Well, that was a baseball season. I’d say it was one to forget but sadly this epic disaster of a second half will not likely be leaving our memories any time soon. Now that all 162 games are in the books, it’s time to reflect and evaluate the individual contributors. We’ll start today with the hitters. Seventeen different players made at least 50 plate appearances for the Twins. Here I assign them all letter grades, in alphabetical order.

Byron Buxton: B
It got lost in the in the fact that he once again was sidelined by multiple injuries, but this was a big bounce-back year for Buxton. He reached 100 games played for just the second time in his career, and posted All-Star caliber production while on the field. Still, he did miss about two months of action, and showed some signs of diminishing athleticism at age 30. 

Willi Castro: B
Castro made his first All-Star team and led Minnesota in games played, setting a new MLB standard for positional flexibility (and a franchise record for HBP!). His durability and versatility made him an indispensable asset for the manager. Those positives solidly outweighed his power outage in the second half, although that did hurt.

Carlos Correa: B
On a rate basis, Correa would be graded an A or even an A+. He was hugely impactful while on the field, hitting as well as he ever has while playing stellar defense. Unfortunately, another bout with plantar fasciitis cost him nearly the entire second half, and his absence played a big part in the team’s downfall.

Kyle Farmer: D
For most of the season, Farmer was about as bad as a player could possibly be. But he surged enough toward the end to bring his numbers back into the range of respectability, and to his credit, he did it at a time where the rest of the offense was in hell. Still, on balance, a poor campaign.

Ryan Jeffers: C
Jeffers failed to back up his stellar 2023 season, experiencing a major offensive backslide after starting strong in April. He completely disappeared in September. Jeffers was still an average MLB hitter and launched 21 home runs; that does have quite a bit of value for a catcher. But his defense behind the plate was generally pretty rough.

Edouard Julien: F
It’s tough to shine any kind of positive light on Julien’s year. He struggled in the majors, went to Triple-A, failed to dominate minor-league pitching, and then got called back up only out of roster necessity. Julien was so uninspiring in his second stint that, by season’s end, he was mostly sitting even against right-handed pitchers.

Max Kepler: D
A sad end to Kepler’s lengthy Twins career. Battling a sore knee for much of the season, Kepler produced a career-worst 91 OPS+ while also showing decline defensively in right field, and he missed all of September. 

Alex Kirilloff: F
He had a solid first couple of weeks, then went into a prolonged tailspin, and revealed only after being optioned to the minors that he’d been playing through injury – to the team’s detriment. He didn’t appear in a game after June 11th, batting .201 on the season.

Trevor Larnach: B+
Larnach was one of the few unclouded bright spots of the 2024 Twins. Putting several years of underwhelming, injury-impacted performance behind him, Larnach played in 112 games and was usually in one of the lineup’s money spots against righties while producing at a well above-average rate (115 OPS+).

Brooks Lee: D
Ranked as one of the best prospects in baseball, fresh off torching Triple-A, Lee arrived on the big-league scene with a splash, batting .458 in his first six games. From that point forward he batted .182 with a .500 OPS in 44 games, showing minimal ability to drive the ball despite a contact-heavy approach. Better days are ahead for the 23-year-old.

Royce Lewis: C
Through his first 40 games, Lewis slashed .279/.356/.664 with 15 home runs, looking the part of an elite slugger. In his last 42, he slashed .191/.236/.256 with one home run as the team nosedived. On balance, his production was still certainly better than average, but he again missed tons of time with injury and his defense regressed noticeably. 

Austin Martin: D+
Martin played more than expected, and probably more than he earned, but his ability to handle center field somewhat competently kept him on the roster for much of the season, and his speed was an asset on a team that had almost none. But Martin was a punchless hitter, and not particularly sharp at any of the defensive positions he played.

Manuel Margot: F
His modestly good numbers against left-handed starters were not enough to offset his general lack of production, his shoddy defense, and his almost inconceivable ineptitude as a pinch-hitter. One of the more annoying Twins players to watch in memory.

Jose Miranda: D+
What a weird season for Miranda, whose hot hitting in June and July – including an MLB record-tying string of 12 straight at-bats with a hit – gave way to a .543 OPS with no homers in the second half, during which he may have never been healthy. He again looked poor defensively at third and first.

Carlos Santana: B
The veteran first baseman proved to be an excellent addition in the context of his modest price tag, delivering a number of clutch hits while leading the team in home runs and providing defense worthy of a Gold Glove. A .748 OPS from a first baseman is ultimately nothing to write home about, but Santana was a quality contributor all-around.

Christian Vázquez: D
To his credit, Vázquez rated well defensively again, but rather than rebounding from a horrendous season at the plate in 2023, he was somehow even worse offensively, ranking among the worst hitters in the league. Even for a role with low offensive standards, Vázquez came up well short of expectations for a second straight season. 

Matt Wallner: B+
He stumbled badly out of the gates and spent most of the first half in Triple-A as a result, but after returning from the minors, Wallner was the team’s most productive player for the remainder of the season, blasting 13 homers with a nearly .900 OPS in 75 games.

MINNEAPOLIS — Basketball might be a game of runs, but Connecticut vs. Minnesota basketball is a game of inches. Regardless of which arena, which lineup or which month — no two WNBA teams have been better matched, blow-for-blow, this season than these. The latest data point — Connecticut’s 73-70 win over Minnesota in Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals — was another one of those nail-biter, stomach-clenching, it’s-anyone’s-game kind of contests.

For that, basketball fans should rejoice. This is what you want to see in the playoffs. Two teams so perfectly matched that truly every possession — and really, every decision within every possession — could be the moment that changes everything.

That Marina Mabrey 3. No, it was the Bridget Carleton 3. Wait, it was that Alyssa Thomas shot feels most important. No way, that Alanna Smith block is going to change everything.

It was a game in which every moment felt monumental because you just knew the final margin would be microscopic. It’s a series that oozes with the parity of the 100-meter dash, a basketball game in need of whatever the equivalent of a photo finish might be.

THE ENGINE 🔥#BringTheHeat pic.twitter.com/6yDNLosIX8

— Connecticut Sun (@ConnecticutSun) September 30, 2024

The three regular-season matchups between Connecticut and Minnesota were decided by just eight total points. Heading into the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s game at Target Center, after 155 minutes of Lynx-Sun basketball this season, Minnesota — in aggregate — had outscored Connecticut by a single point (Lynx 295 – Sun 294).

“All season long, it has been a physical series. Every game has come down to the wire in the fourth quarter,” Sun forward Alyssa Thomas said. “We expected nothing less.”

In Game 1, Connecticut got the advantage, stealing a win on the road. Thomas, who finished one assist short of a triple-double, continued her season-long role as the Sun’s steadying force. She understood the gravity of each possession and her intention with which she pursued every rebound spoke to that.

Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve is well acquainted with Thomas’ specific kind of drive and how it can change possessions and games. It was the reason why, after being named the Paris Olympic coach in 2022, Reeve brought Thomas back into the player pool after a decade of Thomas declining camp invites.

On Sunday night, Thomas battled against Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier. After setting records in the first round of the playoffs, Collier was held to just 19 points and nine rebounds. On another night, that might feel like a pretty good stat line, but Collier — the Lynx’s catalyst — will likely remember the nine shots she missed or the 50-50 balls that went the other way. Pretty good is not good enough for a Minnesota-Connecticut game, and certainly not a WNBA semifinal matchup between the two.

Reeve emphasized that she was preparing the Lynx for the long haul against Connecticut. No one was planning on getting out of this matchup without going nine rounds. The 13 lead changes in Sunday’s game? That was to the script. So the Lynx going down 0-1? Not ideal, but also not a reason to panic. “It’s 40 minutes of 200 minutes,” Reeve said. “That’s the good news for us.”

It wasn’t the prettiest 40 minutes of basketball for either team, but with the two best defensive teams in the WNBA on the floor, pretty isn’t exactly the goal. Minnesota and Connecticut will look back at their game film and see plenty to clean up, but that’s only because the margin here is so small.

“The further you go in the playoffs, the harder it gets,” Reeve said. “Now it’s two teams just going back and forth, not making anything easy. And then it’s just about players finding a way to make a play.”

WATCH YA HEAD, T’S COMING. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/LwPw9Nu1zf

— Minnesota Lynx (@minnesotalynx) September 30, 2024

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The good news for both teams is they have rosters full of players who can find ways to make plays. They might not have the free-agency name recognition or star power that the other semifinal between Las Vegas and New York has, but these rosters are stacked with players who created careers by making the most out of opportunities.

Mabrey, who was traded to Connecticut in July, has been a sharpshooting threat and pick-and-roll power for the Sun since her arrival. DeWanna Bonner quietly picks up double-doubles while being a matchup head-scratcher 14 years into her career. DiJonai Carrington, who played all 40 minutes on Sunday, has had a coming-out party in her first full season starting in the W.

Carleton, a second-round pick in 2019 (in a league in which lottery picks have been cut), has worked her way into the Lynx starting lineup and become “Big-shot B.C.” in the Twin Cities. Alanna Smith, who thought her WNBA career might be over when she was cut in 2022 by the five-win Fever, gives Collier — the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year — a run for her money as the league’s best undersized paint defender.

If the past is any indication, these two teams have a lot more (tightly contested) basketball to play. It’s the kind of basketball and importance a WNBA semifinals should exhibit. Both teams are preparing to deliver.

“It’s a long series,” Carleton said. “It’s a five-game series for a reason.”

(Photo of Napheesa Collier and Alyssa Thomas: David Berding / Getty Images)