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The Twins have slowly sunk from their spot in first place and are months removed from looking like a quality baseball team. As crunch time nears it’s justifiably the first thought that we want Buxton on the field no matter what to provide whatever spark he has left. It’s becoming more and more apparent for several reasons however that the Twins should just play it safe and shut their star down.
This Could Become a Bigger Injury
Buxton has dealt with a nagging knee and hip injury all season which almost certainly will take some sort of clean-up procedure this offseason. That being said, we can hope at this point that the issue can be fixed and healed to kick off 2023. We saw on Monday night however just how hobbled he is, catching balls on one leg and taking awkward follow-throughs after swings. With how physically compromised he is, there’s no doubt he’s putting himself at risk of much more serious injury as he’s forced to modify his mechanics in everything he does on the field.
An injury such as an ACL at this point would knock Buxton out for all of 2023, a season that should be prioritized at this point as the Twins are returning a better pitching staff on paper than they’ve had in several years. What Buxton has done this season is commendable, but it may have all come to a head on Monday night when he was pulled early and appeared to be completely incapable of continuing to play baseball any longer. He’s still a long-term asset for the Twins and we may have reached the point where that has to be valued above all else.
Buxton May Not Matter
Is there a case that the Twins best player not being in the lineup for the stretch run may not matter? I’d say yes given the context of the rest of the lineup. Buxton could go on an MVP level tear from now until the end of the season, and the Twins could still miss the playoffs because of what the rest of the lineup is doing. While Buxton has been struggling recently, the lineup’s inadequacies were front and center in a four-game series against the very bad Texas Rangers in which the Twins managed to score six runs total.
Injuries play a part with several potential spark plugs missing such as Larnach, Kirilloff and Lewis, but it’s hard to argue that regulars such as Correa, Polanco and Kepler haven’t pulled their weight in months. After a trade deadline in which the team patched up the pitching issues that plagued them all season, the offense has become embarrassingly bad, oftentimes being unable to overcome nights where the pitchers allow more than one run. In short, regardless of how Buxton does if the Twins rush him back, he’ll be surrounded in the lineup by some of the most anemic and situationally poor hitters in baseball for the last few months. One player can’t win all of these games. Is that worth the risk?
It would be a huge bummer to see yet another Byron Buxton season shut down by injury, but this is what we have to expect at this point. In many ways, it’s becoming more and more apparent that it’s time to set sights on 2023 with this very flawed team, and this is particularly true in the case of Byron Buxton.
It’s a fact that a fundamentally sound roster would have opened up an insurmountable lead in the poor AL Central, and Buxton’s workload could have been managed more conservatively down the stretch as a result. Instead, the Twins are stuck in no man's land with a roster that’s difficult to take too seriously despite ample opportunity to control their own destiny. Their star was pushed beyond what should have been asked as a result. At this point, the overly aggressive push in regards to Byron Buxton should be done. The priority should be the long term. It’s time to shut him down and let the AL Central cards fall where they may.
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