Kirilloff sent to Triple-A to try to sort through struggles?

MINNEAPOLIS -- One of the biggest mysteries of this season for the Twins has been that they’ve never seen Alex Kirilloff struggle this much when healthy -- which they still believe he is.

But those struggles have gotten to the point where the Twins can no longer let him figure it out at the MLB level -- and in Kirilloff’s fourth season as a regular in the big league picture, they had little choice but to option him to Triple-A St. Paul after Wednesday’s game to give him the opportunity to get himself right.

After two and a half months of these struggles, do the Twins feel any closer to figuring out why the guy that should be one of their most consistent hitters on paper has just stopped hitting?

“If we or he knew that, we would have addressed that already,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “So no, I can’t say it’s one particular thing.”

The timing has been tough in that his issues have coincided with rough seasons for both Edouard Julien and Matt Wallner, who -- alongside Kirilloff -- were expected to provide the brunt of the production against right-handed pitching. All three of them are now with Triple-A.

The Twins have gotten somewhat lucky in that the left-handed hitting Trevor Larnach has emerged from three inconsistent seasons of health and performance to make up for some of the lost production, but the aggregate results do tell a story: The Twins posted a .762 OPS against right-handed pitching last season, which has ebbed to a .701 OPS this year.

So, not only are the Twins left trying to figure out how to get Kirilloff out of an extended funk they’ve never seen from him, but they’re also dealing with the loss of the strong side of the core platoon structure around which they constructed their roster during the offseason.

For example, they recalled the right-handed hitting Austin Martin from St. Paul in a corresponding move on Thursday, and they’ll have more right-handed hitters facing right-handed pitching moving forward, whether it’s Martin, Manuel Margot or Jose Miranda -- the latter two of whom have been among the club’s more productive hitters over the past month.

The Twins are also fortunate in that Martin has clearly outgrown the Triple-A level, as he posted a laughably good ratio of 21 walks to seven strikeouts and a .466 on-base percentage in his stints with St. Paul this season.

“My experience up here was pretty much just showing me that I belong and that I'm more than capable of helping this team win baseball games,” Martin said. “It kind of brings a little bit of confidence going down, just knowing you're where you feel like you're capable of performing and playing at the highest level.”

There had been some encouraging signs with Kirilloff toward the end of May, when he hit three homers in seven games, including deep drives to his power alley in left-center field. But from May 26 onward, he went 4-for-29 (.138) with 12 strikeouts, dragging his season line down to .201/.270/.384 for a .654 OPS.

It’s not that he’s striking out a lot more or swinging and missing a ton (though both rates are up slightly) -- but it’s when he makes contact, most of his line drives have been replaced by ground balls and high fly balls.

Kirilloff didn’t seem to have any indication of what’s been going wrong, either. He and Baldelli have pointed out that he has hit so many different ways throughout his career, all coalescing around his unique ability to put barrel to ball and drive it hard, all over the field. Kirilloff said he’d been trying not to overthink and keep hitting with feel, even amid these struggles.

But ultimately, Kirilloff still hasn’t figured it out for a consistent stretch in the Majors. This was supposed to be the year where he became a cornerstone of the lineup, seemingly with his chronic right wrist and shoulder issues behind him and a clear runway as he entered his first year of arbitration eligibility as a “Super Two” player.

They’re seemingly about as far from that as they’ve ever been.

“This guy has always been very, very good at his job,” Baldelli said. “He knows how to find barrels. Lately, there have been a few different things that we could point to, they haven’t looked like him. It’s not the guy we’re familiar with.”