Player Profile: Can Byron Buxton Live Up to Expectations?

The best prospect in baseball, according to many heading into last season, wasn’t Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa or Francisco Lindor. The best minor league talent in the game was the Twins’ Byron Buxton. In fact, multiple sources have viewed Buxton as the top prospect in baseball the last two years. Take a look at his rankings amongst all prospects in baseball the past three seasons.

There wasn’t a better prospect in baseball heading into the 2014 & 2015 season. To this point though, the young outfielder, just 22 years old, has been an unmitigated disaster. Can he finally live up to expectations in 2016? Let’s explore.

THE SKILLS

There are few in the game who have better overall skills than Buxton. The 6’2”, 190 lbs center fielder is a dynamic talent. Here’s a list of his skills

1. Buxton has tremendous bat speed, a trait you cannot teach. He snaps the bat through the zone with great alacrity. He generates power to all fields and there is certainly the expectation that he will be a 20-plus home run hitter in the big leagues.
2. Buxton has an advanced approach for a player of his age. He should be able to produce batting average once he stabilizes himself at the major league level.
3. He owns tremendous speed, 80 on the 20-80 scouting chart speed. Elite stuff. There may not be a faster player in baseball going from first to third base. An elite skill is this one, no doubt.
4. He’s a strong defender who possesses all the skills necessary to be a Gold Glove winner.

HEALTH WOES

The biggest concern with Buxton to this point is that he’s been hurt a ton. Let us count the ways.

In 2013 he missed time with a shoulder issue.

In 2014 he deal with a wrist injury that cost him a month, a season ending concussion he picked up in August and then he broke a finger scuttling his Arizona Fall League opportunity.

Last year he missed a large chunk of the season with a sprained thumb just two weeks into his big league career.

As a result of all the injuries, here are his games-played totals as a professional.

2012: 48 games
2013: 125 games
2014: 31 games
2015: 72 minor league games, 46 major league games

Is he injury prone? It’s too early to know for certain, even though the early returns are not exactly heartwarming. We can say that he’s suffered a myriad of injuries, none of which seem chronic. The final chapter is yet to be written with Buxton’s ability to stay on the field, but the fact that he’s missed an inordinate amount of time to this point is detrimental to his short-term outlook. As talented as he may be, Buxton is young and he has little experience to this point with just 59 games of experience above Double-A (read that again before you go giving up on him).

PERFORMANCE

Buxton has appeared in 276 minor league games as of this writing with only 60 at Double-A and 13 at the Triple-A level. In that time he’s hit .301 with a strong .381 OBP and .489 SLG, leading to a .872 OPS. Those are big numbers, though they still don’t jump off the page like you might expect with a player of his talent level. Let’s go year by year.

2012: Buxton appeared in 48 games, 21 in the Appalachian Rookie League and 27 games in the Gulf Coast League. Over 189 plate appearances he hit a mere .248 with a .792 OPS as an 18 year old. He hit just five homers but stole 11 bases. He struck out 41 times in 165 at-bats while drawing 19 walks.

2013: He appeared in 68 games at Low-A and 57 at High-A. All told, he racked up 574 plate appearances and hit .334 with a .424 OBP and .520 SLG; superstar-level stuff. He struck out 105 times with 76 walks and while he hit just 12 homers he stole 55 bags (though he was caught 19 times).

2014: He appeared in 30 games at High-A and one game at Double-A. He posted 137 plate appearances with a .234/.309/.395 slash line that impressed no one. He hit four homers and stole six bases.

2015: He appeared in 59 games at Double-A and 13 games at Triple-A before his 46-game stint with the Twins. In those 72 minor league games he slashed .305/.357/.500 with seven home runs, 13 triples and 22 stolen bases. With the Twins he slashed .209/.250/.326 over 138 plate appearances.

COMPARISONS

Don’t forget this fact: Mike Trout was a top-3 prospect in 2011 and 2012. In 2011 he hit .220 with a .672 OPS over 40 games as a rookie with the Angels. He was a total failure. In his first full big league season Trout hit .326 with 30 homers and 49 steals. To this point Buxton hasn’t consistently produced, but when healthy there is no disputing that he flashes elite skills. Moreover, a source as trustworthy as Baseball America has outright compared Buxton to Trout in the past. Even the best of the best don’t always pop immediately which makes what guys like Bryant and Correa did last season even more impressive. Don’t forget that guys like Javier Baez, Archie Bradley, Jonathan Gray, Addison Russell, Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman failed to live up to expectations last season even though they were elite prospects heading into 2015. It’s not a rare occurrence to see an elite prospect struggle in their first big league go-around. It’s not fair, duh, to expect Buxton to pull a Trout, but the truth is that not all paths to stardom are linear. Remember that. Not all players explode in their first season. In fact, history is strongly suggestive that players need a few years, if not more than that (hello Mike Moustakas) to finally find their footing at the big league level. Be careful you don’t overemphasize a small sample size, or early-season struggles, to mean that a player isn’t, or will continue to be, a failure.

CONCLUSION

"He does everything you want," said Chattanooga manager and former Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. "He's got power. He's got speed. He plays defense every night. He can win a game in a lot of ways. He can win it with his legs. He can win it with his glove. He can win it with his bat.” Buxton has the talent to win a fantasy league for you in 2016. A run to 20 homers and 40 steals… the talent is there for that. However, drafting him expecting him to do more than half of that is foolish. A young player with an extensive track record of ill-health, Buxton is all about skills at this point and not so much about production. Could it all come together in 2016? Absolutely. Could he struggle to find consistency and produce like Gregory Polanco and/or Desmond Jennings? Absolutely. The good news is that, at this point, after a couple of seasons of perceived failure and a terrible run with the Twins in 2015, the shine on Buxton’s star will be less than the new “rookies” who people will be looking forward to rostering (I’m looking at guys like Josh Bell, David Dahl and Aaron Judge). This is where you can make your mark in the fantasy game. People love the hype, they thrive on it like a porn addict at a strip club. They need to be at the forefront of the movement. They need to feel the “juice.” There won’t be as much heat behind Buxton this season unless he hits .400 in spring training. If he does explode in March, all bets are off. If he doesn’t, this year’s crop of rookies will likely have more “heat” and you should be able to roster Buxton later than he should be. Remember that last season, folks were taking Bryant in the top five or six rounds in many mixed league drafts last season. Buxton is every bit the talent that Bryant was but do you think you will have to roster Buxton that early this season? Exactly.