Ryan

Jeffers

Jeffers had surgery on May 20th to fix his fractured hamate bone. The original timeline was four to six weeks, so it’s nice to see that the cast is already off. He has not resumed swinging a bat, but that should come towards the middle of June.

This is a brutal blow for Jeffers, who was having his best season ever. The 29-year-old was slashing .295/.408/.541 in 147 plate appearances with seven home runs and 26 RBI. He will be sidelined for a couple of months and could see his power diminished when he does return. Sadly, he doesn’t need to be held in fantasy leagues.

Jeffers is off to a fantastic start to his season, so it’d be a shame if he landed on the IL with an injury apparently sustained on a broken-bat foul ball tonight. Alex Jackson would be the obvious choice to replace him on the roster, though since he’s out of options, the team could instead go to Noah Cardenas or David Bañuelos if they think it’d be a short IL stint for Jeffers. That way, the Twins wouldn’t risk losing Jackson when Jeffers returns.

Jeffers broke his bat the first pitch of an at-bat, took two balls and then basically just walked off the field. The best guess here is that it’s a hand problem, but we’ll find out soon.

Jeffers was DHing today for the first time since May 1, as the Twins just couldn’t take his bat out of the lineup. He is slugging .600 with his three homers and four doubles during the month of May and is up to .538 overall.

Jeffers now has a .948 OPS that’s more than 200 points better than his perfectly solid career mark of .742. In 129 plate appearances, he basically has as many runs scored (22) and RBI (25) as he does strikeouts (23). Through his first six seasons, he was at 207 runs scored, 223 RBI and 467 strikeouts.

With a .302/.409/.531 line and 22 RBI in 29 games, Jeffers couldn’t have started his walk year any better. It could be quite the fascinating battle for the AL All-Star catcher spots this year with Cal Raleigh and Salvador Perez lagging way behind Jeffers, Shea Langeliers and Dillon Dingler in the performance department thus far. Adley Rutschman is looking like he’ll be a factor, too.

Jeffers got the Twins on the board with a 404-foot (103.0 mph EV) two-run blast off of Kevin Gausman in the fourth inning, giving the Twins a 2-1 lead that they would never relinquish. The 28-year-old backstop also reached on a fielder’s choice and scored on an error in the eighth inning. He’s having a strong start to the season offensively, slashing .291/.411/.494 with four long balls, 20 RBI and a stolen base for good measure through his first 96 plate appearances.

A rare stolen base for Jeffers in his first attempt of this season. He was 1-for-2 there last year. Jeffers is batting .282/.414/.465 while starting 20 of the Twins’ 29 games this season.

Facing a 7-3 deficit with two outs in the eighth inning, Jeffers strolled to the plate against Huascar Brazoban with the bases loaded and launched an 0-1 sinker for a 377-foot (108.8 mph EV) game-tying grand slam. The Mets rallied in the bottom half of the inning though to take the lead back and the Twins’ ninth-inning rally wound up falling just short. Jeffers finished the night 1-for-3 plus a pair of walks. He’s having a solid season so far for the Twins — and for fantasy managers in deeper two-catcher leagues — slashing .267/.405/.483 with three homers and 16 RBI.