Byron Buxton is starting to play like the Twins’ superstar that scouts projected

Welcome to the 2017 MLB Postseason, baseball fans! You’ve spent 162 games with your favorite team, and now it’s time to watch the teams you haven’t paid much attention to. Who are these teams, and who are their best players? We can help.

Buxton is the center fielder for the Minnesota Twins, and at 23 is still young enough that if you Google his Baseball-Reference page, the top result is for his minor-league stats.

It depends on what part of the year you’re looking at. Buxton played incredible defense throughout the season, but he also finished June batting .195/.269/.283 with four homers despite playing in 74 games. From July onward, however, Buxton hit and hit some more, batting .309/.358/.538 with 12 homers and 25 extra-base hits over his final 66 games. Combine hitting like that with his glove, and Buxton was the most important player for the Twins down the stretch.

While his overall line is below average for a center fielder, his glove has more than made up for it. Wins above replacement isn’t entirely reliable, nor is it the answer on its own, but Buxton managed to be worth five wins this year even without his bat being a positive for half the season. That’s ridiculous, just so you know, but it’s also somehow believable given what he can do on defense.

Buxton was drafted by the Twins with the second-overall pick in the 2012 draft, right out of high school.

Buxton spent some time as baseball’s overall top prospect, and I wrote an article a few years back titled, “Byron Buxton, the next baseball great?” so yeah, you could say he was always supposed to be this good, if by this good you are specifically referring to his mid-season awakening and what followed.

Basically, Buxton had scouts likening him to Willie Mays in the same way that scouts compared Mike Trout to Mickey Mantle before he arrived in the majors. It took Buxton a couple of years to get going — he showed up in the majors at 21 and didn’t find real success until this summer, at 23 — but someone who can hit for power and average and steal bases and play some of the best defense in center you’ll find is a special player, even if it took him some time to get going. He doesn’t need to be Mays or even quite as good as his last few months to be hugely valuable to the Twins, either.

Buxton looked like a disappointing top prospect who was failing to put it together in the majors, but then it turned out he was only 23 and just needed time to adapt. After breaking out, he’s the best player on the Twins, and one of the key reasons they went from 103 losses to the postseason.