WARNE: The Twins' Secret Extension Candidate

It’s not Joe Mauer, who is still signed to that hotly-contested deal through 2018. It isn’t Brian Dozier, who inked a four-year, $20 million extension just before the season started.

No, it’s third baseman Trevor Plouffe, whom many in Twins Territory regard as flyover country geographically speaking. But while most weren’t watching, Plouffe outperformed the following third basemen last year in wOBA (a Fangraphs metric that takes all hits and properly weighs them before scaling them to on-base percentage for ease of consumption):

Pablo Sandoval

Evan Longoria

David Freese

David Wright

Xander Bogaerts

Nick Castellanos

Now that’s a who’s who of third basemen in a couple of different respects. Of course, a number of those guys had down years, but it’s worth noting that with offense down league wide, Plouffe bucked that trend to have easily his finest big league season — finishing 11th among 24 ‘qualified’ third sackers. Plouffe batted .258/.328/.423, good for a .331 wOBA. For some context, the league-average AL third baseman batted .254/.314/.397, good for a .314 wOBA that places Plouffe a solid 5-ish percent above average.

It wasn’t just offensively where Plouffe made strides either, as defensive metrics ranked him somewhere between the third and fifth best fielder at third base in the AL last year. And even if defensive numbers leave you feeling confused — quite frankly, that’s probably appropriate — think about this: do you still find yourself catching your breath before each of his throws across the diamond? If that isn’t sign of improvement, nothing is.

So how did Plouffe reinvent himself?

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