Twins rewarded for signing outfielder Max Kepler to an extension

A small item in the Star Tribune on July 9, 2009, not­ed some international player signings by the Twins:

"The most prom­is­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al pros­pects the Twins have eith­er signed or have reached a­gree­ment with are Jorge Po­lan­co and Jonatan Ynojoso, a pair of short­stops from the Dom­i­ni­can Re­pub­lic. Mike Rad­cliff, the Twins vice pres­i­dent of play­er per­son­nel, said both have of­fen­sive up­side.

"The Twins also have agree­ments with Aus­tral­i­an righthander Mark Trau and Ger­man out­field­er Max Kep­ler. Kep­ler is con­sid­ered to be the top pros­pect out of Eu­rope but is very raw."

Who would have thought that, 10 years later, Kep­ler and Po­lan­co would not only be lead­ing the Twins' surge to a major league-best 37-17 record, but that both would have signed team-friendly, long-term con­tracts?

Twins Chief Base­ball Of­fi­cer Der­ek Falvey and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Thad Lev­ine made it a pri­or­i­ty this offseason to sign some of their young, high-po­ten­tial players to extensions. That led to Polanco and Kep­ler get­ting five-year deals in February — $25.75 million for Polanco and $35 mil­lion for Kepler. Kepler is signed through the 2024 sea­son, when he will be 31.

"I'm super grate­ful for [the extension]," he said.

Did he ever think this kind of ca­reer was pos­si­ble when he was play­ing base­ball in Ger­ma­ny?

"I don't know, [I] just put in the work, made sac­ri­fices," he said. "Where oth­er kids were hav­ing fun, I was at the field play­ing base­ball."

Kep­ler was spotted by form­er Twins scout Andy John­son, who was based in Norway. John­son saw Kep­ler as a 14-year-old, play­ing at a tour­na­ment in Ger­ma­ny. He told MiLB.com that, "[Kep­ler] was young for that tour­na­ment, but you just saw the ath­let­i­cism. His ath­let­i­cism re­al­ly stuck out from oth­er play­ers."

Kep­ler, who said 15 teams were af­ter him when the Twins signed him with a $775,000 bo­nus, said Terry Ryan — who was a seni­or ad­vis­er to the team at the time, be­tween gen­er­al man­ag­er stints with the club — played a key role in him get­ting to the big leagues.

"Terry Ryan, he's the guy who gave me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play this game," Kep­ler said. "He gave a kid from Ger­ma­ny a chance. I owe him a lot."

Best stretch of ca­reer

Kep­ler, in his fourth full year with the Twins, is putting to­gether his best season at the plate.

He is hit­ting .280 with 12 home runs, 14 doub­les, 35 RBI and 36 runs scored while pri­mar­i­ly hit­ting leadoff. Just as im­por­tant­ly, he has found suc­cess against lefthand­ed pitch­ers, some­thing that eluded him in the past.

In the Twins' 5-3 victory over Mil­wau­kee on Tues­day, Kep­ler broke a 0-0 tie with a two-run double to right off Brew­ers lefthander Alex Clau­dio. He came around to score on C.J. Cron's RBI double two bat­ters later.

This sea­son he is hit­ting .275 with 20 RBI in 142 at-bats against righties while hit­ting .298 with 15 RBI in 47 at-bats against left­ies. Com­pare that to his ca­reer batting averages — .248 against righties and .212 against left­ies — and the improvement is striking.

"It's base­ball, you know, some days you'll hit them good and some days you won't," Kep­ler said. "I'm just try­ing to stay in the pos­i­tive and help my team win."

Kep­ler has re­al­ly tak­en off during his cur­rent, career-best 10-game hit­ting streak. He has hit .452 (19-for-42) with four home runs, 16 RBI and 15 runs scored. The Twins have gone 9-1 in those 10 games.

Kep­ler also hit in 10 con­sec­u­tive games be­tween March 31 and A­pril 14, but in that time he hit .318 with three hom­ers, eight RBI and six runs scored.

Keep­ing it sim­ple

The 26-year-old slug­ger said he's tak­en a sim­ple ap­proach at the plate this sea­son and it is producing re­sults.

"I'm try­ing to play smart ball, put the ball in play and hope­ful­ly good things will hap­pen," Kep­ler said. "I am the same guy. Nothing has changed. I'm still here, thank God."

Kep­ler took a step back last year, when his bat­ting av­er­age dropped from .243 in 2017 to .224 in 2018. He did see a big jump in runs scored from hitting high­er in the line­up, going from 67 to 80, but his RBI pro­duc­tion dropped from 69 to 58 and his slug­ging per­cent­age fell from .425 to .408.

He said he tried to keep his offseason chan­ges to a min­i­mum.

"I worked on my men­tal game, put on some weight, tweaked some things in my swing. But that's just a­bout it," he said.

How does Kepler ac­count for his improvement?

"I don't know, may­be just be­ing more ag­gres­sive this year, tak­ing ad­van­tage of pitch­es I can hit," he said. "Keep­ing it sim­ple."

He also said he's enjoying playing with Byron Bux­ton and Eddie Ro­sa­ri­o in a group has be­come one of baseball's best out­fields.

"Yeah, it's fun play­ing with them every day," he said. "It's def­i­nite­ly some­thing I should ap­pre­ci­ate more, to get to be around such tal­ent­ed play­ers."

Kep­ler also cred­it­ed hit­ting coach James Rowson with help­ing him with his approach to the game.

"He has been here for a cou­ple years now, and he has al­ways been good," Kep­ler said. "Not al­ways [just] me­chan­i­cal­ly, but just mo­ti­vat­ing and al­ways bring­ing good en­er­gy to the field.

"Main­ly the men­tal as­pect of the game. We all have the funda­men­tals down, nice swings, the me­chan­ics are pret­ty on point. It's just im­prov­ing men­tal­ly and be­com­ing strong­er so you can with­stand all the ad­ver­si­ty and go through a sea­son unphased."

Jot­tings

• The Twins have jumped to 19th in at­tend­ance af­ter av­er­ag­ing 32,995 fans per game over their five-game home­stand with the White Sox and Brew­ers.

• Out­field­er Jake Cave has strug­gled since being sent down to Class AAA Roch­es­ter, hit­ting .224 with two home runs and nine RBI in 15 games.

• The Go­phers got in early on the re­cruit­ing of Jahari Long, a 6-2 point guard out of Episcopal High in Bellaire, Texas, who has moved up to 146th in the Class of 2020 and is now a four-star re­cruit, ac­cord­ing to 247Sports.com. The Go­phers of­fered Long a schol­ar­ship last year and he will make a se­cond vis­it to cam­pus soon. Long also has scholarship offers from Louisiana Tech, Rice, Seton Hall and Texas Christian.

Sid Hart­man can be heard on WCCO AM-830 at 8:40 a.m. Mon­day and Fri­day, 2 p.m. Fri­day and 10:30 a.m. Sun­day. • shartman@startribune.com