Minor Leagues

What could these Minnesota Twins really use right about now? An excellent catcher, certainly. Someone with elite on-base skills wouldn't hurt. How about a couple of high-upside starting pitchers with legit front-end potential?

You'll find all of these and more ahead as we continue Twins Daily's midseason Top 40 prospect countdown.

The Triple A All-Star break is upon us. The short-season leagues are in full swing. There were a number of low-scoring contests in the Twins farm system on Monday. Weil and Webb provided offense. The catcher’s mitt was Poppen for Ft. Myers, and Kirilloff and Gelly provided the offense.

Change happens slowly when it comes to a team’s minor league system. Of the previous 20 players unveiled in our midseason prospect list up to this point, 13 were brought into the organization prior to Derek Falvey taking over as Chief Baseball Officer of the Twins.

This next sample of five prospects includes a couple of holdovers from the previous regime, but also features a trio of players that have been added to the organization within the last seven months. Even more interesting, each of those three newcomers was acquired via a different avenue: One via trade, one through the draft and the other as (technically) an international free agent.

It wasn’t long ago when Jose Berrios was a regular fixture on the Twins Daily Minor League Report. On Sunday, he found out he had been selected to his first All-Star Game. Top pitching prospects like Fernando Romero and Brusdar Graterol were both on the mound on Sunday and they hope to follow in Berrios’ footsteps in the years to come.

Did either of them have an All-Star performance on Sunday? Read on to find out...

After the Cedar Rapids Kernels finished batting practice on a warm, humid July 4 afternoon, two of the most productive players on their roster agreed to sit down and talk about the season.

One, an infielder, has been hitting over .300 with an on-base percentage around .400 virtually all season. (And three days after the interview, his bags were packed for Chattanooga, where he’d been promoted to join former Kernels manager Tommy Watkins’ Lookouts.)

The other, a starting pitcher, is 6-2 on the season and leads the Kernels in innings pitched.

Saturday was an evening full of close games and exciting finishes across the Twins’ minor league system. Brent Rooker starred for the Lookouts, hitting a walk-off double, and DaShawn Keirsey led an impressive comeback win in extras for the E-Twins. Come read about what else happened, including an explanation behind why Byron Buxton had to swap to an infielder’s glove at the end of the Red Wings’ game.

On Friday, the Futures Game rosters were announced. We learned a couple of weeks ago that Torii Hunter would manage the USA team while David Ortiz will manage the World Team. Also on Hunter’s coaching staff will be Matthew LeCroy (bench coach), LaTroy Hawkins (pitching coach), and Miracle hitting coach Steve Singleton (hitting coach).

Representing the Twins on Team USA will be Miracle outfielder Alex Kirilloff. Representing the Twins and Australia on the World Team will be LHP Lewis Thorpe.

A serious lack of hitting cost the Twins affiliates several winnable games, and only the Cedar Rapids Kernels managed more than two runs (and the Miracle played a doubleheader).

First-round picks carry a lot of weight in any organization. Some teams are consistently making strong picks but the art of drafting players can be a tough endeavor. If a team misses out multiple first-round picks, there can be a void near the top of an organization’s prospect rankings.

In Twins Daily’s updated top-40 prospect list, two former first-round picks fall into the 21-25 range. Each of them was a top-10 prospect as recently as 2017. Their fall in the rankings is connected to multiple factors but each of them has the potential to help the Twins at some point in the future.

On Independence Day, the Twins system was slated to have all six teams in action. Despite the Miracle being postponed due to weather, the bats produced plenty of fireworks to go around. Even in a loss, Stephen Gonsalves turned in another good performance and should again be knocking on the door to the next level as the trade deadline looms. Check out the action on the farm within.

Hopefully you all had a fantastic Fourth of July holiday! After discussion our Twins Daily choices for Twins prospects 31-40 earlier in the week, today we begin diving into our choices for the Top 30 Twins. In Part three of our series, today we look at our choices for prospects 26-30. As you can see, this group has a few players that we have already seen in a Twins uniform. These are guys who have and probably will again play a role with the big league club. But there are a couple of Miracle pitchers with upside that are in this group as well.

There was more than a full slate of action on Tuesday, as all six affiliates were in action, with one of them playing a doubleheader after their rain out yesterday. There were some solid pitching performances among them, as three games ended in shutouts for the good guys. There was also perhaps what I would call the most bizarre sequence of plays I’ve ever seen in a baseball game, but that’s only if I hadn’t played in, watched, and taken the scorebook for a ton of baseball in Minnesota’s amateur town ball league’s back in my day (bad, bad, defense and pitching). The good thing was, it was an epic collapse of the bad guys that led to a come-from-behind victory.