Byron Buxton

The Twins and franchise cornerstone Byron Buxton have been unable to come to terms on a contract extension, increasing the likelihood of a full-scale sell-off before Friday’s trade deadline. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Dan Hayes report that the Twins’ initial offer was for $73MM over seven years with an unspecified number of incentives. The Twins “increased the guarantee slightly,” but not enough to come to a long-term agreement. The final guarantee increased to $80MM, tweets The Athletic.

The end result here is not surprising, given the muddled valuation process for a talent like Buxton. When he’s at his best, he’s one of the best players in the game, a five-tool player capable of anchoring a first-division lineup on both sides of the ball from a premium position. The injury concerns, however, have limited his contributions and saddled him with a tricky long-term risk profile.

This season perfectly illustrated the dichotomy of Buxton as a team-building asset. In 27 games, he made 110 trips to the plate and accrued an insane 2.7 fWAR with a .369/.409/.767 line, good for a 217 wRC+. But 27 games of MVP-caliber production from Buxton wasn’t enough to keep the Twins anywhere near contention. They currently have a 0.0% chance to make the playoffs, per Fangraphs.

Buxton went on the injured list with a hip strain from May 7th to June 16th, by which point Minnesota’s shot at the playoffs was already slim to nil. He was back for less than a week before breaking his hand and returning to the injured list. Because he’s still out, there’s very little chance that the Twins might move Buxton now.

Instead, they’ll wait for the offseason and re-evaluate. Even just one season of a healthy Buxton ought to pique the interest of a few teams around the league who might be willing to take a chance on keeping him healthy.

The question now is whether Minnesota’s inability to lock up Buxton long-term will push them to be more aggressive in offloading assets like Jose Berrios and Taylor Rogers. Both are under team control through 2022, like Buxton. Both are key cogs in a potential contender in 2022, like Buxton.

With Nelson Cruz already gone and the rest of the present-day roster not looking much like a contender, the Twins may already doubt their chances to battle an increasingly indomitable White Sox team next season.

If Berrios ultimately gets moved in the next week, we’ll know the Twins’ thoughts about next season. If he stays, the Twins may be preparing for one final run with Berrios and Buxton under contract. Either way, it’s looking increasingly likely that Buxton’s long-term future resides somewhere other than Minnesota — where he can tantalize and frustrate a different fanbase.

Byron Buxton is currently on the injured list due to a fractured hand, but the Twins have given him something to think about while he mends. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that Minnesota is hoping to sign Buxton long-term and recently offered him a deal that guarantees him more than $70MM and also includes escalators and incentives — presumably based on health and days spent on the active roster.

Now 27 years old, Buxton was the No. 2 overall draft pick back in 2012 and at various points topped prospect rankings at Baseball America, MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus and ESPN. There were some early growing pains at the plate as Buxton struggled with strikeouts and was unable to tap into his considerable raw power, but in recent years he’s shown the all-around talent that made such a high draft pick and such a vaunted prospect.

Dating back to 2019, Buxton has batted .282/.322/.581 with 33 home runs, 44 doubles, four triples and 21 stolen bases (in 25 attempts). That includes an otherworldly showing so far in 2021, when he’s slashed .369/.409/.767 with 10 home runs and 11 doubles in just 110 plate appearances. Given that Buxton is arguably the best defensive player in baseball, regardless of position, that production at the plate makes him one of baseball’s most valuable players on a per-game basis.

The problem for Buxton, of course, has been staying on the field. That outstanding 2019-21 output came over a sample of just 540 plate appearances, thanks to a barrage of injuries. Some have been fluky in nature — his current injury came when he was hit by a pitch; his 2018 fractured toe happened when he fouled a ball into his foot — but as Rosenthal points out, Buxton has made 11 career trips to the injured list. That number doesn’t even include a quartet of minor league IL placements for various injuries, including a pair of left wrist strains.

There isn’t one nagging injury that continues to hamper Buxton, which is both encouraging and frustrating at the same time. He’s dealt with migraines and concussion symptoms after all-out plays in the outfield, a partially torn a ligament in his thumb while sliding into the bag on a stolen base, surgery to repair the labrum in his left shoulder, and also landed on the IL due to a variety of strains and sprains over the years.

Because of that litany of injuries, Buxton is one of the toughest players in baseball to assess from a contractual standpoint. The aforementioned .282/.322/.581, 33-homer, 44-double output came in a span of 153 games — roughly one full season’s worth of play. Very few players could put together a stretch that impressive over a full season — and certainly not with comparable defensive value — but Buxton has only played 100 games in a Major League season on one occasion. It’s easy to argue that even a half season of Buxton is worth $10MM-plus, but it’s also understandable if the Twins are reluctant with the extent of their guarantee.

One piece of context that ought to be addressed when looking at any potential extension for Buxton is service time. He’ll be a free agent after the 2022 season and is arbitration-eligible for the final time this winter, but that’s due largely to the fact that Buxton wasn’t given a September call-up back in 2018.

Buxton landed on the Major League injured list early in 2018 with what was hoped to be a minimal stay due to migraine issues, but he fouled a ball into his foot during a rehab assignment and suffered a hairline fracture. He attempted to play through the injury at the MLB level but had perhaps the worst three-week stretch of his career while doing so. Buxton was eventually placed back the IL and, upon being activated, was optioned to Triple-A. He then incurred the aforementioned wrist strains, further prolonging his stay in the minors.

Buxton returned from the minor league IL to hit .356/.400/.596 in 12 games down the stretch with Triple-A Rochester, but he wasn’t included among the Twins’ September call-ups. That omission kept Buxton from crossing the threshold from two years of MLB service to three years and pushed his path to free agency back by a year.

GM Thad Levine acknowledged at the time (link via The Athletic) that Buxton’s representatives at Jet Sports Management were “displeased” and “disappointed” with the decision. Buxton himself told the Minneapolis Star Tribune the following December that his omission from the team’s collection of September call-ups “didn’t go over well,” though he later added that he still hoped to spend his entire career with the Twins organization.

The Twins did give Buxton a healthy raise for a Super Two player coming off an injury-decimated season that winter ($1.75MM), but it’s hard to imagine that the September 2018 issue wouldn’t resurface to some extent during present-day extension talks. That doesn’t mean a deal can’t be worked out, of course. It merely adds another layer to what already figured to be an immensely complex set of negotiations.

There aren’t many recent examples of a center fielder with five-plus years of big league service time forgoing free agency and signing an extension, although Aaron Hicks and Charlie Blackmon do serve as potential points of reference. Hicks signed a seven-year, $70MM contract in the spring of 2019 (six years, $64MM of new money). Blackmon signed a six-year, $108MM contract just after Opening Day 2018 (five years, $94MM in new money). Both had five-plus years of service time at the time of their extensions, as Buxton does now, but both were considerably older than Buxton is now. Buxton is also further from the open market at present by virtue of the fact that he’s negotiating midseason rather than during Spring Training of his walk year. Hicks and Blackmon could very well be talking points raised during discussions, but those data points are far from direct parallels.

Notably, Rosenthal suggests there’s a chance the Twins could trade Buxton if the two parties can’t come to terms on a contract extension, though such a move would seem likelier in the offseason than when Buxton is on the injured list with a broken hand. That’s something of a surprise in and of itself, as even in spite of their poor 2021 showing, the Twins have a promising young core of controllable hitters and ample payroll flexibility to reload their pitching staff this offseason. There’s no indication that the Twins are gearing up for a lengthy rebuilding effort, and it’d be hard for them to simultaneously trade Buxton prior to Opening Day 2022 and still claim to be aiming to contend next year.

11:11am: The Twins announced that Buxton has been placed on the 10-day IL — he’ll obviously miss more than the 10-day minimum — and Celestino has been recalled from Triple-A St. Paul. Celestino is playing center field and batting ninth for today’s noon rematch against Cincinnati.

12:58am: Twins center fielder Byron Buxton suffered a “boxer’s fracture” — a fracture at the base of the fifth metacarpal in his left hand — when he was hit by a pitch during Monday night’s game against the Reds, manager Rocco Baldelli announced to reporters after the contest (Twitter link via Betsy Helfand of the St. Paul Pioneer Press).

It’s a deflating injury for a Twins club that only just welcomed Buxton back from a month-long absence due to a hip flexor strain this past weekend. Buxton appeared in three games, going 4-for-10 with a home run and a double, before getting hit by a pitch in tonight’s contest. Baldelli was vague when asked about an expected recovery period for Buxton, who is batting .369/.409/.767 with 10 homers, 11 doubles and five stolen bases in just 110 plate appearances this year.

Injuries have been a frequent hindrance for Buxton in recent years, although there’s little he could’ve done about an errant Tyler Mahle fastball that ran up-and-in on his hands (video link). It’s a tough-luck injury for both Buxton and for the Twins, who have rattled off five straight wins as they hope for a season-saving push in the standings in advance of next month’s trade deadline. Clearly, a Buxton injury will do them no favors in that uphill battle.

The Twins have cycled through various options in Buxton’s absence this year, although two in-house alternatives — Jake Cave and Rob Refsnyder — are on the injured list themselves at the moment. Cave’s injury, a fracture in his back, will keep him out for the foreseeable future. Refsnyder is currently mending a hamstring strain. Longtime infield prospect Nick Gordon has been getting his feet wet in center field recently, and right fielder Max Kepler has proven capable of playing a solid center field over the years. Prospect Gilberto Celestino got a brief look as well, but he was making the jump straight from Double-A and struggled considerably in 10 games and 33 plate appearances.

Even with five straight wins under their belts, the Twins are still 10 games under .500, which makes it highly unlikely the organization would sacrifice any young talent for an immediate option to help bridge the gap in Buxton’s latest absence. An in-house patching of the problem, at least in the short term, seems the likeliest route, which likely means some combination of Kepler and Gordon for the time being. Veteran Keon Broxton is on hand in Triple-A St. Paul, but he’s batting just .169/.260/.215 with the Saints and has fanned in nearly half of his plate appearances. He’d give the Twins a competent defensive option, but his offensive woes against Triple-A pitching are rather glaring, to say the least.

It’s worth noting that while the Buxton injury will only further fuel speculation about the Twins’ trajectory at the trade deadline, they’ll at least have one more chance to control their own fate, so to speak. Once the Twins wrap up a brief two-game series against Cincinnati tomorrow, they’ll play exclusively AL Central opponents for nearly a month.

Minnesota hosts the Indians for four games this weekend before a seven-game road trip to Chicago and Kansas City. They’ll close out the first half with seven at home against the South Siders and Tigers before opening the second half with four on the road in Detroit and three more in Chicago. It’d obviously take quite a run in that stretch of divisional play — especially early on — to turn the tides in their 2021 season. But with such a lengthy slate within the AL Central on the horizon, it’s doubtful the Twins will jump the trade market, even in the wake of a potentially crushing injury.