12-27. That’s the stat that will be remembered most from the 2024 campaign. It was the Twins’ win/loss record over the last six weeks after they went a game-high 17 games over .500 in mid-August.

But there were plenty of other numbers involved last season, many of which help tell interesting stories about what happened to the team and its players. Digging deeper into player stats after the 2024 season, these eight really impressed me.

Matt Wallner had a .389 batting average on balls in play.
It’s just an amazingly large number. Ranked second in all of baseball among players with 200 or more plate appearances behind Xavier Edwards (.398) and it’s pretty funny that the two are at the top of the list because their styles couldn’t be more opposite. (Edwards is a small, highly contactable, underpowered guy similar to Luis Arraez.)

Wallner’s hitting profile played a role in turning so many batted balls into hits — when you consistently crush the ball, you’ll find fewer gloves — but there was a lot of luck involved in managing his .259 average while hitting . in 36% of plate occurrences. Wallner’s K rate was the fifth highest among players with 200+ PA, and no one else in the top 10 had a batting average above .214.

In other words, Wallner will have to cut back on his strikeouts substantially next year or we can expect a steep drop in average and overall production.

The Twins finished 3 hits with a wOBA over .340.
I don’t just mean skilled hitters. I mean all hitters. (Well, wait Diego Castillowho posted a wOBA of .439 in eight plate appearances.) The only Twins players to post a wOBA of .340 or higher in 2024 were Wallner (.385), Carlos Correa (.385) and Byron Buxton (.366) and neither played more than 102 games. From there it drops to Trevor Larnach who finished fourth with a .336 wOBA.

This says a lot about why the line-up was such a disappointment. There just weren’t enough outstanding producers. By comparison, in 2023, the Twins had seven hitters with a wOBA of .340 or better: Royce Lewiswallner, Ryan Jeffers, Edouard Julien, Max Kepler, Alex Kirilloff and Jorge Polanco. All but Polanco returned in 2024, but only Wallner could repeat his strong performance — and only after spending the first half in Triple-A.

Griffin Jax induced swings on 41.2% of out-of-zone lands.
There are a lot of stats that could be cited to show Jax’s greatness in 2024, but I really like this one. One of the most effective things a pitcher can do is get opposing hitters to chase them out of the zone, and Jax has been masterful at it, leading the American League with the percentage above.

It’s a reflection of how Jax completely confuses opposing hitters with his fastball/sweeper combo, which is among the most dominant pitch pairings in the game.

Only 5 of 17 Twins players had above average sprint speed.
You probably noticed this was a slow team. The evidence supports it. The Twins only had five above-average runners in 2024, and I was mildly surprised to learn that Wallner was one of them. The others are less surprising: Byron Buxton, Austin Martin, Willie Castro, Manuel Margot.

Some of the names at the bottom of the list are actually more surprising to me. Christian Vázquez Last place ranking is expected, but second slowest is Brooks Leewhose sprint speed is in the 13th percentile. Slower than Ryan Jeffers. Slower than the 38-year-old first baseman Carlos Santana. He’s got to be one of the slowest midfield players we’ve come across.

John DuranHis xERA (2.70), FIP (2.85) and xFIP (2.70) were all nearly a run lower than his ERA (3.64).
All of these numbers tell the same story: Durán has been extremely unlucky this season and has pitched much better than his inflated ERA or nine losses would suggest. It’s easy enough to argue that he pitched as well as he did in 2023, when he finished with a 2.45 ERA, but things happen in baseball: bad sequencing, bad defense, general bad luck.

Durán led the team in ground ball rate; in fact, it ranked sixth in baseball. He allowed fewer walks and fewer home runs than the previous year. His strike rate was very good. Even while losing a few ticks in speed, Durán did all the important things at a top-notch level, which is why everyone should feel fully confident in him going forward.

Louie Varland he gave up home runs on 21.1% of the balls allowed.
Almost one in four balls opponents put in the air against Varland left the court. It’s wild. Even for someone who doesn’t sing well, that’s a tremendous HR/FB rate. For context, the leader among qualified pitchers was the Boston reliever Zack Kelly at 20.8%, and only seven MLB relievers (non-starters) were above 17%.

I find it noteworthy that xFIP, which attempts to normalize HR rate, has Varland at 4.14 this year compared to his ERA of 7.61. It seems silly to me to say, “If you take away all the homers, he didn’t pitch that bad!” But, is there any truth to this? I’m optimistic about Lou going forward.

Edouard Julien struck out 175 times between the majors and minors.
After a stellar rookie season, Julien’s patient approach gave way to passivity as pitchers took over, in the major leagues and even in Triple-A, where he struck out in over 30 percent of his plate appearances.

Only one Twins player in history has hit more than 175 times in a season, and you can probably guess who it is: Miguel Sano. In fact, Sanó is the only twin to ever hit more than 150 times in a season. While top sluggers like him and Wallner can swell at that rate and still provide value, I’m not sure the same is true for Julien.

Alex Kirilloff had a line drive rate of 13%.
He was the smallest of all Twins players and smaller than any qualified hitter in baseball. In 2023, Kirilloff’s 30.9% drive rate led the team and would have led all qualified hitters. It’s a clear demonstration of how much his game has declined following that strong 2023 campaign, with an undisclosed back injury surely playing a role.

The twins are found in a A tough spot with Kirilloff this offseasonwho is set to pay nearly $2 million in arbitration next year. They know he can be a lineup-spraying force at the best of times, but he’s also been far from that version this season and now faces a fourth straight offseason of health uncertainty.