Minor Leagues

On Friday, news broke that the Minnesota Twins will not be making any minor league roster transactions at this time. Instead, they have committed to paying all of their minor leaguers $400 per week through the end of August.

Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Elizabethton, Tennessee has been home to minor league baseball for over 45 years. Twelve championships have been won and over 120 eventual major league players have spent time playing here. Now those days might be over. Contraction was likely coming, but MLB’s delayed season likely means baseball’s death in Elizabethton.

While Twins fans were getting swept up in pennant fever for the first time in nearly a decade, a development down on the farm flew somewhat under the radar. The 2019 Pensacola Blue Wahoos assembled what may have been the most talented minor league team in franchise history.

Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran are extraordinarily talented, as documented, but the Twins have an under-the-radar arm that should excite you just as much.

Special thanks to the 2020 Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook for information and guidance in this article.

Travis Blankenhorn was a third-round pick back in 2015 before the current front office regime took over. He’s been able to steadily move through the system over the last five seasons while spending the majority of last season at Double-A. Twins Daily caught up with him to ask him five questions as he prepares for the 2020 campaign.

Last week I introduced you to the issues minor league baseball (MiLB) players are having earning a livable wage. This week I will provide a couple solutions to the issue that will provide players with a livable, not exuberant, wage. It will be helpful to read last week's article first.

In recent years the salaries and living conditions of minor league baseball (MiLB) players has been brought to the forefront of fans attention. Now, as the world is rocked by COVID-19, that issue is being magnified as teams reportedly are only paying players $400 per week during the shutdown.

Brent Rooker was gearing up for the 2020 season thinking he had an opportunity to make his big-league debut and be part of one of the strongest teams in baseball. Now he is left wondering when the season will begin and how that will impact his eventual call-up. Rooker was kind enough to answer five (well almost five) questions for Twins Daily.

Major League Baseball, much like the rest of the world, is being hit hard by the fallout from COVID-19. We all know about the start of the regular season being pushed back, however, that is not the only thing in being affected, as the MLB Draft was in serious danger of not happening at all. Fortunately, MLB and MLBPA reached an agreement this past week that insured it will happen, albeit with some major alterations.

For the past six or seven years, I have gone down to Minnesota Twins spring training in Ft. Myers. I most enjoy spending time down on the minor league fields, head on a swivel, watching prospects do their work, practice and play games. It’s fun to see the top prospects in action, but for me it’s always fun to find a few players who aren’t talked about as much, or I haven’t seen in action, that stand out. Here are my three players from 2020 Twins minor league spring training (and a bonus minor league signing).

Over the span of just a couple of months in the summer of 2009, the Twins added the trio of Jorge Polanco, Max Kepler and Miguel Sano. In doing so, they shelled out just $4.675 million. On the cheap, the team added three players who have become big parts of the nucleus of the 2020 Twins and all have signed long-term extensions.

The summer of 2009 was an outlier from a normal year on the International market, but let's take a look at the Twins activity recently.

Sometimes narratives, baseball or other, get into circulation, and once they do, it seems that they are hard to get rid of. I have probably (unfortunately) started some, and I am sure that I have passed along some without doing any research. Of course, I think we all agree that a little data to either support or disprove any narrative should help. Today I am going to address one of those narratives and let you decide.