Twins slugger Matt Wallner is having a peculiar yet effective season
What should we make of Matt Wallner’s 2025 season for the Twins? The statistics are bizarre and in some ways unprecedented, yet the overall results have still been effective. It’s a fascinating production profile that creates some room for debate about his value.
After a recent hot stretch — he hit four home runs in a three-game span within the last week — Wallner is up to a career-high 20 homers on the season. And yet, he has a whopping 35 runs batted in, seven of which came during that stretch. 13 of Wallner’s homers have been solo shots and six more have come with one runner on base. His clutch three-run homer in the ninth inning of Tuesday’s win in Toronto was Wallner’s first all year with multiple runners aboard.
That home run to RBI ratio is almost impossible to pull off. If the season ended right now, which it of course doesn’t, Wallner would have the fewest RBI in a 20-homer campaign in MLB history. The next-closest player? Amusingly, it’s Joey Gallo, who had 21 homers and 40 RBI for the Twins in 2023. Chris Hoiles of the Orioles had 20 homers and 40 RBI in 1992. Wallner could certainly challenge Matt Olson’s 2017 record for the most homers (24) ever by a player with fewer than 50 RBI.
Wallner’s season has been a clearly better version of 2023 Gallo, who hit just .177 but still managed to be right at the league average in OPS+. This year, Wallner is hitting .215, which may cause some old-school baseball fans to instantly write him off as a poor, unproductive hitter. But we’ve learned over the years that batting average simply isn’t a very helpful stat to measure a hitter’s performance. Because Wallner is slugging .502 and walking enough to have a .321 on-base percentage, he has an .823 OPS, which this year is a good for a 122 OPS+ (meaning he’s been 22 percent better than league average).
His batting average isn’t pretty. He has a 29 percent strikeout rate and a 36 percent whiff rate (which is in the 1st percentile). And yet, when Wallner does make contact, he often crushes the ball in the air. His barrel rate, which is down from the last two seasons, is still in the 90th percentile. He hits fly balls 49 percent of the time and pulls the ball 55 percent of the time. That combination leads to home runs, which are the most valuable outcome in the sport.
There’s no denying that Wallner is having a down season compared to his 2023 and 2024 output. He hit in the .250-.260 range in those seasons, with OPS marks in the high .800s, despite even loftier strikeout rates and some cold stretches that landed him in Triple-A St. Paul for basically half of both seasons. Some of that is undoubtedly luck-based. Wallner’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is just .239 this year, down from .389 last season. The 27-year-old’s career BABIP is .313, which suggests he’s due for positive regression in that department.
What about the lack of RBI? Does that number indicate that Wallner isn’t clutch? Maybe, but probably not. Wallner is hitting just .173 with a .655 OPS with runners in scoring position this season, but the sample size is only 67 of his 321 total plate appearances. He hasn’t been in those spots all that often. Only 117 of his PAs (36 percent) have come with anyone on base, and he’s actually done better in those situations (.859 OPS) than with the bases empty (.802).
All things considered, would you rather have a .300 hitter with an .820 OPS — someone like Bo Bichette or Maikel Garcia this year — over a .215 hitter with the same OPS? Probably. More balls in play create more opportunities to drive in runs and extend innings. But Wallner’s ability to draw walks and to crush baseballs over the fence gives him plenty of value, even if he does it in a somewhat unconventional way.
Wallner will always have some Gallo to his game. He’s never going to hit for a ton of average and he’s always going to strike out fairly often. But we’re talking about a guy who, in 255 MLB games, has recorded an .850 OPS and 133 OPS+. Since the Twins’ inaugural season in 1961, they’ve had only seven other players with at least a 130 OPS+ in 250-plus games: Bob Allison, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Chili Davis, Shane Mack, and Nelson Cruz. Three of those guys are Hall of Famers.
Even in a down year that saw him miss a month and a half due to a hamstring injury in the spring, Wallner has been a highly-productive hitter for the Twins. If his BABIP bounces back next season and he stays healthy for the entire year, he could easily hit 30-plus homers and be a 4-5 WAR player. No matter his batting average, Wallner is someone who shouldn’t be taken for granted by Twins fans.
