This winter two free agents jumped out at me as being
obvious fits for this Minnesota Twins team. Marwin Gonzalez with his positional
flexibility and Nelson Cruz for his big bat seemed like perfect fits for a
lineup needing to fill some holes. Despite Cruz getting up there in age, he hadn’t
shown any signs of slowing down and the only question was whether that would
carry over into 2019. Now beyond the halfway point I think we have all the
answers necessary.
After a National League swing in early April a handful of
Twins fans popped up questioning whether the long-time designated hitter still
had it. Through the first game of an April 20th doubleheader against
the Baltimore Orioles Cruz owns a .268/.412/.415 slash line. He’d hit just one
home run and wasn’t looking like the guy that blasts 30 dingers with ease. If
the 17-game sample size wasn’t enough to suggest it was too soon, then the
four-hit nightcap that day should have been. After game two of the doubleheader
Minnesota’s DH owned a .326/.446/.609 line and the rest may be history.
With 78 games under his belt the newly turned 39-year-old
has posted a .980 OPS for the Twins. That’s the best mark over any full season
in his career. Slugging over .600 for the first time he’s got a career high
there as well, and the .375 OBP is even with his high-water mark set in 2017
with the Seattle Mariners.
ZiPS projected Cruz to post an .848 OPS in 2019 and saw him
hitting 30 home runs. While the slash line will remain in flux through the end
of the season, he’s already at 26 and is tracking towards 40 long balls for the
fourth time in his career, and first since 2016. Obviously, the golf ball-esque
baseball doesn’t hurt anything for a big-time power hitter, but Cruz is still
doing plenty of this on his own.
You don’t have to search far to find Nelson’s name on hard
hit leaderboards. His 12.3 barrels per plate appearance are second in baseball behind
only the Yankees Gary Sanchez. His 94.2 mph average exit velocity trails only
Aaron Judge and his 54.4% hard hit rate is the best in the sport. Roughly
one-third of the balls he puts in the air leave the yard, and a good portion of
them seem to go into orbit. If there was an expected decline to come, Cruz
himself seemed to miss the memo.
Looking at the body of work really isn’t to suggest this is
uncharted territory for Cruz, he’s had better seasons. In 2015 and 2016 with
the Mariners he combined to post a total of 9.4 fWAR. It’s fair to assume
production would slow as you age, but this is going to be a better year than he
had as a All Star for the 6th time last season and could conceivably
reach a 4.0 fWAR baseline.
The Twins got Cruz for $250k less than the Mariners paid him
a season ago, and the $12MM option in 2020 looks like a forgone conclusion at
this point. He’ll be 40 next July and if we can take performance in this
campaign as any indicator, the only thing going over the hill will be a
boatload of bombas.
