The Next Minnesota Twins, 2025 Edition

Those Twins to debut in 2024 included position players Austin Martin, Jair Camargo, Brooks Lee, Michael Helman, and DaShawn Keirsey; and pitchers David Festa and Zebby Matthews. Because of his meteoric rise through the minors (after starting the year all the way back in Cedar Rapids), Matthews was the only one of those names not listed in this same entry before the start of the 2024 season. If you’re wondering, the only category below I could have fit him in would have been the “Dark Horses,” and he probably would have been the darkest horse I’ve ever mentioned. Coming into this season, by contrast, he’s put himself onto several top-100 prospect lists, and will likely be a large contributor to the Twins rotation. That is a huge credit to both him and the pitching development staff Derek Falvey and the organization have put together.

Going into Opening Day, Festa figures into the same ready-to-help-the-rotation category as Matthews, while Martin and Keirsey may be in line for the final roster spots. Lee was poised to break camp in the starting lineup, but has since joined Royce Lewis on the IL, while Camargo will again serve as catching depth with the St. Paul Saints. After a long minors career with the Twins, Helman moved on to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Unlike the past few seasons, the Twins have a lot of their top prospects at the upper levels of the minors, so when opportunities arrive this year (whether through injury, performance, or peculiar circumstances), the names that could be called up are likely to be exciting ones.

So, who are some of the prospects who could make their MLB dreams come true in 2025, and become some of the Next Minnesota Twins?

ON THE 40-MAN ROSTER:
Since I started researching this article, this section has lost a couple of names, but does still include potential star power from an outfielder. Both Matt Canterino and Eiberson Castellano would have resided here, but Canterino is (again) out for the year after shoulder surgery, and Castellano has been returned to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Emmanuel Rodriguez (22 years old on Opening Day), OF – Twins Daily’s #3 Prospect
Rodriguez, like seemingly all Minnesota Twins top prospects (sigh), has dealt with many different injuries coming up through the minors, which have slowed him down. In 2024, that was a thumb injury that limited him to just 47 games. He's on the shelf to start the 2025 season with a sprained ankle, as well, but by the end of the year, he was up with the St. Paul Saints because of his immense talent.

While he has played center field most of his career thus far and is certainly capable there, moving to a corner could help him settle into the majors. Right field also fits his profile, as he has a strong arm and his hitting talents are centered around patience and light-tower power. In those 47 games last season, he had 25 extra-base hits, including nine home runs, and drew a staggering 51 walks for a .280/.459/567 batting line. The only knock here is that it came with a nearly 30% strikeout rate, an issue many hope can be mitigated by a more conscientiously aggressive approach.

Travis Adams (25), RHP (Adams made his MLB debut on 7/5 against the Tampa Bay Rays as part of a bullpen game. He had one bad inning, but worked as the bulk pitcher and finished four frames. He allowed five earned runs on nine hits while striking out one)
Adams was a bit of a surprising addition to the 40-man roster during the offseason, but that doesn’t mean it was unearned. He made 19 starts with the Wichita Wind Surge and ended the year with three starts (four appearances) in Triple A. While with Wichita, consistency was his calling card. In 14 of those starts, he went at least 5 innings and allowed three or fewer runs. If you wanted anything close to a “Quality Start,” Adams was likely to give you one. In his final six games before being promoted to St. Paul, Adams went 1-1 with a 0.85 ERA and gave up just 15 hits in 31 2/3 innings. It also included 32 strikeouts, compared to just seven walks, and a lowly .390 opponents' OPS. He certainly earned that promotion.

There are a lot of names in the pitching pipeline you might think of first before you get to Adams, but count him out at your own peril. The Twins believed in him enough to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, and he should be in the Saints' rotation to start the season, just a Green Line trip away in an emergency.

Diego Cartaya (23), C
Just two years ago, Cartaya was a global top-20 prospect in baseball, as he combined prodigious power with strong on-base skills in the lower levels of the minors. He hit a bit of a wall in Double A, but reached Triple A with the Dodgers organization last year before coming to the Twins in a trade this offseason. He is probably a step up as a defender, compared to fellow backstop Camargo, so depending on the need for the major-league roster, could serve well in a pinch. He and Camargo will split time behind the dish with the Saints to start the year.

Marco Raya (22), RHP – TD’s #6 Prospect
Raya’s path through the minors to this point has been almost unheard of. I certainly can’t remember another pitching prospect who has been handled in this drastic a way by the Twins. I’ll reserve judgment, as he hasn’t even made it to the majors yet, but in my Top Prospect article from earlier in the offseason, this peculiarity is the crux of my own evaluations of him to this point. Can he throw enough innings (or pitches) to be a dependable starting pitcher? It’s time to find out.

There will be a lot of starting pitching talent in St. Paul to begin the year, so unless the Saints utilize a six-man rotation (not a terrible idea), I’m not sure Raya will be there at the outset. However, he is on the 40-man roster while some of those other pitchers are not, so it could go either way. In Wichita, he would certainly front their rotation. Raya finished with a 2.09 ERA in his last eight starts there.

TOP PROSPECTS:
This is a section all Twins fans should get excited about. In addition to Raya and Rodriguez above, all four of these names reside in the Top 10 of our most recent Top Prospect ranking, and three of them are in the top five. There is a good chance that all four of these names will see Target Field this summer, and I’ll be pumped to watch all of them at CHS Field before then.

Walker Jenkins (20), OF – TD’s #1 Prospect
Perhaps the prospect of all prospects when the summer truly comes around, Jenkins begins 2025 as a global top-five player in the minor leagues. He is a true five-tool talent, and has hit .302/.400/.473 in 108 games as a pro thus far. He gave me quite the scare as I watched him injure himself with Fort Myers in the first game of the 2024 season, but he came back in June and hit himself to Double-A Wichita before it was over.

As far as things to work on, I do think there is a lot more Joe Mauer in his swing than Justin Morneau at this point. That is, he has not yet shown himself to be a power threat, even though everything you hear about him says that it will show up. I’m taking Ryan Jeffers’s thoughts from the Winter Meltdown as gospel on this:

“He is so freakishly talented…The sheer size of him, is just, you can’t fathom him only being 19 years old.” This also looks pretty effortless:

He just turned 20 years old and has spent only a week at Double A, so there is no rush—unless his performance creates one. But if he wants to go the route of the Jacksons from last season (Chourio, Holliday, Merrill) and debut at 20, I’ll personally bring him from Wichita to St. Paul, then St. Paul to Target Field in my 2017 Mazda CX-5. It’s an IIHS Top Safety Pick and I’ve never been in an accident (knock on my wooden bat).

The joke there, of course, is that he is also dealing with a sprained ankle this March, but the indications are he will be good to go to start the season. Buckle up!

Luke Keaschall (22), IF/OF – TD’s #3 Prospect (Keaschall made his MLB debut on 4/18 against the Atlanta Braves. He drove in a run with a single in his first at-bat, and finished 2-for-4 with a double, run scored, and stolen base)
Keaschall spent all of the 2024 season knowing that he would eventually be shut down for surgery on his elbow, but that didn’t stop him from boosting his stock into top-50 prospect territory along the way. He demolished the Midwest League to the tune of a 181 wRC+, then finished his final 59 games on the Wind Surge with a .832 OPS, .131 above the Texas League average.

While the Twins will likely take it easy on him as far as playing defense to start the season, he's likely to be in St. Paul. A call-up for Keaschall is more likely in the back half of the season, but infield depth in the organization is pretty wide-open, and he also has the talents to hold down any spot in the outfield with his underrated speed. He's been caught just six times on 40 steal attempts in his career thus far. It's also hard to dislike or count out anyone with the attitude of “Wherever they want me to play, I like to hit.”

Andrew Morris (23), RHP – TD’s #5 Prospect
While Twins fans may know that what Matthews did last year was meteoric, they might be surprised to learn there was another pitcher (two, actually…) who did nearly the same thing.

Enter Morris and his 2.37 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in 133 innings, across the same three levels of the minors where Matthews put up 2.60 and 0.86 numbers. The WHIP difference can be attributed to the fact that Matthews never walked anybody, which Morris can't quite match—but he, too, has good control. Whereas Matthews lives on the “control” end of the spectrum when it comes to this stat, Morris may still come in higher on the “command” front. He throws the traditional four-pitch mix, but each offering is distinct, and he mixes in cutters and sinkers at differing velocities as well.

The Twins utilized eight starting pitchers in an (overall) pretty healthy 2024 season from their starting rotation, and about the time they reach that number is where I can envision Morris coming in. That’s because there are still Festa, Matthews, and Adams joining him in the Saints rotation to start the season. Spot starts are not out of the question, either, but room would need to be made for Morris on the 40-man, whereas those other names don’t have this hurdle.

Cory Lewis (24), RHP – TD’s #9 Prospect
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Lewis probably has the most fun pitch to see in all of baseball. Yes, everybody knows that it's a knuckleball (that he only throws about 15% of the time), but his version is one-of-a-kind because of its velocity. Whereas the well-known knuckleballers like Tim Wakefield generally lobbed theirs in the high 60s to mid-70s, Lewis lives in the mid-80s with his. It is an unpredictably moving offering that can arrive before hitters reconcile that it is not spinning appropriately. I mean, look at it!

That’s just pure entertainment for the pitcher, hitter, catcher, and fans!

Also don’t forget that Lewis was Twins Daily’s Starting Pitcher of the Year in 2023, and didn’t get started in 2024 until late May, as he dealt with a shoulder issue in camp. After coming back and getting his legs (and shoulder) under him, from the start of August on, he pitched to the tune of a 1.64 ERA, struck out 51 hitters in 44 innings, and closed out his season with a start for the Saints. He could be another one of the cogs in a stacked rotation there to start the year.

TRIPLE-A DEPTH:
Most of the names above fall into the upper ranges of the Twins' prospect rankings and should see time in Triple A. That means, for this category, it’s a bit harder to find names (like DaShawn Keirsey) that have appeared here in the past. However, its lone entry is where my favorite prospect from the 2024 season is going to come in…

Payton Eeles (25), IF
…Which is this guy, and his pure lightning-in-a-bottle play from his 5’5” frame.

That said, I almost feel bad for putting Eeles here in the “depth” category. If it weren’t for Luke Keaschall, he would have run away with the Twins Daily Hitter of the Year Award last year. It was truly an amazing accomplishment for a player who wasn’t even in the organization until after the season started, as the Twins signed him out of the Independent Leagues on May 7th.

He proceeded to get on base at a clip closer to .500 than .400 at Fort Myers and Cedar Rapids, before an opportunity in St. Paul came calling. He never left, as over his 64 games there, he batted .299, continued to get on base over 40% of the time, and compiled an OPS .156 above the International League average. He also stole 41 bases and was playing all over the diamond with the Saints. It was a five-tool and jack-of-all-trades campaign from out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, it will take a bit of time before we get to see him in 2025, as he just underwent surgery on his knee that will sideline him for a bit. Despite that, I expect big things to continue when he gets back on the field.

DARK HORSES:
Like Zebby Matthews of last season, this is the category for guys who could come out of nowhere and make a surprising debut. Maybe they’ve been injured, or perhaps they have a unique or specific talent that could pay dividends.

Connor Prielipp (24), LHP – TD’s #10 Prospect
Call it a case of “hopium” or whatever else you may like, but I am a Prielipp stan. Every pitch he has ever thrown has been electric, including some that you may have seen down in Florida this spring.

The obvious problem there is it is year four in the system (he was drafted in 2022), and he has thrown only 30 professional innings. 

The positives are that 23 1/3 of those came at the end of 2024, after his latest elbow surgery, which added an internal brace. Perhaps that is what is needed for his arm to stand up to the ludicrousness of his pitching arsenal. It includes a mid-90s fastball, an elite spinning and devastating 90-MPH slider, and a changeup that had a 62% whiff rate last year. The comparison for “stuff” here approaches Johan Santana, and Prielipp is also left-handed. Santana is also the blueprint for the type of start to his career that Prielipp could benefit from, given his injury history, being a bullpen option early before blossoming into a starter long-term.

Christian MacLeod (24), LHP
There were so many pitching success stories in the minors for the Twins last year, that in my opinion, one of the best went largely unnoticed. That came from left-hander Christian MacLeod, who struck out 10.4 batters per nine innings at stops in Cedar Rapids, Wichita, and St. Paul, just like Matthews and Morris above. He was not the same level of control artist that they were, but the overall performance closely followed. He will be a top-of-the-rotation option in Wichita out of the gate.

Kyle Bischoff (25), RHP
One of the top performing relief pitchers in the system in 2024, Bischoff is coming off a season where he struck out 11.4 per nine frames in appearances with the Kernels, Wind Surge, and Saints. A lot would have to go wrong with the major-league bullpen for him to have a chance to crack through, but crazy things happen every season. 

DON’T FORGET ABOUT:
This section is all about some of the prospects who may have been lost in the shuffle, at one point were highly regarded, or simply have paid their dues and are ready for their cup of coffee.

Kala’i Rosario (22), OF – TD’s #19 Prospect
The slugger out of Hawaii has shown both a propensity for power and strikeouts over his career. The 2023 Midwest League MVP repeated the Arizona Fall League in 2024 after missing time during the regular season with an elbow injury.

Yunior Severino (25), 1B/DH
Had the opportunity to test the free agent waters this offseason, but quickly returned to the Twins organization on a minor-league deal. Led all of the minor leagues in home runs in 2023.

Jeferson Morales (25), UT
Was a standout this spring with the Twins, playing in 20 games and batting .375/.459/.531. Has experience at second base, left field, and catcher and has mashed lefties over his career.

These are just some of the prospects that I think fans could see wearing Twins uniforms for the first time at Target Field in 2025. When do you think any of them will debut? Who are you most excited about? And who are any of your favorites that I may have missed? Go Twins!

Interested in learning more about the Minnesota Twins' top prospects? Check out our comprehensive top prospects list that includes up-to-date stats, articles and videos about every prospect, scouting reports, and more!