Minors

For those that might have missed it, the Twins Daily minor league writers recently held a draft of players in Minnesota’s farm system. When all was said and done, six teams of 16-players were selected, and we reached out to FanGraph’s Dan Szymborski to run the ZiPS projections for each roster. The results may surprise you…

In each of the past several seasons, the Cedar Rapids Kernels have held an “Autism Awareness Night” at Veterans Memorial Stadium, with the Kernels wearing special jerseys that are auctioned off to benefit The East Central Iowa Autism Society.

When developing prospect lists, one of many criteria that goes into the thinking is Age-to-Level data. High-ranking prospects are often guys with great tools who are performing at a level where they are very young. If you look near the top of the Top 30 prospect lists that Jeremy, Cody and I put together for the Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook 2015, you’ll see a lot of players who were very young for their level.

The Minnesota Twins are finally experiencing a long-awaited turnaround as an organization, and while that is reflected to some extent on the big-league field, it is more evident as you examine a minor-league system that is suddenly stacked with quality young arms.

On Tuesday, Seth wrote about the dilemma that the Twins face, with Tommy Milone forcing his way back into the picture by decimating Triple-A hitters while no spots in the MLB rotation are necessarily open.

You know the times are a-changin' here in Minnesota when we're struggling to find room for a deserving starting pitcher rather than desperately cycling through ill-equipped replacements.

Such scenarios figure to become more and more common over the next few years, with a veritable army of outstanding pitchers rising through the ranks.

Most of the work that Sam Clay and AJ Murray did together during their shared time at Georgia Tech was confined to the bullpen, but this season the pair of former Yellow Jackets have played critical roles together for the Midwest League Western Division-leading Cedar Rapids Kernels.

Clay, a lefty who was the Minnesota Twins’ fourth-round draft pick in 2014, carries a 3-1 record and a 1.10 ERA into his Wednesday night start at Burlington. He has averaged more than a strikeout per inning in his seven starts.

Murray, selected by the Twins in the 14th round of last year’s draft, is carrying a .285/.394/.489 (.883 OPS) slash line as the Kernels’ primary catcher. He’s hit 11 doubles, one triple and five home runs while batting in the middle of the Cedar Rapids lineup and has thrown out 35% of runners attempting to steal a base.

After adding two high schoolers on Day One of the draft, the Minnesota Twins went the college route in Round 2 selecting left-handed pitcher Steven Hajjar from the University of Michigan.

With their first round pick, the Twins took a high upside high school pitcher in Chase Petty who has a 100+ MPH fastball.

Willians Astudillo is one savvy motherforker.

He’s not even 27 years old yet but he’s got the savvy moves of a much older, wiser veteran.

We already know that Astudillo is sneaky. Behind the plate during spring training, Astudillo caught the Yankees’ Shane Robinson

When this season was in its infancy, I had a lot of high expectations for the 2018 Cedar Rapids Kernels. I was not alone, of course, since the Kernels’ Opening Day roster was filled with big-bonus position players, highlighted by 2017’s first-overall draft pick, Royce Lewis, and the Twins’ 2016 first-round pick, Alex Kirilloff.