Mechanical adjustments leading to quality results for Caratini

PHOENIX – A small tweak has made a big impact in Victor Caratini’s game.

The Twins catcher, who signed a two-year deal with the club in January, has hit .382 in June to raise his batting average from .190 to its current mark of .231. It’s a drastic improvement from his average of .143 in May, and the change came about after he started reviewing his mechanics with hitting coach Keith Beauregard following a frustrating run of bad luck at the plate.

Caratini shifted his hands, as well as how he’s loading up, and results have followed. That success continued on Friday, as he blasted a Statcast-projected 430 foot home run in Minnesota’s series-opening 9-5 loss to the Diamondbacks at Chase Field.

The homer had an exit velocity of 106.1 miles per hour and it marked the veteran catcher’s second dinger in three games.

Indeed, all of those adjustments are yielding promising results, if not expected.

“Hitting is really hard,” Caratini said. “And we found out that moving my hands a little bit forward, and that's when the hitting coaches tell me, your hands are little different than the last two years, and that's why I'm making an [adjustment].”

Caratini finished 1-for-2 with two walks on Friday, and he has recorded a hit in 10 of 12 games this month.

The 32-year-old’s recent success shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, as Caratini’s underlying numbers have been strong throughout the season. His solid contact percentage (7.4) ranks third out of his 10 Major League seasons, while his barrel percentage of 6.6 ranks fourth.

Even his expected batting average of .254 is right up there with his best seasons, as it ranks fifth behind 2025 (.255), 2023 (.256), 2019 (.258) and 2024 (.261).

Just a peek at those figures was enough for Twins manager Derek Shelton to know Caratini would eventually start finding openings, and June has been trending that way.

“It's the old adage like, ‘Oh, you're swinging the bat well, you're getting nothing to show for it,’ but now we can actually prove that,” Shelton said. “I think it is important because hitters get beat down like, ‘I'm sick of hitting the ball on the nose, and I'm sick of, good swing, good swing, good swing.’”

Minnesota’s hitting staff delivered that message to Caratini as they worked to adjust his mechanics, and he heard them loud and clear -- even if dealing in hypotheticals is not something he particularly enjoys.

“I was unlucky in May,” Caratini said. “At the end of the day, though, you don’t want the expected stats. You want the real stats.”

Those have certainly shown up just one month later.

“The swings have been there, and it looked like he was trying to force a little bit,” Shelton said. “Now, it’s the guy that we thought we were going to get, and he’s making really good swings.”

Caratini has become the de facto everyday catcher for Minnesota after Ryan Jeffers was sidelined with a left hamate bone fracture in mid-May. He had still been getting the at-bats in -- Caratini has played first base in 13 games this season -- but he’s seen much more consistent playing time behind the plate in Jeffers’ absence.

Even so, he was quick to credit his work with Beauregard and the hitting staff with his June surge, as opposed to the more elevated catching role he has taken on lately.

Regardless of the position he plays, or even how often, for that matter, Caratini said consistency is earned through practice, not repeated reps at the same position.

“The last two years, three years, sometimes I played a lot, sometimes I played like every two or three days,” Caratini said. “The issue was the way I had my hands the last two years, compared to where I started the season this year.

“We found it, and now I need to just keep working on that and keep working with the hitting coaches to keep that consistency.”