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Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Stuck at Triple-A, Matt Wallner wonders if his time with the Twins is over
- Story byPioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
- Stuck at Triple-A, Matt Wallner wonders if his time with the Twins is over
It's been a rough year for Matt Wallner , whose budding major league career with his hometown team was derailed by a lousy start this season and has since been on hold in St. Paul with the Triple-A Saints.
"It's been a lot of not fun this year, to be honest," Wallner said.
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A Forest Lake native who was a supplemental first-round draft pick (39th overall) out of Southern Mississippi in 2016, Wallner was staking a claim on a corner outfield spot in 2024 , a lanky, strong-armed prospect already showing elite power.
But after an erratic 2025 season, Wallner — by his own account a notoriously slow starter — started this season hitting .167 with 53 strikeouts and four home runs in 34 games and was optioned back to St. Paul.
What was expected to be a reset seems to have become a mostly full minor league season for the 28-year-old. Major league rosters can be expanded by two on Sept. 1, but after putting together 62 productive games with the Saints, Wallner doesn't expect to be one of the players recalled by the Twins.
Maybe ever.
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"Really, genuinely not," he said before the Saints played host to Louisville at CHS Field on Thursday. "If it happens, it does. But in my head, I feel like maybe my time is past in this organization. I don't know. I really don't. Seems like it, but what do I know?"
In his first two seasons with the Twins in 2023 and 2024, Wallner was developing into a classic power hitter whose strong throwing arm fit the profile of a major league right fielder. In 151 games combined, he hit .254 with 27 home runs and 78 runs batted in, and was getting on base at a .371 clip.
From 2023-25, Wallner's exit velocity (92 mph) was in the 90th percentile among major league hitters — he was 16th among batters with at least 100 batted-ball events in 2024 — and his bat speed (77 mph) was in the 95th . His barrel rate (results) was consistently high, but his square up rate (efficiency) was consistently below 5%.
In his 34 major league games this season, the velocity and bat speed numbers were down.
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In St. Paul this season, Wallner is hitting .276 with 20 home runs, 58 RBIs and a .959 OPS in 62 games through Thursday.
"I feel like I can go next year, and I feel like I'm not hitting with a .500 OPS in April again," he said. "Hitting in June and after has never been a problem for me, it's always getting going. It's always been that way, even in college. Every single year. I've just never hit in the beginning of the year. Obviously, that's not an excuse. It's something I need to overcome.
"I'm just working to find something I feel like I can show up to spring training with and be ready. You know, maybe not feel like I'm ready to go, but feel like I'm 50 at-bats from being ready — as opposed to 200."
Notably, Wallner consistently spoke about spring training as his next launching pad, not Target Field. He's reading the tea leaves here.
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Wallner is on the 40-man roster but knows the Twins have outfielders ( Trevor Larnach , Austin Martin , Luke Keaschall , Alan Roden ) and left-handed bats (Larnach, Roden, Kody Clemens , along with switch-hitters Josh Bell , Victor Caratini and Brooks Lee ) on the active roster.
On Friday, the Twins called up their No. 2 prospect — per MLB Pipeline — infielder Kaelen Culpepper, to make his major league debut in a weekend series at Milwaukee . And if Minnesota adds an outfielder, it's expected to be their top prospect, Walker Jenkins — another left-handed bat.
"And if that's the case, that's the case," Wallner said. "That's fine."
And then, of course, there is the fact that Wallner, despite notable improvement in his at-bats, has been in St. Paul since early May.
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He said he doesn't have any social media accounts and so wasn't tracking the trade deadline over the previous few weeks. But it's pretty clear he wondered whether he might be traded. Maybe even hoped he would be.
Wallner is under team control for a while — his first arbitration year is 2027 — so he would need the Twins to release him outright before he could get a chance elsewhere.
That doesn't make a lot of sense for the big league club right now. Wallner is an asset under team control; he gives general manager Jeremy Zoll options as he plows through free agency this winter.
It's all a lot to take in for the asset himself, so Wallner is trying to compartmentalize.
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"I just wanna focus on this year, and then next year," he said.
"If I'm here, I mean, just realistically, I don't see a high possibility that I will be next year. But if I am, great," Wallner added. "If I'm elsewhere, I'll just take what I've learned here and go into that. I'm just focused on the year, here, now, and I'll deal with that when it happens."
