Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco and Miguel Sanó were part of the same 2009 international signing class, joining the Minnesota Twins as 16-year-olds the summer before the team moved from the Metrodome to Target Field.
That trio spent a total of 42 years with the organization, including 28 seasons and 2,598 games wearing a Twins uniform in the majors. And now they’re all gone. Sanó was released following the 2022 season. Polanco was traded to the Seattle Mariners in January. And last week, Kepler signed a one-year, $10 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Welcome to Philly, Max!
We have signed outfielder Max Kepler to a one-year contract, as announced today by Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski. pic.twitter.com/s1rFo6OfYu
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) December 20, 2024
Kepler is coming off a career-worst season in which he hit .253/.302/.380 with eight homers in 105 games and sat out most of September with a knee injury that later required surgery, so it’s no surprise the soon-to-be 32-year-old’s free-agent market was limited. In fact, one year and $10 million is the exact deal The Athletic’s Free Agent Big Board projected him to land.
He’s a bounce-back candidate at this stage of his career and the Phillies are betting on rediscovering the second-half 2023 version of Kepler that posted a 149 OPS+ in 66 games, rather than the 2024 (91 OPS+), first-half 2023 (86 OPS+), 2022 (92 OPS+) and 2021 (98 OPS+) versions that were each below average offensively and prone to missing time with nagging injuries.
It’s not an unreasonable flier for the Phillies to take at that price tag — $10 million is what Kepler was paid last season, and that’s from an extension signed in 2019 — but several of his key underlying metrics took red flag-raising steps backward in 2024. It’s been obvious for a while now that the Twins had no interest in re-signing him.
They have a pair of much cheaper left-handed hitters ready to take over as the starting corner outfielders in Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach, both of whom are roughly five years younger than Kepler and out-produced him in 2024. And they’ll have high-profile prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez, another left-handed-hitting outfielder, waiting in the wings at Triple-A St. Paul.
It was time for both sides to go their separate ways. In late September, as it was clear he’d played his last Twins game, an uncharacteristically talkative Kepler reflected on 15 years with the organization to a handful of reporters. He seemed almost relieved to have completed his Twins journey, or at least at peace knowing he was ready to move on.
“It’s not the way I’d like to go out as a Twin, but then again, s— happens,” Kepler said. “I’m proud of myself for what I’ve done as an individual, as a teammate, as a friend to everyone in this clubhouse. I obviously want to go out on a higher note, but if I look at, what, 15 years of my life, half my life as a Twin, I don’t think I could have done much more as a kid from Berlin.”
He’s right, of course.
To sign a raw 16-year-old from Germany, decidedly not a baseball hotbed, and get 10 seasons, 1,072 games and 18.6 WAR in return can’t be spun as anything but an extremely positive outcome for the Twins. And as Kepler discussed with the end in sight, his Twins career was beyond what he ever imagined.
Sweet pregame interview moment, as Max Kepler told Jorge Polanco how much it means to make a playoff run with him after more than a decade together in the Twins organization.
They were roommates after signing with the Twins as 16-year-olds in the 2009 international class. pic.twitter.com/qVWw7Wqyho
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) October 8, 2023
Still, Kepler’s lack of improvement was frustrating. He was an average starting outfielder as a rookie and that rarely changed, as evidenced by a career 102 OPS+ and a below-average mark in all but three years. Yet for an $800,000 bonus — a quarter of what Sanó signed for — and $45 million in salary, the Twins got roughly $150 million in WAR-based value from Kepler.
And the same average-ness that often made Kepler a source of frustration in Minnesota would be seen as a bargain in Philadelphia, where mediocre hitting and good defense from a corner outfielder would be well worth the modest $10 million investment for a contending team with a bloated payroll and plenty of issues to address.
Matt Gelb of The Athletic reports that the Phillies plan to deploy Kepler as their everyday left fielder, which is noteworthy on both fronts.
Kepler wasn’t fond of changing positions with the Twins. Early in his career, he was often used as a fill-in center fielder when Byron Buxton was injured, but Kepler last started a game somewhere other than right field in 2021 and has never played left field in the big leagues. His stance on moving around the outfield has apparently changed, along with his overall circumstances.
Kepler was an everyday player for the Twins, so the Phillies using him that way isn’t shocking, but it does mean another team is willing to overlook his career-long struggles against lefties. He is one of the few lefty hitters this Twins regime hasn’t platooned, but they should have: His career .655 OPS off lefties is third-worst in team history after Jacque Jones and Nick Punto.
Jones, who played for the Twins from 1999-2005, is perhaps Kepler’s closest comp as a corner outfielder and lefty hitter who avoided platooning despite struggling with lefties. Kepler was a better fielder — he averaged 2.6 fWAR per 150 games compared to 1.8 for Jones — but strictly as hitters, Kepler had a 102 OPS+ and Jones had a 101 OPS+ in a Twins uniform.
Gelb called the Kepler signing “a puzzling move by the Phillies” and maybe that’s fitting considering “puzzling” is also an apt description of much of his Twins career. Far more good than bad, with some memorable highs, but full of stagnation instead of development and average-ish overall in a way that felt like the Twins never got the most out of Kepler. Now the Phillies will try.
(Photo of Max Kepler celebrating a walk-off single against the Phillies in July: Matt Krohn / Getty Images)
