Sorry for the server instability, we're seeing some growing pains while migrating to a new platform. We will resolve this as soon as possible, thank you for your patience.×
As a Twins fan, I have seen several different approaches to drafting and developing pitching. We saw the pitch to contact philosophy at work for a long time. We saw the ill-fated drafting college fireball relievers and trying to develop them as starters, which failed (although we did get a nice relief pitcher in Tyler Duffey out of it). However, the current philosophy seems to be drafting college pitchers who have good peripheral numbers, high spin rates, or some other trait that separates th
I always know that baseball season is quickly approaching when I see all of the prospect lists coming out. It is always entertaining to read differing opinions about the same guy. At the end of the day, prospect lists are always a crapshoot. That being said, they can still be entertaining and informative, especially if the person conducting the list is plugged in with scouts who have seen the player or have seen the player live. Unfortunately, this is not one of those prospect lists. I have seen
Like many diehard fans, it is easy to get immersed in the potential of young prospects. It can be more intoxicating when those prospects are taken first overall in the draft. Royce Lewis is a fantastic prospect with the potential to be one of the best players in the game. The speed, the power, the makeup; it is easy to see why he is viewed as one of the top prospects in the game. However, I have always thought that Royce Lewis is the second-best prospect in the Twins system. Recently, Ke
MLB is announcing the top rated prospects. I am pleased to see that the Twins have the 10th rated SS with Brooks Lee, who was rated as the top hitting SS prospect. Royce Lewis was not in the top 10, but was mentioned in the article as being on the fringe of the top 10 at SS. Julian is #7 at 2B and is rated as the 2B prospect who has made the most improvements in the shortest amount of time and who has risen the farthest. MLB mentioned that Jose Miranda had graduated off of last year's top 10 rankings at 3B. When we add Carlos Correa and all his superlatives to the equation at SS and a former all star SS, Polanco, currently at 2B...that is impressive. 1B will hopefully be manned by Kirilloff, who is still very young (remember he was drafted out of HS) and very promising as a fielder at a relatively new position, where his play looks smooth, and if his wrist is fixed, he can be a very promising hitter, with some power. The Twins' OF is current loaded with award winning defensive outfielders, but probably not any highly ranked OF prospects. I feel Larnach is the most likely to become an impressive young OF'er or possibly Wallner or Martin , who has underperformed in pro ball so far, based on his draft position. Catching is by far the Twins weakest group of prospects. The Twins should attempt to trade for Henry Davis of the Pirates, who have 2 catchers ranked in the top 10 prospects. Davis is rated as having the best catching arm among the prospects. The Mets also have 2 catchers in the top ten list of prospects and both will probably be good hitters in the majors. In fact the Mets' prospect catcher, Alvarez, is rated as being the best hitting prospect of all prospects, and ranked #1 among all prospects. So I expect he will be the first choice to catch for the Mets. Possibly that will free up the other top prospect catcher on the Mets, Parada, to be traded to the Twins. Now about those pitching prospects....