After missing out on a number of big time free agents the Minnesota Twins may now have to rely on some talented, yet very unproven young players in their organization. While there is no doubt more moves are to come from the front office, they have entrusted the future of the franchise into some players they hope can be the core of the team moving forward. I’ve done some research on one specific player that will likely have a big impact on not only 2023 but in the next few years as well, Alex Kirilloff, the very first draft pick of the Thad Levine and Derek Falvey regime, let’s take a deeper dive into why he is viewed as a core piece for years to come for the Minnesota Twins.   

The sample size in the Major Leagues isn’t very big for Alex Kirilloff, having yet to cross the 400 plate appearance threshold in his career. Despite that, I still think by combining his minor league and Major League numbers we can put together a decent outlook on him. The number one question with Kirilloff is health. Kirilloff has now lost most of three seasons due to elbow surgery and two surgeries on his wrist. There has been a clear decline in his production when the wrist has been bothering him and if this continues to be an issue throughout his career it may be unlikely he ever maximizes his potential. Since injuries are largely unpredictable and unstable year to year I won't spend much time talking about them.

Now onto Kirilloff’s on field play. The MLB numbers aren’t particularly impressive to this point but it is important to remember about half of his Major League at bats have come playing through an injury that eventually required surgical repair, twice. Through 387 plate appearances he is slashing .251/.295/.398 with 11 HRs, 55 RBI, 4.9% BB%, 22.7% K% and a 91 wRC+. It is important to remember Kirilloff has hit exceptionally at every level in the minor leagues. Since he graduated rookie ball the lowest wRC+ he posted in the minors was 121 in 2019 in AA. He had a .359/.465/.641 slash line and 192 wRC+ in AAA last season in 157 PA. Despite underwhelming MLB numbers so far Kirilloff has been a top 25 prospect by a number of sites, so many people have been optimistic on his ability to hit. 

Feature Image via CRAIG LASSIG, ASSOCIATED PRESS

I won’t spend much time on his defense or baserunning, I think corner infield and outfield defense is pretty unimpactful, so whether you want to say he is a bad outfielder and a good first baseman or vice versa I don’t believe it will affect his overall value much. Alex Kirilloff will need to hit to be a quality MLB player. 

I want to focus on the two things that I think will determine his career outcome: his walk rate and his combination of bat to ball skills and raw power. Starting with the bad, Alex Kirilloff has never shown the ability to be a high walk rate player. Throughout his minor league career his BB% fluctuated between 4.7% and 8.5% with an outlier 14.0% in AAA last season. So far in the Majors Kirilloff has a career 4.9% BB% and a .295 OBP. For some context, 4.9% would have been the 8th lowest BB% in baseball among qualified hitters and a .295 OBP would have been 15th lowest, and believe me, the hitters around those marks were not very good. 

So why is this important? The number of major league hitters that can consistently produce quality hitting seasons despite a low on-base number is extremely small. There are examples of successes: Sal Perez, Javey Baez and we watched Eddie Rosario do it for years. The problem is the dozens of other players that don’t draw walks and simply don’t hit enough to compensate for it. Hitting is volatile by nature and walks can provide stability through slumps to endure cold spells and still be productive. 

However, we should have hope that Kirilloff can be one of those outliers that can outproduce a low on base. First off, Kirilloff will likely be a low strikeout hitter. His K% in the minors was consistently well below league average, hovering between 14-18%. Kirilloff, despite his low walk rates, has only a slightly above average chase rate. His zone contact rate is about average but in his young career his chase contact rate is more than 4% above league average. He has very good bat to ball skills which fit his prospect profile coming up through the minors. Low strikeout totals can boost your batting average and thus help counter low walk totals. 

Another way to beat a low walk rate is to consistently outproduce league average BABIP (batting average on balls in play). The two most common ways to do this are to be really fast and hit the ball all over the field like Tim Anderson or Dee Gordon (in his prime), or to hit the ball extremely hard all the time. I don’t think anyone will be mistaking Alex Kirilloff for Dee Gordon so let’s take a look at how hard he hits the ball. Per Statcast, for his career Kirilloff has an average exit velocity of 90.3 mph, well above league average at 88.4 mph. His career barrel% (a batted ball in excess of 98 MPH) sits at 10.2%, well above major league average at 6.7%. While not elite (15% and above) it is certainly a good starting point and it is probably safe to think hitting with an injured wrist probably deflates those numbers significantly. This also shows in his expected batting average (xBA) and expected slugging numbers (xSLG). I referenced his slashline earlier being .251/.295/.398 but if you look at his xBA and xSLG they are .270 and .474 respectively. Basically what this means is Kirilloff has been consistently hitting the ball hard even though it has not been resulting in good stats. From this data we can conclude Kirilloff has either been unlucky throughout his career, or been victimized by the lefty shift. Luck usually regresses to the mean and the shift is going away so we could be optimistic that Kirilloff can produce better than he has shown so far. 

Because this style of hitting is very erratic there are a wide variety of outcomes that are possible for Alex Kirilloff. The Twins seem to be betting that he can out hit his low walk totals and be more of a Sal Perez/Teoscar Hernandez type hitter rather than a Randall Grichuk/Alec Bohm type hitter. While Kirilloff is clearly talented and has a tremendous ceiling as a player, are Derek Falvey and Thad Levine wise to possibly bet their jobs on him panning out? The fun thing about prospects is that nobody knows what will happen despite all the data and scouting in the world. What do you think? Are you optimistic about Alex Kirilloff?