2 Lessons Learned from the Twins 2023 Draft

[Jamie Cameron]

The 2023 MLB Draft is in the books. Players and teams are in the thick of agreeing to terms on signing bonuses. As we bring our Draft coverage to a close for the 2023 cycle, it’s a good time to reflect on what this latest crop of players taught us about the Twins tendencies and preferences.

Image courtesy of Brock Beauchamp

Before we dig into some reflections on the Twins 2023 draft class, I wanted to provide a few notes on the second annual Consensus Draft Board. I ranked 311 players using nine industry boards and added 115 player write ups in what I believe to be the first and only board of its type available for the MLB Draft. Through six rounds of the draft (around 200 picks), 90% of players drafted were on the Consensus Board. By the end of the draft, only six college players I listed weren't drafted. I'm working on a more robust look at where prospects were drafted in relation to their consensus position compared to their ranking on others boards, but that's a work in progress. Thank you to everyone who used and engaged in it.

The Twins ‘Preferring College Players’ is a Myth Busted
For multiple years now, we’ve heard the refrain ‘Twins prefer college bats’ from draft analysts and in draft content (including here at Twins Daily, and including me). It’s time to put that narrative to bed. The Twins drafted prep players at 5 (Jenkins), 34 (Soto), 82 (Winokur), and 150 (Questad). High school players comprised four of the Twins first six picks.

Indeed, looking at the past 25 years of MLB Drafts, the Twins have taken college players on average 61.6% of the time, the fourth smallest percentage in MLB. By contrast, the Twins have taken high school players on average 38.1% of the time, the fourth highest percentage in MLB over that same span.

The transferable takeaway, then, is that trying to simplify the Twins preferences to a particular demographic is a far too reductionist approach. In a pre-draft interview with Darren Wolfson, Twins VP of Amateur Scouting Sean Johnson stated that the organization's goal is always to ‘lean into the strength of the draft’. That's a much more useful principle to center when considering Twins draft picks in future cycles.

The Twins Leaned into What They Excel at, Developing Arms
In addition to leaning into the strength of the Draft, MLB organizations with excellent talent recognition also lean into their player development strengths. The Marlins took Noble Meyer and Thomas White with their first two picks, for example. In the case of the Twins, it’s developing pitching and adding velocity to arms. 

Another misapplied principle in Twins organizational parlance is the idea of ‘Falvey’s pitching pipeline’, as we tend to fixate on arms who have contributed to the major league team, and in an even more hyper-focused fashion, on starting pitching. The Twins organization is flush with pitching in a variety of roles that has been exceptionally developed since the beginning of the Falvey regime.

At the major league level up to 40% of the Twins rotation this season has at times been pitchers the Twins drafted and developed in or after the 12th round (Bailey Ober and Louie Varland). Other pitchers at least partially developed in house that have contributed include Joe Ryan, Jhoan Duran, Jordan Balazovic, Brent Headrick, Griffin Jax, Jovani Moran, Brock Stewart, and Caleb Thielbar. Look through other levels of the minor leagues and you’ll find many more promising arms at various stages of the development continuum from David Festa and Marco Raya, to Cory Lewis and C.J. Culpepper. The Twins know how to develop arms.

In the 2023 draft, The Twins went on a college pitching run, selecting college pitchers in 12 consecutive picks between rounds seven and 18. Many of those pitchers are from smaller schools and colleges and have a pitch, a feature, or a quirk the Twins feel like they can meaningfully develop. To inspire confidence in this approach, we only need look back at the Twins 2022 draft, and the performance to date of arms drafted in similar rounds:

Zebby Matthews, RHP, 8th round (234th overall pick)
70.1 IP, 3.71 ERA, 77 K, 7 BB (A and A+ combined)

Cory Lewis, RHP, 9th round (264th overall pick)
63 IP, 2.29 ERA, 81 K, 21 BB (A and A+ combined)

C.J. Culpepper, RHP, 13th round (384th overall pick)
57.1 IP, 1.88 ERA, 61 K, 16 BB (A and A+ combined)

All three of these pitchers were drafted outside the top 200 picks, but have added velocity, have already been promoted to A+ Cedar Rapids in their first full professional seasons, and have excellent production. An extremely promising start to their careers with the organization.

While it's easy to look at an outlets pre-draft rankings and struggle to see why the Twins may not take a player ‘still on the board’, this is both the nature of the later rounds of the MLB draft and an excellent example of the Twins leveraging their strengths. After the outstanding early returns on 2022’s college pitching class, the Twins talent identification and player development should have the full confidence of fans in their ability to develop useful arms to contribute or trade for other assets.

Stay tuned in the next few weeks for an announcement from Jeremy Nygaard and me about how we’ll be expanding our coverage of the draft for the 2024 cycle. Thanks for reading and engaging since February. The Draft community at Twins Daily is the best.

Do you have any reflections or trends to share from the 2023 draft cycle? join the discussion with a comment below.

View full article

[roger]

Thanks for this update, Jamie.  Found it to be interesting.

Those three starters from 2022 are certainly doing well.  Heck, more than well.  Don't know if any will ever pitch for the Twins, but if they could get one fourth or fifth starter out of every draft from late in the draft (say rounds 6+), that would be huge. 

Must agree I was somewhat surprised as I watched them draft college pitcher after college pitcher for seemingly the entire draft beginning with what was it, the seventh round?

[Mike Sixel]

I's a college pitcher being in high A actually unusual at this point? I have no idea. 

[jishfish]

Awesome points Jamie, and I think a really great exercise to do while everything is so fresh after the draft. I'll be curious to see if the "Twins love LHH College Bats" sticks around next year on a national level or not, but I think locally that can be put to rest pretty easily.

I have to imagine the one constant going forward is that the Twins are going to hammer college arms in Rounds 5-15 (as a lot of teams do). But would be awesome to see them continue to have success there, as they have with the 2022 class.

[Nashvilletwin]

This is great stuff Jamie.  Love the analysis and effort.  Thank you. 

[Dman]

Thanks for the great coverage of the draft!!  There is no better site for the Twins draft than Twins Daily.  The interaction you get to have is top notch as is the information.  

I will say looking back a lot of the Twins best players and biggest stars came from the high school ranks so I like the fact fact they leveraged that this draft. Still while high school picks often have the highest ceiling they also have the lowest floors.  So no guarantee's there.

The Twins have nailed a lot of picks in the last three drafts but I still like what they did in 2021 with Petty and then grabbing three left handed pitchers.  Granted most of the top of that draft has been traded away now as other teams liked those picks as well. 2022 is looking pretty good right now as well if Prielipp were healthy it would be looking even better so I think they are identifying good players and doing a good job of development.

Hoping this class is their best one yet. Thanks again for covering the draft for us junkies who like to follow it early. 🙂

[jmlease1]

I like this analysis of the Twins tendencies in drafting, much more subtle and more insightful. I think it makes total sense that as an organization they try to lean in on the strengths they see in the draft and try to draft players (and I'm sure this applies more to later round picks then say their first couple of picks and impacts those pick more strongly) that can be impacted by what they see as their developmental strengths.

Overall I feel like the Twins have put together and maintained a relatively strong farm system; without a ton of high picks their strengths are more in terms of depth now, but even graduating a fair number of players into MLB service (or dealing prospects) they haven't bottomed out the way that we've seen other clubs go. Before this year's draft there was some chatter about how much weaker the Twins system was, but when the rankings came out from various publications the Twins were generally middle of the pack, not bottom 5.

[Jamie Cameron]

3 hours ago, jishfish said:

Awesome points Jamie, and I think a really great exercise to do while everything is so fresh after the draft. I'll be curious to see if the "Twins love LHH College Bats" sticks around next year on a national level or not, but I think locally that can be put to rest pretty easily.

I have to imagine the one constant going forward is that the Twins are going to hammer college arms in Rounds 5-15 (as a lot of teams do). But would be awesome to see them continue to have success there, as they have with the 2022 class.

Think this narrative will stick, because, to be fair, no one with a national focus gets to the same level of nerdiness we all do with the Twins specifically lol

[Jamie Cameron]

3 hours ago, Dman said:

Thanks for the great coverage of the draft!!  There is no better site for the Twins draft than Twins Daily.  The interaction you get to have is top notch as is the information.  

I will say looking back a lot of the Twins best players and biggest stars came from the high school ranks so I like the fact fact they leveraged that this draft. Still while high school picks often have the highest ceiling they also have the lowest floors.  So no guarantee's there.

The Twins have nailed a lot of picks in the last three drafts but I still like what they did in 2021 with Petty and then grabbing three left handed pitchers.  Granted most of the top of that draft has been traded away now as other teams liked those picks as well. 2022 is looking pretty good right now as well if Prielipp were healthy it would be looking even better so I think they are identifying good players and doing a good job of development.

Hoping this class is their best one yet. Thanks again for covering the draft for us junkies who like to follow it early. 🙂

The Prielipp injury is such a bummer. I still like the pick as a second rounder at the time though, hope he can recover follows.

Thanks for all the draft engagement and fun you all. Jeremy and I will have a fun content announcement in the next few weeks for folks who are interested in carrying on the draft content train

[Jamie Cameron]

2 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

I like this analysis of the Twins tendencies in drafting, much more subtle and more insightful. I think it makes total sense that as an organization they try to lean in on the strengths they see in the draft and try to draft players (and I'm sure this applies more to later round picks then say their first couple of picks and impacts those pick more strongly) that can be impacted by what they see as their developmental strengths.

Overall I feel like the Twins have put together and maintained a relatively strong farm system; without a ton of high picks their strengths are more in terms of depth now, but even graduating a fair number of players into MLB service (or dealing prospects) they haven't bottomed out the way that we've seen other clubs go. Before this year's draft there was some chatter about how much weaker the Twins system was, but when the rankings came out from various publications the Twins were generally middle of the pack, not bottom 5.

Great point. With the new class, guessing the Twins will be somewhere 15-20 on most farm lists. That's impressive after all the departures.

[Sielk]

52 minutes ago, Jamie Cameron said:

Think this narrative will stick, because, to be fair, no one with a national focus gets to the same level of nerdiness we all do with the Twins specifically lol

I still don't know where this narrative came from in the first place.

Sure, they have drafted some college bats. But even before this year's draft four of the current regime's nine first-round picks have been high schoolers. That's basically half of them.

How do all the experts look at this and conclude that "the Twins only want college players"?

[DocBauer]

Festa and Nowlin are a couple of other late picks in recent seasons that are showing well in the sytem, Festa more so.

They do tend to mix things up in regard to height, weight, and different levels of ball and different kinds of "stuff", which I'm glad to see. Senseless to pigeonhole yourself in to just one type of anything. I know I stated this elsewhere recently, but it's interesting to me the Twins aren't afraid to draft guys:

A} Coming off injury, or in their first season back from one, believing they are getting value in an arm being "underrated" at the time. 

B} Smaller school arms...often with good length...that they believe aren't fully developed yet. And that makes sense. Most 17-18yo kids simply aren't done with their physical development yet. Some add 30lbs and grow another 2-4" even after HS graduation. So you get someone from a smaller school that wasn't ready for the power conference offers and maybe has a higher ceiling available. 

A smart approach!

 

[old nurse]

10 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

I's a college pitcher being in high A actually unusual at this point? I have no idea. 

From a nondescript  college career to promoted twice in a years time, you would not be wrong to call that unusual. 

[old nurse]

Tyler Mahle, Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Kent Maeda, Chis Paddackr, Pablo Lopez all were traded for, not developed by the Twins. Ober is their only success story. They have a quite a few failed starters in the bullpen

[madtowntwin]

Interesting article on the Twin's Draft (Philosophy) and subsequent comments. In terms of pitching metrics there is all kinds of data on spin rate, mph, arm angle, and release point. In terms of release point the focus seems more related to side arm, behind the ear, submarine, etc. In the NBA - Height and wingspan are frequently mentioned within player analysis and summation. Watching Ober the other night I was wondering if there might be another factor in Twin's pitching analysis. That metric would include a pitcher's wingspan and the point at which the pitch is released between the pitcher's plant foot / the extended arm holding the ball / the plate....I suppose inseam would also be factorial. Just been pondering this. Would would the metric be termed?? The "Ober Under"?? Sorry - Puns, It's a curse....