The Minnesota Twins Have a New Top 100 Prospect

[Jamie Cameron]

Image courtesy of William Parmeter (photo of Dasan Hill)

 

That didn’t take long. Just ten months after being drafted by the Minnesota Twins with the very nice 69th overall pick, Dasan Hill was named the 85th best global prospect by Baseball America. That feels aggressive for someone who, at the time of writing, has thrown 12 professional innings. Let’s talk about it.

Before we dig into strengths and opportunities from Hill’s early showing, it’s worth digging into the aggressiveness of the ranking. Here’s my working hypothesis. In general, the industry is trending towards a more frequent and more aggressive ranking of prospects. Why? Two reasons; with increasing prospect-based content, there’s pressure to be ‘first’ (or close to it) on a guy. That’s not a criticism of BA. I’m a paid, very happy subscriber. It’s simply calling out an observation. Secondly, and more relevantly; prospect numbers 70-125 are fairly interchangeable. 

So what about Hill, eh? How has he looked? How is he performing? What do the first glimpses of his arsenal tell us about him?

There are some clues in his signing of how bullish the Twins were on Hill. They signed him for $2 million to forgo his commitment to DBU. That’s towards the upper end of prep bonuses outside the first round of the 2024 draft. Next, the frame. He’s listed at 6’5, 160 pounds. He’s definitely put on some good weight since being drafted, but it’s easy to see the vision here. A prospect whose velo popped into the mid-90s pre-draft with a premium projectable frame.

The early returns have been encouraging. Hill has made four appearances, the most recent of which he was removed from after 1.1 innings with back tightness. He’s been pretty dominant so far in his age-19 season. 12 innings pitched, a 2.84 FIP, a 43.8 K%, and a 10.4 BB%. Insert your own small sample size caveat here, but that’s an encouraging start. I’ve caught most of Hill’s starts this season and there are two tangible takeaways; no one at Low-A can touch his breaking/off-speed stuff, and the strikes can come and go. I’d expect the latter to be true for a prep draftee in their first professional season. Hill has thrown 60% strikes in 2025 (dragged down by his most recent appearance). He’ll need to be closer to 70% when it’s all said and done.

Hill throws from a higher three quarter slot. There’s some deception in the delivery with a little crossfire there. He keeps the ball hidden well behind his head through his delivery. Hill doesn’t have much extension, a trait the Twins seem to like in their pitchers (Ober, Pablo, Paddack etc.)

Hill has two fastball shapes, a four seamer and a two seamer, the latter being what he is relying on more heavily early in his pro career. Hill’s fastballs are probably his least interesting pitch currently. It’s the one that’s potentially going to get damaged by right-handed hitters as, against righties specifically, he’s leaving it over the heart of the plate significantly more (~15%) than against lefties. Still, we should note the wins too. Hill has added velo since joining the Twins. In his spring training outings, his fastball was up to 99 mph. So far in game action, it’s touched 98 mph. That’s going to create some margin for error.

Hill’s secondary pitches are where he separates himself for a pitcher so young. He has three offerings, a slider, curveball, and changeup, all of which look strong in the early going.

Hill’s slider averages 81.7 mph. I’d expect that to firm up through his pro career. It has two plane movement, both sweep and drop and through those first 12 innings, is generating a whiff rate north of 60%. It looks like a nightmare for Low-A hitters. The curveball looks similar, just with around 9 inches more drop than the slider. This pitch sits at 79.2 mph on average (this will need to creep up, too). While it’s not as good a pitch as the slider, what’s been impressive is Hill’s ability to command it. He can consistently place it on the bottom right corner of the strike zone against right-handed hitters, rendering anyone unable to do much with it.

Finally, Hill’s changeup. This will be a crucial pitch in helping to neutralize right-handed hitters. This might be his best pitch. It gets a ton of late fade and is averaging over 15 inches of horizontal break, thrown around 84 mph on average, close to an ideal velocity separation from his fastballs.

There’s plenty to work on here and we’re taking a peak at very small sample sizes with Hill in his pro debut. What I would say stand out early on, are the quality of depth of the pitches in his arsenal, in addition to his ability to command some of his off-speed and breaking pitches effectively. That’s not a combination you often see in a prep draftee in their first pro season. Let’s hope we get to see plenty more in 2025.

 

 

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[Patzky]

Yay! (And he's hurt. ) 😮

[twinstalker]

Canceled (paused) my Fubo over the summer and need to subscribe to Twins.tv.  I'll give you twenty guesses as to whether their web site is functional.

So, since they don't want my money, any idea how I might watch today's game?

[Fatbat]

Hopefully his injury is minor. Kid has some stuff.

[LambchoP]

Well every twins fan knows that every ranked prospect of ours has to hit the injured list a few times before making the big league team. Hopefully Hill is getting his injuries out of the way early because so far in SSS, he looks like he could be potential ace material as long as the organization doesn't mess him up 

[madtowntwin]

Would the photograph indicate he's "Filling Out" a little bit?? Loved the pick when he was drafted, but talk about the proverbial "String Bean?....Something to the tune of 6'6" 160#. Talent ceiling is off the charts, but obviously finger are crossed that the rest of his body can catch up to his arm. Some patience will need to be demonstrated as he develops...I suspect that most every ache and pain will be monitored closely. 

26 minutes ago, LambchoP said:

Well every twins fan knows that every ranked prospect of ours has to hit the injured list a few times before making the big league team. Hopefully Hill is getting his injuries out of the way early because so far in SSS, he looks like he could be potential ace material as long as the organization doesn't mess him up 

 

[dxpavelka]

1 hour ago, twinstalker said:

Canceled (paused) my Fubo over the summer and need to subscribe to Twins.tv.  I'll give you twenty guesses as to whether their web site is functional.

So, since they don't want my money, any idea how I might watch today's game?

I have Twins.tv on my cable system.  Works just fine. 

[yeahyabetcha]

59 minutes ago, dxpavelka said:

I have Twins.tv on my cable system.  Works just fine. 

I have been streaming them all season with zero issues.

[Brandon]

Good stuff. Now we just need 4 more top 100 prospects side like pitching, you can never have too many many top 100 prospects.  
On a more serious note. It’s cool to learn more about our players and prospects and their skill set.

[Dman]

I really liked the pick when they made it but I never expected to be a top 100 guy his first full pro year.  Usually the high school arms struggle to some degree, but he has been good from the start.  He will need to fill out some but Festa is still pretty skinny and he does just fine.  My mind would blown if the Twins developed an ace type lefty.  There's a long way to go, but I love seeing Hill off to a great start.

[mikelink45]

Always fun, but no ranking counts until they prove it.

[twinstalker]

5 hours ago, yeahyabetcha said:

I have been streaming them all season with zero issues.

Well, I had them for a month, thinking I was going to pause Fubo a month ago, so I could actually watch them on either app and both worked fine.  I canceled the twins.tv subscription on April 27 and was watching them through Fubo only since, when I actually did pause my Fubo on Friday.  Saw the Fri/Sat games on Apple/Fox but could not re-subscribe this morning after logging into my account.

Turns out I found a workaround.  By the way, if you need customer service, good luck. 

And before sending this just now I figured out what I think the issue was.  I was using a VPN that placed me in Chicago.  Not sure why that would matter.

 

[Ruven]

The Twins are moving toward an entirely homegrown rotation, and that’s alright with me. For now trade acquisitions Pablo, Ryan, Paddack, and SWR are of course welcome to hold down the fort, maybe for several seasons, but the once mythical pitching pipeline now has a pulse.

And that means it may become possible down the road to trade away (if necessary) the more expen$ive pitchers (Paddack & Pablo now, Ryan & Ober eventually) for rare, needed parts (RH power, high .OBP speedster) that are close to plug and play because quality arms are ready to step up. Good times. 

[bean5302]

On 5/11/2025 at 10:06 AM, Fatbat said:

Hopefully his injury is minor. Kid has some stuff.

Tender/tight upper back. Sounds minor.

[Linus]

Long way to go but reason to pay attention. Having some idea with four different pitches at that age and some velocity plus being left handed? Yup. 

[Mike Sixel]

4 hours ago, Ruven said:

The Twins are moving toward an entirely homegrown rotation, and that’s alright with me. For now trade acquisitions Pablo, Ryan, Paddack, and SWR are of course welcome to hold down the fort, maybe for several seasons, but the once mythical pitching pipeline now has a pulse.

And that means it may become possible down the road to trade away (if necessary) the more expen$ive pitchers (Paddack & Pablo now, Ryan & Ober eventually) for rare, needed parts (RH power, high .OBP speedster) that are close to plug and play because quality arms are ready to step up. Good times. 

Trading for guys is part of the pipeline. How is this not real in people's heads at this point? It's how CLE did it, for one example....

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

Trading for guys is part of the pipeline. How is this not real in people's heads at this point? It's how CLE did it, for one example....

Some people don't seem to understand that drafting and development is pretty important. Cleveland's draft/development pipeline produced 7.6 WAR last year. The Twins? 3.5 WAR despite Minnesota typically hanging on tooth and nail to their guys until they hit free agency.