Byron Buxton's RISP Struggles Are a Strange Defect in a Great Season

Let's make one thing very, very clear: Byron Buxton is having an incredible individual season. The Twins' center fielder is tied for the AL lead with 25 home runs (in only 70 games) and boasts a .912 OPS that is ninth-best among all qualified hitters. He deserves to be a starting outfielder for the American League in the All-Star Game in Philadelphia a few weeks from now. He's Minnesota's best and most important player.

And yet, it's getting hard to ignore the strange defect of Buxton's season so far. For as great as he's been, almost all of his damage has come early in innings and with the bases empty. With runners in scoring position, especially in clutch situations, he's been bizarrely...terrible.

In the bottom of the seventh inning on Wednesday night, the Twins trailed the Dodgers 4-3 and brought Buxton to the plate with two runners on and two outs. He proceeded to weakly pop out to the foul side of first base. Buxton got another chance with two outs and a runner on (albeit not in scoring position) in the bottom of the ninth and struck out against LA closer Tanner Scott. That big, clutch hit has seemingly eluded the Twins' star slugger all year.

Hurt, Mookie, and the Dodgers get a bit fortunate to get out of it. pic.twitter.com/LAkOmIreTm
— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) June 25, 2026

This time it's Tanner's turn to get Buxton in a big spot, closing the game with a strikeout. pic.twitter.com/CnBm4Og2gg
— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) June 25, 2026

The numbers tell the story. Of Buxton's 25 home runs, 14 have come when leading off an inning. He has slashed an absurd .323/.343/.808 in 102 plate appearances (out of 315 total) as the first batter in an inning. Buxton has also been highly productive with one out (.919 OPS). But in 88 plate appearances with two outs, he has a slash line of .128/.227/.244 (that's a .471 OPS) with just two home runs.

Regardless of outs, Buxton has a .994 OPS this season with no one on base. 17 of his 25 homers have been solo shots, which is how he has just 41 RBI. With anyone on base at all, his OPS drops to .783 (still good but not elite). In 65 plate appearances with a runner in scoring position, he's hit .161 with a .601 OPS.

So Buxton is both struggling with two outs and struggling with runners in scoring position. When you combine those two, the results are even worse. In 31 plate appearances containing both of those elements, he's gone 1 for 27 with four walks and 11 strikeouts.

The sample sizes aren't very big here, but they aren't minuscule either. And Buxton's lack of production in clutch situations has limited the impact he's had on the Twins' offense. That shows up in his Win Probability Added, which is a stat that measures the "importance of a given plate appearance in the context of the game" and "quantifies the percent change in a team's chances of winning from one event to the next."

Buxton's WPA so far this year is 0.1, which ranks 180th among all hitters and eighth on the Twins, behind Ryan Jeffers, Brooks Lee, Kody Clemens, Trevor Larnach, Austin Martin, Ryan Kreidler, and Alex Jackson. Also at 0.1 is Triple-A outfielder Gabriel Gonzalez, who had a hit and two walks in one singular game for the Twins in May.

This is not meant to criticize Buxton, who has been sensational this season. We aren't suggesting that he's inherently un-clutch (after all, he had a .984 OPS with RISP last year). We're just pointing out an odd trend in an otherwise spectacular season for the Twins' best player. If Buxton can start to deliver with runners on base and in two-out situations like he has with the bases empty, he could wind up making a real MVP case in the second half.

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