Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account
  • entries
    22
  • comments
    146
  • views
    24,125

Are We Getting Enough Talent From our Drafts during Falvey's Tenure?

Brandon

Entry posted by Brandon in Draft Grading ·

1,468 views

 Share

Twins Video

Andy MacPhail, a former Twins GM who helped construct the 87 and 91 World Series Teams once said his goal was to promote 2-3 players per season up to the majors to fill roles on the team.  A good farm system can do that.  So, with that in mind let’s review the previous drafts in the Falvey era, not to grade them but to see how Falvey. Levine and company are doing in developing 2-3 starters/ regulars (or really players who can stay on the roster all year including bench and relievers) a year. Below the starters I will include several who at least played a role of some kind and list if anyone else still has a chance to make it to the show. Let me know if I forget someone.  I am not the draft hound as others here.  

2017: was their first draft year and the players who are starters include:

  1.  3B Royce Lewis
  2. OF/DH Brent Rooker
  3. SP Bailey Ober

And that is pretty much it.  There are others who may still make it up for a role including Blaine Enlow, Mark Contreras, Calvin Faucher is with the Rays, and maybe Andrew Bechtold

This draft is a success as Ober and Lewis are a big part of the team now and moving forward.

2018: has many potential role players or players who can carve out niches but there are some who start for the Twins and others who contribute.

  1.  C Ryan Jeffers
  2. OF Trevor Larnarch
  3. RP Cole Sands
  4. RP Josh Winder
  5. RP Kody Funderburk

The jury is still out on Larnarch.  Cole Sands and Josh Winder are likely to be 7th and 8th man on relief pitching with the potential to get better.  Kody Funderburk is just getting started but is off to a nice start and looks promising.  In terms of others who may make it up at some point include DaShawn Keirsey Jr., Chris Williams, Austin Schulfer

This draft needs a little more time to be judged.  Jeffers is a starter and Larnarch should be.  If Kody Funderburk becomes a solid reliever and we get some innings 20-50 from Winder and Sands in the pen in each of the next 2 seasons I would rate this draft as solid. 

2019: we had the misfortune of drafting Keoni Cavaco in the first round which set the draft performance back quite a bit.  But it looks like we still did well in this draft.

  1.  Matt Wallner (also drafted by the Twins in 32nd round in 2016)
  2. Spencer Steer
  3. Eduouard Julien
  4. Louie Varland

Inn addition to these guys Casey Legumina who we trade to the Reds for Farmer, Sawyer Gibson-Long who we traded to Detroit for Fulmer just made his major league debut and Brent Headrick pitched over 20 innings up here this season and is on the shuttle with Josh Winder and Cole Sands as the 7th and 8th relievers Alex Isola is a solid hitting C prospect in AA and Matt Canterino is a top pitching prospect who is injured. 

I gotta say this was a great draft for them. 

2020: was a lost season and while we only drafted 5 players, we do have 3 prospects from this draft.

Alerick Soularie in AA, Kala’I Rosario in A+, and Marco Raya. 

I would rate this draft a success if one player makes it up and is a starter.  The best bet is Raya if he can stay healthy. 

2021: We traded our first 4 picks from the 2021 draft to be more competitive last year.  Petty for Sonny Gray, Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Steve Hajjar were included in the trade for Mahle, and Cade Povich was included in the trade for Lopez from Baltimore. 

Festa is in AAA and is getting close to an opportunity at some point next season.  Christina Strand is now up with Cincinnati, Povich was in AA with a high strikeout rate.  Jaylin Nolin is a top prospect and Noah Miller is already a major league ready defensive specialist if he can learn to hit at all so he can at least be a solid bench player. 

I would say there are lots of depth players in this draft outside of Encarnacion-Strand if we get a few of them to contribute this can be a good draft.

2022: is too early to grade as is 2023 but there are many prospects from the 2022 draft who did well in their first full minor league season including Brooks Lee who made it to AAA and Tanner Schobel in AA. And the Twins were voted as having one of the top three drafts in terms of talent acquired in the draft in 2023. 

Overall, the Twins have consistently done a good job of developing players for the major leagues under Falvey.  I think the surprise is that they have not drafted and developed very much pitching, but have drafted many good hitters, who they developed for the lineup or trade.  I do see many promising starting pitchers down in A and A+ ball so it will be fun to see how that translates as they pitch at more advanced levels next year and so on.  I would rate the 2017 draft, 2019 draft, with 2022 and 2023 drafts looking to join them as the most successful and the 2018 draft is on the cusp.  2020 is an incomplete as COVID torpedoed the season.  The success of the 2021 draft will be determined by players no longer in the organization.  Do you feel like the Twins in the Falvey era are succeeding in drafting and developing players to contribute at the major leagues?

 Share

14 Comments

Recommended Comments

Teflon

Thanks for the article, Brandon. MLB teams have access to such large amounts of information and video on prospects these days I feel it's much harder to whiff on picks than when they were just relying on written reports from regional scouts and cross-checkers. I also feel the rate at which prospects ascend can be inflated by the injury situation on the big league club or deflated by logjams at certain positions  - so there's not alway consistent opportunities from year-to-year.

Link to comment
Brandon
3 hours ago, Teflon said:

Thanks for the article, Brandon. MLB teams have access to such large amounts of information and video on prospects these days I feel it's much harder to whiff on picks than when they were just relying on written reports from regional scouts and cross-checkers. I also feel the rate at which prospects ascend can be inflated by the injury situation on the big league club or deflated by logjams at certain positions  - so there's not alway consistent opportunities from year-to-year.

If we are able to produce more than the 2-3 regular players on an annual basis it will make it easier for us to let players go as they approach free agency which will help keep payroll in check.  How many players should we be able to produce on an annual basis?  3? 4? 5?  obviously it will fluctuate some from year to year.  But the goal should be to produce 10-15 regulars every 5 years.  Again if we are producing 15-20 regulars then we have players to trade and the payroll costs will be able to stay down as we move on from players as they approach free agency.   The Twins will probably put more money into scouting as they get more efficient at this type of player acquisition,  

Link to comment
Trov
10 hours ago, Teflon said:

Thanks for the article, Brandon. MLB teams have access to such large amounts of information and video on prospects these days I feel it's much harder to whiff on picks than when they were just relying on written reports from regional scouts and cross-checkers. I also feel the rate at which prospects ascend can be inflated by the injury situation on the big league club or deflated by logjams at certain positions  - so there's not alway consistent opportunities from year-to-year.

In terms of drafting it is still a crap shoot.  Many teams miss, and sometimes number 1 picks get missed.  When you are drafting high school kids you have no clue how will they develop into adulthood.  With college kids you do not know if they will adjust to wood bats, and to facing top pitching day in and day out.  You can get an idea but there has and will always be flops in drafts, and hidden gems that rise to the top. Sometimes it is injuries that hurt guys at the top, and sometimes the gems are found because they did not come from big areas that got much exposure. Sometimes you draft a guy because he has the basics but you want to hope he improves in other areas, and they just never do.  

Link to comment
DJL44
7 hours ago, Brandon said:

If we are able to produce more than the 2-3 regular players on an annual basis it will make it easier for us to let players go as they approach free agency which will help keep payroll in check.  How many players should we be able to produce on an annual basis?  3? 4? 5?  obviously it will fluctuate some from year to year.  But the goal should be to produce 10-15 regulars every 5 years.  Again if we are producing 15-20 regulars then we have players to trade and the payroll costs will be able to stay down as we move on from players as they approach free agency.   The Twins will probably put more money into scouting as they get more efficient at this type of player acquisition,  

The average number of successful draft picks per team per year is 1.5. That's measuring success by getting a pick who contributes more than someone you could get off the waiver wire for free. Producing 15 players every 5 years is well above average.

Link to comment
Brandon
12 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The average number of successful draft picks per team per year is 1.5. That's measuring success by getting a pick who contributes more than someone you could get off the waiver wire for free. Producing 15 players every 5 years is well above average.

I guess that’s why Andy MacPhail said 2-3 players meaning 2.5 players which is a full 1.0 player per year on average higher than the national average.  Which gives the team half its 25/26 man roster every 5 years with the rest coming from Extensions, Free Agency, Waivers, Trades and so on.  Developing players is the lowest cost for player acquisition especially if more are developed without increasing spending.  

Link to comment
Brandon
14 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I think they're drafting well but haven't been getting much out of international free agency. They have been particularly bad at acquiring pitching through international free agency.

Not since the international class of 2009.  Hopefully they fix the area where development is going wrong and start developing more players from International signings.  I know we are signing highly rated players so the problem is in development.  Maybe at low A and Rookie League levels the coaching isn’t reaching those players properly.  I don’t know.  

Link to comment
jmlease1
41 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I think they're drafting well but haven't been getting much out of international free agency. They have been particularly bad at acquiring pitching through international free agency.

well, arguably Yunior Severino could be seen as an international free agent, and Emmanuel Rodriguez was an international signing as well. But there hasn't been much in the way of pitching in a while. That said, as much of a crap shoot as the draft still is in baseball, international signings are even more variable, I think.

Link to comment
Trov
1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

I think they're drafting well but haven't been getting much out of international free agency. They have been particularly bad at acquiring pitching through international free agency.

International pitching prospects are very rare generally.  They sometimes develop, but if you look at the top international guys, very few are signed as pitchers.  Trying to project a 16 or 17 year old pitcher is never going to be easy.  Even highly talked about HS pitchers still are a high miss rate.  

In terms of the position players, E-Rod is a top guy.  The rest of the international guys are really too young to tell what we got from them.  Most are signed at 16 or 17 so takes at least a couple of years to even make full season ball normally. 

Link to comment
saviking

I'm fine with who they drafted. But I'm a little disappointed in how poorly they have traded assets and wish they woukd be a little more aggressive in bringing them up to the big leagues. I'm hoping they use more of them next year. 

Link to comment
Fire Dan Gladden

Seven years is not a huge window for analyzing drafts, but they absolutely have to receive a ton of credit so far.

- They have reimagined the entire farm system with a large number of hard throwing pitchers.  All of the pitching prospects on the cusp are theirs.
- Complaints can be made in hindsight about the prospects they have traded, but the fact is that at the time the trades were made, they were viewed to have tied or won most every deal.
- Churning out 2-3 quality starting players every year is a FANTASTIC output.  They are trending in that direction right now.

People complain about the FO for a lot of reasons, but I can't see how their can be complaints about the farm system

Link to comment
jmlease1
9 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:


People complain about the FO for a lot of reasons, but I can't see how their can be complaints about the farm system

They've had some busts at the top of the draft (Cavaco & Sabato are notable) that were questionable at the time, but overall their drafts are producing and they've done a good job of finding value in later round picks, so it's not just dependent on the first rounder making good. Sure, Sabato probably isn't going to be anything...but Kal'ai Rosario and Marco Raya might. Even after dealing significant assets from the 2021 draft away, they still have guys like Festa, Ohl, and Nowlin developing in the pipeline.

I'm pretty impressed overall with their drafts and subsequent development of players in the minors. They're not all going to work, but it's easy to see where talent is starting to flow upwards on a consistent basis. They're going to be facing some real questions on who to add to the 40-man and could have real competition for spots on the MLB roster even without free agent signings, and that's a great problem to have. 

Julien, Wallner, Lewis, Ober are all important contributors to this team, Varland coming in late to shore up the bullpen is big...and the cupboard is not bare!

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...