A late-season wrist injury has likely put an end to the outfielder's breakout campaign.
Trevor Larnach spent much of his time with the Minnesota Twins trying to prove he belonged in the picture.
This season, for a while, it looked like he finally had.
Now, a sore left wrist has put his season on hold and may have opened a much bigger question about where Larnach fits in Minnesota beyond September. The Twins placed the outfielder on the 10-day injured list with a left wrist sprain, retroactive to Sept. 15, and recalled Alan Roden from Triple-A St. Paul in the corresponding move.
Larnach had already missed several games before the move became official. He underwent an MRI earlier in the week, and the results weren't what the Twins had hoped. According to Aaron Gleeman via X, Larnach's season is likely over.
That would be an unfortunate ending to what was, by several measures, his strongest season in the majors.
Larnach entered the final stretch hitting .269/.352/.436 with 13 home runs, 48 RBI and 57 runs scored over 433 plate appearances. His 2.2 fWAR and 123 wRC+ both represent career-best marks.
The timing of the injury is particularly frustrating because Larnach had spent the first half of the season making the case that this year was different. He hit .289 with an .830 OPS before his production fell off in the second half.
Even with that late decline, the season had changed the way Larnach could be viewed. The 29-year-old was no longer simply another former first-round pick still waiting for everything to come together. For a Twins organization that had spent years hoping to see more from him, there was finally evidence of a player capable of contributing consistently.
The wrist problem had been building before the Twins shut him down.
Larnach told manager Derek Shelton that he had been dealing with soreness for several days before it became more noticeable during a slide on Sunday. Shelton explained that he decided to have the wrist examined when Larnach tried to go through his normal routine on Monday and realized something wasn't right.
“He’s dealing with some left wrist soreness,” Shelton told reporters, via MLB.com's Matthew Leach. “So we sent him for an MRI. He has felt it for a few days, and then he felt it sliding yesterday. And then when he came in today, tried to go through his routine and just didn’t go kind of the way he wanted it to. So we’re just going to get it looked at.”
The Twins now have little reason to rush him back with only nine games remaining in the regular season.
That also gives the organization a longer look at players who could eventually make Larnach expendable. Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez have already reached the majors, while Byron Buxton and Luke Keaschall are also expected to play a major role in Minnesota's outfield plans when healthy.
That is where Larnach's situation becomes more complicated.
His season may have ended with some of the best numbers of his career, but it could also leave the Twins deciding whether those numbers were enough to keep him in a crowded outfield picture.
For now, Larnach's wrist has made that decision easier to postpone.
