28-30 million.
It’s not a Dozier situation, as the second baseman was still four years away from hitting free agency. Plouffe, on the other hand, is eligible for free agency after 2017, and has already been through two arbitration-eligible winters. In fact, I’ll even admit that figure might be light, especially considering what Kyle Seager got from Seattle (seven years, $100 million) over the winter. Seager has a commensurate amount of experience (545 games; 2,275 plate appearances) to Plouffe (504; 2,003), and Plouffe debuted a season earlier.
So maybe that deal I offered is laughably stupid. Maybe it’d be closer to four or five years and $40-50 million. Plouffe isn’t quite as good as Seager, and doesn’t have nearly the established track record, as Seager has amassed +13 WAR via Fangraphs over the past three years. Plouffe is at +4.4 but is coming off a +3.6 mark. At the end of the day, I think it’s something the Twins should — and likely will — consider.