CLEVELAND --
“I want to be the best hitting catcher in baseball,” he said. “That’s who I want to be and who I believe I can be.”\n\nIt’s an extremely lofty goal and not something that comes easily. And it must be said: He’s not there yet. But with a homer and a double in the Twins’ 11-1 win against the Guardians on Monday night, and a hot streak that goes back two weeks, he’s starting to remind people of what he’s capable of.
This is the same player who posted a .276/.369/.490 line as recently as 2023, and he feels he’s getting back to that level.\n\nOver his last 11 games, Jeffers has a .307/.425/.524 line, and the Twins are 8-3. He had been showing patience and contact for a while. On Monday the power finally came with his first homer of the year and second game with two extra-base hits.\n\n“I think his swing and his timing are just syncing up really well,” said manager Rocco Baldelli.
Baldelli said that Jeffers has been “revamping his idea of going out there and having a good at-bat.” Jeffers explained what that meant.\n\nFor the past two seasons, Jeffers said, he’d become too mechanically focused. He overhauled his swing following the 2022 season, and while hitters are always doing some minor tweaks, he felt he was thinking too much about mechanics.\n\nNow, he feels he’s got a handle on those swing adjustments, and he no longer has to think so much about them. That means that he can instead think about approach, pitch selection, and how pitchers are coming at him.
“You want to get to the point where your prep work and everything can be angled at what you’re going to try to do that day,” he said, “instead of trying to work mechanics into your prep work. And then you get to the point where you don’t even think about your mechanics. It just happens. And I think that’s where I’m starting to get to.”\n\nThat focus on approach is absolutely paying off. Jeffers is currently showing career-best marks in walk rate (10.0 percent), strikeout rate (17.5 percent), chase rate (22.8 percent) and whiff rate (22.4 percent).\n\nHe is, in short, taking the best at-bats of his career.\n\n“The fact that I was holding a .700 OPS and have had no \\[power\\], no homers, that’s a testament to my approach,” he said. “I’m taking walks. I’m taking my singles. That’s how you hold a .900 OPS in the big leagues, is when you’re not going good, when you’re not hitting the ball out of the ballpark, you’re still taking your walks. You’re still taking your singles. That’s how you hold good stats.”
The Twins need those good stats, too. After the team’s offense scuffled too often in the season’s first three weeks, Baldelli acknowledged that he was going to adjust the strict rotation at catcher that the team had used, with