Byron Buxton Got Called Up (Again) And Actually Did Something This Time
Every time you look up, Byron Buxton is either getting demoted to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings, or being called up to the Minnesota Twins. He’s up again, and he actually did something. #progress
Buxton started the year with Minnesota on Opening Day, and made it 15 games before being sent down after hitting .156 with a .497 OPS. He then hit .336 with a an OPS of 1.007 over 29 games with Rochester to earn another call-up. Being that they’re the worst team in the league, the Twins gave him every opportunity to figure it out at the major league level, but Buxton hit .204 with a .580 OPS in 45 games in his second stint with Minnesota, resulting in him getting sent down again. In his second stint with the Red Wings, Buxton hit an underwhelming .257 with an .801 OPS. He’s now on his third stint with the Twins this year.
Let’s face it — when you’re taken at No. 2 in the MLB draft, expectations are going to be high. However, some guys develop and progress better and faster than others. Buxton is still only 22 years old, selected by the Twins in the 2012 draft, so there’s still plenty of time for him to actually live up to the expectations that come along with being a No. 2 pick. Where Buxton catches a lot of shit from Twins fans is because the No. 1 pick in that 2012 draft was Carlos Correa. Yeah, the same Carlos Correa who’s a year younger than Buxton, and started making an impact at the major league level as a 20-year-old, winning the Rookie of the Year award last season.
While Correa’s been busy hitting .277 with an .834 OPS over 228 major league games the last two seasons, Buxton has only managed to hit .201 with a .577 OPS over 110 major league games the last two years. It’s obviously a positive sign that Minnesota called up Buxton (again) and he actually did something, but I still don’t think this is a sign of things to come. Buxton got called up because the rosters expanded, not because he was burning it up in the minor leagues or something.
In his most recent stint down in Rochester, Buxton was hitting .257 with an .801 OPS, 5 home runs, 2 doubles and a triple. He also struck out 32 times in 74 at-bats. So, for a former No. 2 pick with major league experience playing against minor leaguers, he wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire and forcing the Twins’ hand to call him up, like one would expect a talent like him to be doing against “inferior” competition.