Twins Daily 2026 Top Prospects: #11-15

[Nick Nelson]

Image courtesy of Image courtesy of William Parmeter (Marco Raya)

Part one: #16-20

15. Marco Raya, RHP

Age: 23
2025 Stats (AAA): 98.2 IP, 6.02 ERA, 1.62 WHIP, 9.3 K/9, 5.2 BB/9
During his rise through the minors, Raya has been a consistent fixture in our rankings despite several things working against him: workload restrictions, shaky control, and results that never quite matched up to the quality of his stuff. But any observer could see that quality on display — hard, high-spin breaking balls that gave older and more experienced hitters fits.

Last year, Raya's momentum came to a halt in Triple-A. For the first time in his pro career, he was the one looking overwhelmed as walks, wild pitches and laborious outings piled up. It's a stumble we can excuse, given that Raya arrived in Triple-A as a 22-year-old who was promoted aggressively through the Twins' system. But now he has to rebound and prove his brutal 2025 was merely a bump in the road.

He'll be aiming to do so in the bullpen. Given how little interest the Twins have shown in building up his stamina for a starting workload, this has long appeared to be the plan, but now his conversion to a reliever is all but official. That's a spot in which Raya has a very good chance to thrive, and perhaps blossom in a late-inning role — as long as he can throw strikes. For what it's worth, he's looked excellent in early spring action.

14. Quentin Young, SS

Age: 18
2025 Stats (A): 22 PA, .118/.227/.118, 0 HR, 3 RBI
The Twins were thinking big — literally and figuratively — when they used their second-round pick, 54th overall, to select Young in last year's draft. Turning 19 in a few days, the former prep star is already a massive specimen at 6-foot-6 and 225 lbs. His throwing and swinging strength are immense, casting the potential for a star slugger at third base or an outfield corner. (There's no way he's sticking at shortstop, even if it's technically his current position.)

The question with Young is simple: Will he make enough contact to produce? That was the universal knock on him entering the draft. Baseball America describes his swing as "long, with a pronounced hitch," and such issues are not always easily solved for a guy his size. Young struck out nine times in 22 plate appearances during a brief debut at Low-A Fort Myers last year, but it says something about the team's belief in him that they sent him there directly. He will be a fun one to follow this year.

13. Brandon Winokur, SS/CF

Age: 21
2025 Stats (A+): 529 PA, .226/.304/.388, 17 HR, 68 RBI
It's fitting that Winokur is right next to Young in these rankings because his story and traits are remarkably similar. He's a huge right-handed hitter (6-foot-6, 210) drafted highly out of high school (third round in 2023) on the basis of his tantalizing raw tools. Like Young, Winokur shows uncommon defensive ability for a player his size, and spent a majority of his time at shortstop or center field in Cedar Rapids last year, though he did start to break in more at third. 

Winokur hardly dominated in his first exposure to High-A, posting a sub-.700 OPS in 122 games, but staying healthy and holding his own against more advanced competition was a win in its own right. His 17 homers and 26 steals (on 30 attempts) demonstrate what his athleticism makes possible, and his 24.7% strikeout rate — while still on the high side — was a solid improvement over 2024 (28%).

12. Andrew Morris, RHP

Age: 24
2025 Stats (AAA): 94.2 IP, 4.09 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 8.5 K/9, 2.7 BB/9
A fourth-round draft pick out of Texas Tech in 2022, Morris enjoyed moderate success in his first full season before experiencing a full-on breakthrough in 2024. He started in High-A and finished with an effective seven-start stint at Triple-A, posting a 2.37 ERA across three levels and positioning himself for a potentially imminent big-league call-up.

The 2025 season didn't quite go as planned. He got off to a pretty good start with the Saints, but in late May he started getting hit noticeably harder, and in June he went on the injured list with a forearm strain. That can be an ominous development for pitchers, but Morris came back healthy after six weeks in pitched well down the stretch, with a 3.45 ERA and 29-to-4 K/BB ratio in 31 ⅓ innings. 

Boasting a six-pitch mix with a mid-90s fastball, Morris doesn't get tons of whiffs and projects as more of a mid-rotation option than future ace. There's an argument for eventually having him follow Raya into a relief role, but for now Morris is an important piece of starting pitching depth for the Twins. 

11. Riley Quick, RHP

Age: 21
2025 Stats: DNP
Quick is the third player among the five highlighted here who's listed at 6-foot-6, but the first who takes that size advantage to the pitching mound. Minnesota selected the big righty out of Alabama with their supplemental first-round pick last year, 36th overall, after he struck out 72 hitters in 60 innings with a 3.95 ERA for the Tide in his return from Tommy John surgery. 

He didn't make any official appearances upon joining Twins system last year, but figures to be unleashed in Single-A this year and it'll be interesting to see how he fares. No one would be surprised to see the hulking hard-thrower blow away young hitters with a fastball that reaches the upper-90s and some legit secondary offerings. Quick may be one of the best-kept secrets in the minors ... but not for long.

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[arby58]

It's hard for me to get that excited about Young (other than his pedigree, at least half of it) just yet. There is a boom/bust look to him. I'm now convinced I would move Mendez to 13. 

[jmlease1]

I think this grouping shows that Mendez was definitely rated too low, lol.

I do still believe in Raya's talent, but I am glad that he's getting moved to the bullpen. He's been passed by quite a few guys on the pitching charts and he should have the weapons to roll in the bullpen.

I'd probably have Young lower because there's so much unknown on him. Trying not to hold his family relations against him; not his fault Delmon was a Twin.

Hopefully the Twins will move Winokur off SS for good; he's never going to play there and he should focus on positions where he might actually have a defensive home (3B, CF, maybe even 1B where his size and athleticism would play up nicely). At some point though his tools have to start translating into more production or it won't matter. I'm a little skeptical on him.

Morris would have been one of our top pitching prospects not all that far in the past, so having him land here is a good sign we're developing more and better prospects. I don't think a 6-pitch mix will play, so he's going to need some of his offerings to be where he puts his focus, IMHO. And he needs to stay healthy. To me, he's not really competing for a rotation spot even with Pablo out and Festa getting shut down; Matthews, Abel, Bradley, and even Rojas look ahead of him right now. I suspect he'll be in AAA as a starter as the 2nd option or so to come up in case of injury or ineffectiveness. (which is fine! let him prove it)

Quick has the most upside of this tranche, and it'll be fun to see how he goes this season. I think he'll be very strong in Ft. Myers and might even get a promotion to Cedar Rapids earlier than expected.

[mikelink45]

11 minutes ago, jmlease1 said:

I think this grouping shows that Mendez was definitely rated too low, lol.

I do still believe in Raya's talent, but I am glad that he's getting moved to the bullpen. He's been passed by quite a few guys on the pitching charts and he should have the weapons to roll in the bullpen.

I'd probably have Young lower because there's so much unknown on him. Trying not to hold his family relations against him; not his fault Delmon was a Twin.

Hopefully the Twins will move Winokur off SS for good; he's never going to play there and he should focus on positions where he might actually have a defensive home (3B, CF, maybe even 1B where his size and athleticism would play up nicely). At some point though his tools have to start translating into more production or it won't matter. I'm a little skeptical on him.

Morris would have been one of our top pitching prospects not all that far in the past, so having him land here is a good sign we're developing more and better prospects. I don't think a 6-pitch mix will play, so he's going to need some of his offerings to be where he puts his focus, IMHO. And he needs to stay healthy. To me, he's not really competing for a rotation spot even with Pablo out and Festa getting shut down; Matthews, Abel, Bradley, and even Rojas look ahead of him right now. I suspect he'll be in AAA as a starter as the 2nd option or so to come up in case of injury or ineffectiveness. (which is fine! let him prove it)

Quick has the most upside of this tranche, and it'll be fun to see how he goes this season. I think he'll be very strong in Ft. Myers and might even get a promotion to Cedar Rapids earlier than expected.

I agree that Mendez should be ahead of the last four on this list.

[mikelink45]

I totally agree with the last post - put Winokur some place other than SS.  He is not Ripken,  His size and speed do not spell SS. 

Otherwise this group does not impress me. 

[rdehring]

Another fantastic read, Nick.  Thanks.

A couple young men with awesome talent/potential.  Add one uber exciting pitcher and I like this group, although I also could see Mendez higher than a couple of these young prospects.

[Jeff K]

Raya was seriously terrible last season.  Maybe he is still a prospect, but if so, he is much too high on this list.

[TJSweens]

2 hours ago, arby58 said:

It's hard for me to get that excited about Young (other than his pedigree, at least half of it) just yet. There is a boom/bust look to him. I'm now convinced I would move Mendez to 13. 

I remember reading that the Twins draft room erupted when Young was still on the board at #54. Big tools across the board. The Twins scouts loved him. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 

[DataNerd]

3 hours ago, arby58 said:

It's hard for me to get that excited about Young (other than his pedigree, at least half of it) just yet. There is a boom/bust look to him. I'm now convinced I would move Mendez to 13. 

Definitely a boom/bust guy, but at this point there are no sure things and this spot seems about right.  He has a lower chance of making it than everyone ranked above him, but he similarly has a better 90th percentile outcome than anyone ranked below him.

[jmlease1]

57 minutes ago, TJSweens said:

I remember reading that the Twins draft room erupted when Young was still on the board at #54. Big tools across the board. The Twins scouts loved him. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 

I mean, I don't mind doing the risk/reward thing at #54, you know? A team should take some of those risks. I think there's a feeling around here at times that teams are supposed to always hit on their first 3 selections every draft, and that's just terribly difficult.

[Cris E]

I think Winokur is the next Twins 3B in the event that Lewis never does play 120 games in a season. I mean he might figure things out and become a fixture over there, but they need a solution in case he doesn't. And right now this organization is echoing, hollow, empty at 3B.  How empty? Gio Urshela empty. 

[Nick Nelson]

"For what it's worth, [Raya's] looked excellent in early spring action."

JINX!! 🥴

[Mike Sixel]

6 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I totally agree with the last post - put Winokur some place other than SS.  He is not Ripken,  His size and speed do not spell SS. 

Otherwise this group does not impress me. 

This. He'll never play there in the majors. Hey him to his eventual position so he can learn. 

[weitz41]

2 hours ago, Nick Nelson said:

"For what it's worth, [Raya's] looked excellent in early spring action."

JINX!! 🥴

By that you mean before he faced the Yankees today?  😜

I see a lot about Mendez in previous posts. I'm a fan of him as well. BUT He's way too much of a ground ball hitter right now. The whispers about a move to 1B gives him some helium but I think just inside the top 20 is a fair assessment until he proves to be the 1B of the future or starts lifting the ball more. Preferibly both.

Most of these players have their warts so mostly projection and where they were drafted. Seems like a fair location on the top 20 list

[arby58]

7 minutes ago, weitz41 said:

I see a lot about Mendez in previous posts. I'm a fan of him as well. BUT He's way too much of a ground ball hitter right now. The whispers about a move to 1B gives him some helium but I think just inside the top 20 is a fair assessment until he proves to be the 1B of the future or starts lifting the ball more. Preferibly both.

Mendez' stats compare pretty well with Joe Mauer's at AA. Joe was 20, Mendez 21. They each had a great 'eye' - Joe 25 walks and 25 Ks, Mendez 67 walks and 65 Ks. Joe's OBP was .400, Mendez was .399. Joe's slugging percentage was .453, Mendez was .439. Joe had 4 HRs in 310 PAs, Mendez 11 in 491.

I'm not convinced he has to change his approach all that much to be an impactful offensive player.

[weitz41]

13 minutes ago, arby58 said:

Mendez' stats compare pretty well with Joe Mauer's at AA. Joe was 20, Mendez 21. They each had a great 'eye' - Joe 25 walks and 25 Ks, Mendez 67 walks and 65 Ks. Joe's OBP was .400, Mendez was .399. Joe's slugging percentage was .453, Mendez was .439. Joe had 4 HRs in 310 PAs, Mendez 11 in 491.

I'm not convinced he has to change his approach all that much to be an impactful offensive player.

Fair enough. I would say, in my defense, the game was played a lot differently in 2004 then it is today. Comparing a players AA stats to a hall of famer can be a little misleading. Let's let him earn that top 15 rank not hand it to him because we want that to be true.

[jmlease1]

43 minutes ago, weitz41 said:

Fair enough. I would say, in my defense, the game was played a lot differently in 2004 then it is today. Comparing a players AA stats to a hall of famer can be a little misleading. Let's let him earn that top 15 rank not hand it to him because we want that to be true.

Sure, but I think I'd rather give it to the guy who has proven something in pro ball and had success in AA over the guy who has a bunch of tools & question marks and no real pro track record.

[arby58]

1 hour ago, weitz41 said:

Fair enough. I would say, in my defense, the game was played a lot differently in 2004 then it is today. Comparing a players AA stats to a hall of famer can be a little misleading. Let's let him earn that top 15 rank not hand it to him because we want that to be true.

The biggest difference, of course, is Mauer was a catcher (at least at the start), so that was a big plus. But in terms of their approach to hitting, they look similar. The game still has room for guys who 'hit like Joe.' I'm not projecting an HOF career based on it, of course - but the comparison is remarkable.

[twinstalker]

6 hours ago, Cris E said:

I think Winokur is the next Twins 3B in the event that Lewis never does play 120 games in a season. I mean he might figure things out and become a fixture over there, but they need a solution in case he doesn't. And right now this organization is echoing, hollow, empty at 3B.  How empty? Gio Urshela empty. 

Guys don't really "figure things out."  Hitting is really hard.   You figure out how to get out of a slump if you've been a good hitter.  You don't figure out how to hit.  It's so incredibly rare that an age appropriate guy for his leagues, which Winokur has been, suddenly learns how to hit that it's not worth hoping for.  Maybe if he'd been rushed and placed two leagues ahead of where he should be, there'd be hope.

Winokur will move up the ladder and sputter out.  If he gets a cup of coffee, good for him.  OTOH, the Twins might just be so bad and have such a bad system that they might play anybody.  It's sort of happened before in their history.

Here's the explanation in simple terms.  Go to baseball reference and look at Winokur's slash lines avg/obp/slg each season. It's a good lesson in what goes on.  First, note that he's age appropriate for his leagues.  The reason he's "younger" than his league is because leagues have a whole bunch of failed guys repeating.  A normal drafted-high kid like Winokur is going to be better than others in the league where everybody hasn't yet proven anything.  I mean, that's why he was drafted high, he was better than most.  And his stats ended up good stats for the rookie league.

If a player does well enough like Winokur did, he gets promoted, but now he's playing against others who have also succeeded at that lowest level.  Funny enough, his stats took a dive, because where he was a top 20-30% player in the FCL, he's now a top 40-50% player in the FSL., and his OPS decreases by 122 points, who'd have guessed?   But it's not just production.  Suddenly we notice that low A pitchers strike him out at a rate that's way too high for him him to ever really be a prospect.  I mean, if low A pitchers are striking him out at a 28% rate, MLB pitchers are going to kill him.  But let's pretend we don't notice that.

So now he has an average year at low A where his OPS dropped 122 points, and most others advancing to the next level had better seasons and are most likely better players.  They all go to high A, and now our hero is a lesser player playing against better ones.  You'd expect his production to go down, and voila! it goes down another 69 OPS points.  Basically our guy isn't going to get better as he goes up the ladder.  We now all realize that.  It makes sense.

But the prospect gods have something up their sleeves to torture Twins fans.  In their infinite wisdom, the gods supplied Twins ballparks at AA and AAA that are hitters paradises (edens?).  Suddenly our hero's stats improve, and the naive among us think he's a true prospect...then get mad and demand to know why all these great prospects fail when they reach Target Field.

That was, is, and will be the story of Brandon Winokur, but the thing to understand is that he's not very good compared to the guys/competition who have moved up with him, there are more and better coming behind, and his MLB predictors in his stats predict no MLB for you! (think soup nazi).

When I make statements like Brandon Winokur has no chance to play in the majors, it's a bit hyperbolic, but that's because the chances of him doing so are so close to nil, other than than cup and coffee.  I'm not a hater, I'm a realist.  We're hopeful because we've seemingly seen guys come out of nowhere to be great, but in actuality, we didn't understand the journey and the starting point of those guys.  Winokur was a good prospect as an amateur in that he could play some level of professional ball, but the book said he wasn't a good risk, and the Twins crossed their fingers anyway, ignoring the scouts and stats.  He's exactly what the scouting reports thought he was.  Everything about his trip has been predictable.

(no, i don't remember what the weakness were, specifically, it could have easily been chasing out of zone or contact rates in zone but I forget.)

[bean5302]

2 hours ago, twinstalker said:

...First, note that he's age appropriate for his leagues.  The reason he's "younger" than his league is because leagues have a whole bunch of failed guys repeating...

There's a lot of truth here. Legit prospects are always younger than their competition. That said, in terms of raw "age" Winokur is younger than the competition because you see a lot of good prospectcollege guys at A+, but in his 3rd pro season, struggling in Cedar Rapids isn't a great projection model.

He had a major improvement in his K rate, going from Ft. Myers to Cedar Rapids while dropping his K rate from 28% to 24% and there's probably more power coming. Batted ball data in the minors is tough to trust, but the lower BABIP over nearly 500 PA makes sense given the sky high pop up rate reported at almost 25% of fly balls he hit. Basically, Winokur didn't make enough contact, and when he did hit the ball, the contact quality was lacking.

It will be interesting to see where the Twins put Winokur to start this season. Will he repeat the start in Cedar Rapids or now entering his 4th year, will the Twins push him up to Wichita? I think he still has a year left to rebound after a tough 2025. 

[bean5302]

I don't mind this list. I don't think the Twins have clear delineation between the ranking of their 10-20 prospects. 

[darwin22]

11 hours ago, Jeff K said:

Raya was seriously terrible last season.  Maybe he is still a prospect, but if so, he is much too high on this list.

After today's utterly AWFUL performance (31 pitches--4 walks) against the JV lineup against the Yankees, its hard for me to believe Raya is even a top 30 prospect in this organization.  Pathetic.  I know only 1 ST outing, but after he got rocked in SP last year, I can't believe he's ANYWHERE close to pitching in the bullpen for the Twins.

[Cris E]

On 2/27/2026 at 6:25 PM, twinstalker said:

Guys don't really "figure things out."  Hitting is really hard.   You figure out how to get out of a slump if you've been a good hitter.  You don't figure out how to hit.  It's so incredibly rare that an age appropriate guy for his leagues, which Winokur has been, suddenly learns how to hit that it's not worth hoping for.  Maybe if he'd been rushed and placed two leagues ahead of where he should be, there'd be hope.

You misunderstood my post: I was hoping that Lewis figures out how to stay on the field. And that is something that can be picked up and improved on. Buxton had a better year last year, Molitor played much more after 30 than before,  You learn how to prepare differently, how to protect yourself better, and you're less likely to try doing way more than you're capable of.   But if Lewis can't stay out there for 100 games then they'll be needing another 3B and they really don't have one.

[arby58]

5 hours ago, Cris E said:

You misunderstood my post: I was hoping that Lewis figures out how to stay on the field. And that is something that can be picked up and improved on. Buxton had a better year last year, Molitor played much more after 30 than before,  You learn how to prepare differently, how to protect yourself better, and you're less likely to try doing way more than you're capable of.   But if Lewis can't stay out there for 100 games then they'll be needing another 3B and they really don't have one.

Lee is more likely to be a passable third baseman than SS - although his hitting (or lack thereof) will be hard to accept there.