Twins Minor League Report (8/2): Twins Top Yankees in Wild Game in Boca Chica

[Ted Schwerzler]

Minnesota topped the White Sox at Target Field on Friday. It was the 18th straight loss for Chicago. The DSL Twins played an insane game that you have to see (or read about) to believe. Outside of that, it was the Wichita Wind Surge that saved a organizational, minor-league sweep.

 

Image courtesy of Ed Bailey, Wichita Wind Surge

CURRENT W-L Records
Minnesota Twins: 60-48
St. Paul Saints: 53-52
Wichita Wind Surge: 42-58
Cedar Rapids Kernels: 55-43
Fort Myers Mighty Mussels: 51-46
DSL Twins: 22-19

TRANSACTIONS

• C Patrick Winkel placed on temporary inactive list by St. Paul. 
• Fort Myers RHP Kyle Bloor was released by the Twins organization. 

SAINTS SENTINEL
Iowa 5, St. Paul 1
Box Score
Zebby Matthews was on the bump for the Saints, and it was a tough outing for the recently-promoted prospect. He got tagged for five runs on nine hits. Matthews didn’t walk anyone and did strike out eight, however.

Iowa scored all five of their runs in the first inning to grab a big lead early. A grand slam by Royce Lewis's high school teammate (Chase Stumpf) in the opening frame was certainly not ideal. Edouard Julien plated Dalton Shuffield with a sixth-inning ground out, but that was the only run St. Paul mustered.

The Saints had just four hits on the night. They struck out 10 times and drew just a pair of walks. Justin Topa worked another scoreless inning during his rehab assignment.

WIND SURGE WISDOM
Wichita 8, NW Arkansas 4
Box Score
It was Marco Raya’s turn for the Wind Surge, and he had another abbreviated start. Working 4 1/3 innings, Raya surrendered four runs on seven hits with a pair of walks and four strikeouts. After Jarret Whorff struck out both batters he faced to end the fifth inning, Cory Lewis worked the rest of the game. The traditional starter earned his first save working four scoreless innings. He had five strikeouts and a pair of walks.

Wichita was down by three runs after the top of the first inning, but they had a quick answer. Carson McCusker’s fielder’s choice scored both Luke Keaschall and Jake Rucker. Jeferson Morales then blasted his seventh dinger of the season to make it 5-3 as Tyler Dearden and McCusker scored ahead of him.

McCusker’s second-inning single scored Keaschall to make it 6-3. The Naturals responded with a run in the fourth inning, but Noah Cardenas homered to bring home Ben Ross in the bottom of the sixth and make it an 8-4 game.

Ross was the only Wichita hitter to record a pair of hits. The Wind Surge worked around a 13/3 K/BB on the evening.

KERNELS NUGGETS
Great Lakes 5, Cedar Rapids 2
Box Score
Ricky Castro was on the bump for the Kernels and worked five innings. The Loons got him for three runs (two earned), on five hits and a walk. He struck out four batters.

Great Lakes took a 2-0 lead in the second inning, but the Kernels had a quick answer. Walker Jenkins drove home Jose Salas with a single for his first RBI at High-A, and Rubel Cespedes plated him on a single of his own. Tied at 2-2, the teams went to the fourth inning.

Former Twins prospect Noah Miller reached on a fifth-inning error that allowed Great Lakes to take a 3-2 lead. They added two more runs in the seventh inning for some insurance.

The Kernels had 10 hits in the game. Kevin Maitan joined Cespedes, Salas, and Jenkins with a pair of hits. Cedar Rapids carried a 9/2 K/BB while leaving seven runners on base. No hits went for extra bases.

MUSSEL MATTERS
St. Lucie 3, Fort Myers 2
Box Score
Jose Olivares started and worked a pair of innings allowing one run. Adrian Bohorquez made his Fort Myers debut and worked three scoreless innings while allowing just a single hit. He struck out four and didn’t give up a walk.

St. Lucie took the lead with a first-inning run before Yohander Martinez tied things with a fifth inning sacrifice bunt. Maddux Houghton scored on the play.  The Mets jumped back in front with a pair of runs in the seventh inning. Yasser Mercedes brought home Poncho Ruiz in the eighth inning to make it 3-2, but that’s as close as Fort Myers could get.

The Mighty Mussels scattered nine hits on Friday night. Brandon Winokur and Daniel Pena both had two hits.

DOMINICAN DAILIES
DSL Twins 21, DSL Yankees Bombers 19 (13 innings)
Box Score
Daiber De Los Santos has put up some nice stat lines throughout the DSL season, and Friday was another in the list of strong games. He went 3-for-8 with a pair of doubles. He scored two runs and drove in a run as well. Merphy Hernandez hit his first professional home run, a three-run blast in the sixth inning. He finished 3-for-5 with three walks and five RBI. Ramiro Dominguez also went yard, his second homer of the year. Eduardo Beltre homered in a 2-for-8 game with a pair of runs and four RBI.

The Twins scored 21 runs on 17 hits. After single tallies in the fourth and fifth innings, the Twins put up seven in the sixth inning to take a commanding 9-0 lead. They gave back four in the bottom half, but scored in the seventh and eighth innings to keep the breathing room. The game was pushed to the 13th inning and both teams scored four in the 12th inning. A three-run 13th won it for the Twins. 

Leonardo Rondon drew the start and his three innings of work were nearly flawless. Allowing just three hits, he struck out three to lower his ERA to 3.60 on the year.

TWINS DAILY MINOR LEAGUE PLAYERS OF THE DAY
Pitcher of the Day – Cory Lewis (Wichita) - 4.0 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 5 K
Hitter of the Day – Merphy Hernandez (DSL) - 3-5, 3 R, 5 RBI, 3 BB, HR

PROSPECT SUMMARY
Check out the Prospect Tracker for much more on the Twins Top 20 prospects after seeing how they did on Thursday. 
#1– Walker Jenkins (Cedar Rapids) – 2-4, R, RBI, K
#2 – Brooks Lee (Minnesota) – 0-2, R, 2 BB, K
#5 – Gabriel Gonzalez (Cedar Rapids) – 0-4, K
#6 – Marco Raya (Wichita) – 4.1 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 4 K
#8 – Austin Martin (Minnesota) – R
#9 – Luke Keaschall (Wichita) – 0-3, 2 R, BB, K
#10 – Brandon Winokur (Fort Myers) – 2-4
#13 – Tanner Schobel (Wichita) – 1-4, 2B, 2 K
#14 – Zebby Matthews (St. Paul) – 5.0 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 0 BB, 8 K
#15 – Cory Lewis (Wichita) – 4.0 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 5 K

SATURDAY’S PROBABLE STARTERS
St. Paul @ Iowa (6:08 PM CST) – RHP Louie Varland (3-7, 5.34 ERA)
Wichita vs NW Arkansas (6:05 PM) - TBD
Cedar Rapids vs Great Lakes (6:35 PM CST) – LHP Connor Prielipp (0-0, 0.00 ERA)
Fort Myers vs St. Lucie (5:05 PM CST) – RHP Charlee Soto (0-4, 5.64 ERA)

Please feel free to ask questions and discuss Friday’s games!

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[SaberNerd]

With Bohorquez being in Fort Myers, finally have public Statcast data on him and he looks like a legit prospect.  Fastball around 95mph, and a 2900RPM curveball, just 19.  Long ways away, but this puts him in the top 30 conversation.

[High heat]

Cory Lewis piggy backing at AA behind Raya really makes me nervous.  
 

I know Lewis was hurt for most of the first half but has he fallen that far out of the organizations view or was this just a way to get two guys in knowing they want them to only throw 4 innings.  I was hoping Lewis was goin to progress this yr  and the knuckles would make a MLB return.

[bean5302]

Whew. These last couple starts have really put the brakes on the Zebby Matthews train. Not sure if the Twins are having Matthews work on something or if his stuff just isn't playing as well against more polished hitters.

[mark sills]

5 hours ago, High heat said:

Cory Lewis piggy backing at AA behind Raya really makes me nervous.  
 

I know Lewis was hurt for most of the first half but has he fallen that far out of the organizations view or was this just a way to get two guys in knowing they want them to only throw 4 innings.  I was hoping Lewis was goin to progress this yr  and the knuckles would make a MLB return.

All the starters do a piggy back if there day to pitch is Friday , Raya pitches every Friday and is is on seven day, the rest are on six days.

[FlyingFinn]

5 hours ago, High heat said:

Cory Lewis piggy backing at AA behind Raya really makes me nervous.  

Wichita has so many starting pitchers that they have to do this to get them their innings. And the Wind Surge bullpen has blown so many saves this year that the way to win games is just use the starters in piggy backing games. I think it's worked twice this week. Lewis is just a better pitcher than Raya right now but Raya is still young.

[ryan189]

1 hour ago, mark sills said:

All the starters do a piggy back if there day to pitch is Friday , Raya pitches every Friday and is is on seven day, the rest are on six days.

 

[ryan189]

you are the first person I have seen on here to figure this out

[ryan189]

y

[ryan189]

1 hour ago, FlyingFinn said:

Wichita has so many starting pitchers that they have to do this to get them their innings. And the Wind Surge bullpen has blown so many saves this year that the way to win games is just use the starters in piggy backing games. I think it's worked twice this week. Lewis is just a better pitcher than Raya right now but Raya is still young.

this is definitely not the reason they do piggy back starts but yes the bullpen has issues .

[terrydactyls]

22 minutes ago, ryan189 said:

this is definitely not the reason they do piggy back starts but yes the bullpen has issues .

That is a very strong statement.  Do you have connections with the team, are part of the coaching staff, or just more insightful than the rest of us?  I thought Mark's reasoning was very logical until you straightened me out.  Thank you.

[ryan189]

go up a couple comments and the guy that talks about raya being on 7 days and the other guys on 6 is 100 percent correct..  but he is kind of correct they have a ton of starters but with current injuries they have not had to piggy back more then just the one day. and rozek has mostly been out of the pen these days and he picks up starts on  occasion.

[tony&rodney]

Just a guess, but one of the areas where Matthews needed some work was on occasionally pitching inside. While Matthews throws hard and has good control, batters have been leaning out over the plate. AAA hitters are better than AA bats and those sliders on the corner were getting hit more often. Unfortunately, last night Mathews beaned Gilberto Celestino in the first inning. Celestino had to be brought off the field on a cart and Matthews was visible upset as were others. Remember that Celestino had been a part of the organization and many of these guys know him. In any event, Matthews just more or less grooved his pitches for a few batters. It almost seemed inevitable that he would give up a hard hit in that inning. Matthews did recover to pitch another four innings though and finished with 8 strikeouts. He will be fine.

FWIW, Matthews is progressing really well as a pitcher, but I doubt the Twins have any ideas of promoting him this year before all of Varland, Boushley, and Plutko with Festa and Dobnak already on the MLB roster. Next year Matthews could get a run.

[Dman]

9 hours ago, SaberNerd said:

With Bohorquez being in Fort Myers, finally have public Statcast data on him and he looks like a legit prospect.  Fastball around 95mph, and a 2900RPM curveball, just 19.  Long ways away, but this puts him in the top 30 conversation.

Yeah I am pretty excited about Bohorquez as well and am glad they are giving him some games in A ball.  He has some wicked stuff from what I understand. Just has to gain a bit more control of it.

Fangraphs has him rated 17 in a getting to be pretty stacked Twins system and this is part of what they have to say about him. If you want to read more I would recommend going to their site.

"Bohorquez looks, rather soundly, like the best pitcher on the Twins’ Florida complex roster and like one of the higher-upside arms in the entire system. The physically mature righty will command a 92-96 mph fastball that sometimes has 19 inches of vertical break. Off of that he locates an upper-80s cutter to his glove side and then pulls the rug out from under hitters with a slower, mid-70s curveball that features 2,800 rpm of spin on average. He is going to carve up complex-level hitters all summer with this kind of stuff and, based on how advanced his feel for location is, he might not meet any resistance until he reaches High- or Double-A."

That's a pretty exciting writeup for a guy they likely didn't see coming.

 

[roger]

Great seeing Topa with another good inning.  Have to believe he is close to joining the Twins pen.  Will be interesting to see who goes down.  Will it be Dobber?

Also great seeing Jenkins with another nice game.  Although its only a couple games, interesting he has 4 K's and noooo walks.  Although Raya only pitched 4+ innings, see he was up to nearly 80 pitches (79).