Twins Minor League Report (6/10): Tough Day For The Bats

Are the Twins waiting till Alan Busenitz has an ERA of negative infinity before they call him back up?

Sure doesn't take long for Rooker to figure out a league. OPS now over .800.

Sure doesn't take long for Rooker to figure out a league. OPS now over .800.

Rooker has been held hitless in just 2 games since June 1st; in one of those games he went 0 for 1 with 4BB...4! As a side note, he did the the day or two after I posted a comment about him needing to bump his BB% up to around 10%...maybe he read my post? Ha! Hope he has continued success and we see him in a Twins uniform in September!

Rooker has been held hitless in just 2 games since June 1st; in one of those games he went 0 for 1 with 4BB...4! As a side note, he did the the day or two after I posted a comment about him needing to bump his BB% up to around 10%...maybe he read my post? Ha! Hope he has continued success and we see him in a Twins uniform in September!

Rooker has 9 walks in his last ten games.  Even tossing out the 4 walk game, gives him 5 walks in 9 games (42 PA) which is over 11%.  Yes, SSS, but encouraging.

Had high hopes for Bechtold coming into the season.  His bat was as cold as ice for much of this season.  He is hitting .313 in his last 10 games with his average sneaking over .200 Sunday.  Although the organization may eventually move some of their shortstops to third, they need someone to step up at third over the next couple years and there is still time for Bechtold.

Overall Kohl's numbers aren't great but when you check out his splits LHB have a .488 BABIP against him this season vs RHB at .308. He's actually been really good vs RHB overall, is that pointing towards him not having an out pitch against lefties? Is the defense letting him down (a lot)? Seems like he still doesn't give up much hard contact and his groundball rate is still absurd (2.5:1 GB/FB ratio).

Kohl Stewart “struck out nine.” That sure is a weird way to misspell “struck out four.”

Kirilloff certainly has majority ownership of the Midwest League right now.

Hits - 1st

Doubles - T-2nd (active leader)

Triples - T-3rd (actively T-2nd)

Home Runs - 1st

RBI - 1st

AVG - 4th (actively 2nd)

SLG - 2nd (active leader)

OPS - 2nd (active leader)

Kohl Stewart “struck out nine.” That sure is a weird way to misspell “struck out four.”

What do you mean?  Is the box score wrong?

I didn't expect much from the FT Myers team, but did for the others.  Disappointing to see those records so far. 

Their prospects were hyped... But prospect status doesn't have much to do with on-field performance, especially in the lower levels. 

 

The Kernels have the 2nd youngest Hitters in the league at 20.8, a full year, on average, younger than the average pitcher in the league.

 

They have the third youngest Pitchers in the league. 

 

I rarely look at W-L record either. I certainly don't' care about it other than adding a sentence at the end of the occasional team story. But I would say that the young guys are more than holding their own. 

While team records and individual performances by the key prospects ought to be discussed in separate sentences, I will argue that, over a full schedule, team records do in fact correlate meaningfully with the overall quality of the system's depth of C+ and better prospects.

I can't help wondering if the system, touted for its depth, and not its star power at the start of the season, isn't slightly over-rated when it comes to depth. And it might have been slightly under-rated in terms of star power given the break-out of Kirilloff, Gordon's performance, the emergence of Romero, Graterol's higher visibility, Lewis's steady play at SS, etc.

We certainly do have some prospects performing well but the record for the year is significantly worse than last year and I don't think that is from promotions to the big league team.   We just came off of an awful and almost unbelievable 4-23 week which didn't help.    We did have some significant turnover in the coaching staffs didn't we?  Perhaps that is impacting overall performance.      In the end if our prospects are developing, the win/loss is not important but no one likes to see a 4-23 week.      

Wells is leading the league in WHIP and 2nd in ERA. Time for a promotion?

Rooker has 9 walks in his last ten games.  Even tossing out the 4 walk game, gives him 5 walks in 9 games (42 PA) which is over 11%.  Yes, SSS, but encouraging.

 

Had high hopes for Bechtold coming into the season.  His bat was as cold as ice for much of this season.  He is hitting .313 in his last 10 games with his average sneaking over .200 Sunday.  Although the organization may eventually move some of their shortstops to third, they need someone to step up at third over the next couple years and there is still time for Bechtold.

Bechtold had a really good season last year at Elizabethton so I too had high hopes for him out of the gate this year.    Started slow but now is picking it up in June.  

Hopefully he can continue to hit because he's a great 3B with a rocket arm.

Wells is leading the league in WHIP and 2nd in ERA. Time for a promotion?

Good question. Every time I check these reports it seems like Wells has pitcher another impressive game.