Inside Matt Wallner’s strange statistical season for the Twins

DENVER − When Matt Wallner came off the injured list in May after missing six weeks with a strained left hamstring, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said “it literally was exciting to write his name on the lineup card again. It means so much to get his production back in our lineup.”

Now Wallner has been back for six weeks, and it’s fair to ask — when will that production arrive?

The left-handed slugger and Forest Lake native is having one of the most bizarre seasons any Twin has had in awhile. His 10 home runs make him one of five Twins in double-digits, not bad for a guy who has played only 55 games. And he’s hitting .242 against left-handed pitching, a huge improvement; in fact, it’s the first time in his career he’s hit better than .184 against lefties, and his .606 slugging average vs. left-handers is All-Star level.

From that angle, he appears to be responding to the challenge Baldelli issued to Wallner and Trevor Larnach during spring training.

“We’re going to be looking for them to take the next step in their development, and that’ll be left-on-left production,” the Twins manager said. “That’s going to be next bit of growth in their game, and we’re excited to see where they take that.”

So it feels like progress has been made — except that there are so many oddball stats in Wallner’s season, too, starting with the fact that now he’s not hitting right-handers, the skill that got him to the big leagues. His .196 average is a whopping 79 points lower than his previous career low, his .413 slugging off last year’s level by 153 points.

And that’s not even the weirdest part. Wallner has only 16 RBIs this season, not so easy to do when you’ve also hit 10 home runs. That means Wallner has driven in himself far more often (10 times) than he’s driven in a teammate (just six). And three of those scored ahead of him on home runs.

Basically, the 27-year-old right fielder has been quite unproductive in run-scoring situations.

Start with runners in scoring position: Wallner is 2-for-24 (.083) in those situations, worst on the team, with no homers and only two runs driven in.

Drill down even farther, and the numbers are crazy. As mentioned, Wallner has driven in a run without a home run only three times all year — and two of them came in the season’s first two weeks, before his injury. Wallner has driven in a run without a home run just once since April 13, with a ninth-inning sacrifice fly to drive in the final run of a 10-5 loss in Detroit on June 28. That’s one non-homer RBI in his last 39 games.

Or try this: When Wallner bats with two or three teammates on base, he is 0-for-14 this season, with three walks and zero RBIs. Yes, his last home run with more than one runner on base came last Aug. 21 in San Diego, 25 home runs ago.

He’s also batted only seven times all season with a Twin on third base. That sacrifice fly in Detroit is the only time he drove that runner home; Wallner is 0-for-6 without an RBI in his other chances.

Certainly part of this is dictated by opportunity. Ty France, for example, has batted 35 times with a runner on third base, five times more often than Wallner. But France has taken advantage far more often, batting 11-for-31 (.355) and collecting 18 RBIs in those situations.

Wallner’s WAR this season is only 0.2, ranking 118th in the majors among players with 10 or more home runs. (But hey, it’s better than the player he replaced in right field; Max Kepler’s WAR for the Phillies is 0.1.) And his Win Probability Added, which measures how much your actions increase the probably of your team winning, is an abysmal minus 1.3.

There is plenty of time for Wallner to reverse his season, especially since 10 homers while fighting off an injury shows he’s still the dangerous hitter the Twins expected him to be. Now he needs to become more dangerous when the ball stays in the park.