Vervehound

duffey's stuff has ticked up this year and he's a legit no.3-type at this point. he's a flyball guy and will give up his share of gopher balls, but the guy can miss a decent amount of bats and is proving durable. think scott baker for a comp stuff-wise, but hopefully not durability-wsie. he'd be knocking on the tail end of any twins top ten list i did, even with our stacked system.

of the five twins on the lists, i'm most surprised by stewart. understood that he's been being handled with kid gloves so the lists must have taken that into account. encouraging.

i think your argument is refuting itself. why would a team overspend in the draft and lose picks if those were more valuable? by increasing the number of chances in the international signing lottery, you're increasing the odds of hitting on one and you have the pick of all the top talent to do so, whereas in the draft you'd be working with a limited pool of marginally signable guys after your first pick. the yankees are spot on.

this new system of international signings is going to be much more abused than the old one. only sitting out a year as a penalty for overspending incites those teams to go ahead and spend away every other year and, once they've started to spend, to keep throwing money at players because of the impending sanctions. this will likely result in a group of teams taking turns to dominate the market. this year it'll be the yankees and a few others, next year it'll be the cubs and what ever other team is on that cycle.

I'd be surprised if the twins didn't have the consensus top ranked farm system after the season. only santana will have for sure graduated from last year's top ten, and possibly meyer.

cederoth, clay and curtiss.

i count six high schoolers in round 6 and only two so far in round 7. teams are going down their lists for signability and are waiting until round 11 to go for the best remaining prep talent.

you realize that could be construed as really funny considering all of the arm injuries we've drafted in recent years? tootle, bard, chargois to name the first that come to mind. the twins have been entirely cavalier about incorporating medical reports into their drafting and have only recently conceded the need to do so.

wasn't suggesting we'd re-draft him, only that the 5th round money he signs for this year won't differ significantly from what we offered last year.

twins need to take some high ceiling prepsters in rounds 6-10 or this draft is subpar, imo.

but as a 23 y.o. college senior, he significantly lowered his leverage and will likely wind up signing for what he was offered last year.

no way he starts.

this may have ramifications for rochester as well. it's pretty nuts that the mets triple A team is in las vegas and that's an undesirable location/league, so if they move to hartford there might be a subsequent move for them to grab the red wings. i think the twins like having their affiliates in pitching/hitting neutral leagues that aren't multiple time zones away but if they move their AA operations, their AAA could follow. let's hope we can avoid the texas or pacific coast leagues.

i've been on nola for a long time - i believe the longest of anyone on this board (see the first few pages of the draft thread) he's a freak in that he's a consummate maestro of the strikezone while retaining plus stuff. you do seem overly enamored by raw stuff. i'd remind you that anyone not named nolan ryan will need to eventually dial back his stuff in favor of command and pitch economy. i like tyler kolek and am not scared by him being the heaviest high school pitcher ever taken in the first round. i will tell you, however, that unless he converts to the pen, he will not be throwing 100 mph bb's but will likely sit 92-95. it's cool to know that he could spike up the radar gun at the all star game like when brad penny was suddenly hitting 99mph a few years back, but for the most part that's not useful velocity and will need refining. picking between nola and kolek (what a contrast in prospects, btw) would be very difficult for me and i'd be happy if we went either way, especially because as much as i love nola, i'm not sure if he's built to be a workhorse. that said, they're both excellent prospects.

but there is a long history of allowing young pitchers to throw their breaking stuff and get t.j. right away. this way of handling stewart might be the next trend in for bonus baby arms - build your arm strength your first season and learn to spot your fastball and change-up, then work in your breaking stuff as you mature.