FORT MYERS, Fla.  — With Byron Buxton in the middle, flanked by Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler, the Minnesota Twins boast one of the most dynamic young outfields in baseball.

Their average age is 25. They combined to hit 62 home runs last season. Their defense is superb, judged by both basic measurements and advanced metrics.

These are Jeff Pickler’s protegees.

“We don’t feel too pressured, or feel scared to make that mistake. We’ve got room to improve, and he understands that,” Buxton said, reflecting on his first year under Pickler’s supervision. “It allows us to go out there and play free, play aggressively.”

Soon after Derek Falvey took over as the organization’s chief baseball officer, the Twins hired Pickler as the eighth coach under manager Paul Molitor, without a defined role like the rest of the staff. Though his background was at second base, in an eight-year minor league career that topped out at Triple-A and ended in 2005, Pickler was quickly identified as the right person to work with the outfield and try to further tap into the immense potential of this homegrown trio.

“The concept in the infield is the margin for error is really small and they’re expected to catch every ball and they’re expected to put every throw within three inches, and in the outfield our focus is so much more big picture that maybe we lose sight of the details that the infielders focus on,” Pickler said. “So we tried to bring some of those details to the outfield and say, ‘Hey, if infielders can focus on some of these things and help them make plays more consistently and throw the ball more accurately, can we bring those concepts to the outfield?’”

The son of a longtime college baseball coach, Pickler came to Minnesota with experience in three major league organizations, either as a scout or in player development.