Minor Leagues

With the Cedar Rapids Kernels being rained out on Monday, there was some extra baseball for Twins affiliates on Tuesday. While the Kernels managed a split, it was the starting pitching in a couple of the other games that made the headlines. Lewis Thorpe struck out a bunch of hitters for his second start in a row, while another pitcher who exited his last game after being struck by a line drive, picked up where he left off without missing a beat, ending the night leading his league in K’s.

The Pensacola Blue Wahoos are in their first year partnering with the Minnesota Twins, and they’ve appeared to join the organization at a great time. Several top prospects in the system should spend time with them during the 2019 season, and several already are there. They sit atop the Southern League standings and in large part that has been because of their starting pitching. Brusdar Graterol is the big name, but every starter to take the mound has done their part and more.

It was a good night for teams throughout the Twins' minor league system. There wasn’t a loss to be found among the Twins affiliates. One starting pitcher’s impressive streak continues. One starter had one rough inning but was solid other than that. One prospect was just shy of hitting for the cycle. And one affiliate was rained out.

Their jerseys may say Kernels on the outside, but underneath, the guys on Cedar Rapids pitching coach Virgil Vasquez’s staff have adopted a more burning mindset.

The pitching staff has adopted an “Enter the Dragon” motto that is reflected not only on the back of the T-shirts they wear under their uniforms, but in the intensity with which they attack opposing batters.

Minnesota completed a sweep of the Orioles on Sunday afternoon. It was quite the series for the Twins as the club does their best to take care of some of the rebuilding clubs in the American League. Minnesota will get to see Baltimore again next weekend, but first they need to put on their big-boy pants and face the Astros.

There was only one game in the Twins farm system on Sunday. Was Pensacola able to make a clean sweep for the organization?

Four starting pitchers went at least five innings and gave up one or no earned runs, there were seven home runs hit — including a walk-off from Michael Helman — and Twins affiliates went 4-1. Come check out the details on what went down across the minor league system Friday night.

Have you ever wanted your own airplane? Well, the Twins’ Double-A affiliate was sort of able to accomplish this on Thursday. There’s more to the story below. Also, there was plenty of action throughout the Twins’ system. Two teams tried to mount comebacks, while another took advantage of the opportunities provided by the other team.

Go back through the minor league histories of most players who ultimately become big leaguers. You can often see a point in the career timelines where they went from just another young player trying to figure it all out to a legitimate professional ballplayer with a chance to make his dreams come true. A point at which a metaphorical switch was flipped.


If Trey Cabbage’s dreams of playing Major League Baseball ultimately are realized, the spring of 2019 might just be the point in time that we identify his switch as having been flipped.

A Triple A doubleheader added an extra game to a full slate of action on Tuesday night, and if not for a hit parade from Cedar Rapids, pitching would have been the only story on the day. Each affiliate got a strong effort from their starting pitcher, including likely the best start of a top phenom's career to this point. And his game wasn’t even the one that finished 1-0 in favor of the good guys.

The Miracle didn’t quite reach their 12-run total from Sunday, but on Monday they did score seven runs. They also got another strong starter who is beginning this season with a great streak. Pensacola’s Opening Day starter was terrific again, and the Blue Wahoos game ended with a back flip, so that’s always good.

Over their previous seven games, the Miracle had scored a combined 15 runs. A look through the batting averages of players in the lineup (besides the red-hot Lewin Diaz and his .480 batting average) showed that the bats were cold. On Sunday, they scored 12 runs on 21 hits and all nine starters had at least two hits in the game. .

What had seemed like a fairly normal day of baseball turned into something more thanks to one game in particular that decided to not play by the rules. Read all about it and much more in this edition of the Twins minor league report.