jishfish

I would be fine with Skenes at 5 (unlikely he is there, but definitely wouldn't rule it out). Dollander will for sure be there at 5, and I would be extremely disappointed if they take him over Jenkins, Clark, Langford, or even Kyle Teel at this point. I just don't think it's worth passing on the caliber of position player you can get at 5 unless it's someone absolutely special like Skenes.

I'm 100% with you on this, and would also throw Jacob Wilson and Brayden Taylor into this bucket, personally. I know Taylor has fallen in a lot of recent rankings which probably aren't reflected here since they came out in the last 24 hours or so. I'm sure all three of those guys will end up being fine players, they just don't do it for me at the moment.

First of all, just want to say thank you for putting this together! As someone who follows the draft pretty closely, I can't imagine how much work this has been! My view of things at the moment is that Crews/Skenes are essentially locks to go in the first 3 picks. I don't think any amount of struggles in the next 2 months, or even injury, could possibly knock them down to the Twins, I think this Twins FO would love for Langford to drop to 5, which is probably unlikely, but certainly more possible than Crews/Skenes. Personally I feel like there's a pretty big drop off after the top 5 (Jenkins/Clark being the other two), so I'm perfectly happy if any of those are the pick. They all have unique skill sets, with the potential to be all-stars at the next level. I'm probably the outlier on here, but I have very little interest in Dollander at #5, even if he turns things around the rest of the college season. I would much rather go for a high-end every day player and take shots on college pitchers in rounds 3-20. If the Twins decide to get creative and potentially save some money at #5 to go over-slot at #34/49, the two I would have my eye on are Kyle Teel and Tommy Troy. Still a long ways to go, and the MLB draft is so unpredictable that things could look totally different come July, but the only thing I'm confident of is that the Twins are in a great spot given their lottery luck and bonus pool!

I'm curious if anyone has any strong feelings on Tommy Troy out of Stanford? I don't think he sticks at short at the next level, but lately I've come around on either him or Kyle Teel as slightly underslot guys who I think will be extremely strong/stable performers at the next level, even if they don't become super stars. I tend to agree with @Dman regarding Nimmala. If we had stuck at 13 I would be all for it, but when we're picking in the top 5 I really feel like you need to have some security in the hit tool, which seems to be his main sticking point. On the other hand he is only 17, and if the Twins believe the hit tool will come around, a 70-power SS and cannon arm is certainly intriguing!

I've come around more and more to the idea of Teel being a possibility at #5. The combination of athletic profile plus being the strong side of the platoon makes him extremely intriguing to me, especially if there were to be any possibility of going slightly under-slot. It looks like over the last 3 years there are only five left handed hitting catchers who have been above average hitters, two of whom are switch-hitters and another is Dalton Varsho who I would consider an OF at this point, so potentially a special profile. The other thing I love is that as far as I can tell, this dude starts every single game at catcher for Virginia. Granted they're not playing every day like in the majors, but they're getting 4-5 games in each week and this guy just doesn't come out from behind the dish. I don't think he'll creep into my personal top 5 come draft day, but I can definitely see him being in the 7-10 range and someone I certainly wouldn't be upset about them taking.

Totally agree with you on this point. From a casual perspective, it's so much harder to follow preps leading up to the draft given their season starts later, they play less game, and the quality of competition varies so much. I think the preps are what I'm most interested to follow over the next 3 months. Seems like we have a pretty good feel for college talent at this point, but I'm pretty sure last year Jackson Holliday was considered a late first round pick at this point still. So much can happen over the next few months!

I think it's hard to overstate how huge moving up in the lottery was for the Twins. Having what traditionally would be been the 13th overall pick and ending up with the 4th highest bonus pool is massive, and gives the Twins so much flexibility to approach the draft in different ways. There's the potential to possibly get a player they love past the Rangers due to the bonus pool difference, or the possibility of getting top 25-30 talents down to picks 34 and 49, which is probably more so the route I see them going based on this FO's philosophies. My best guess at how the draft goes is: High-floor college bat at #5 --> 1-2 high upside preps at #34/49 --> hammer college pitching in rounds 5-15, which has been their MO in prior years. My bold prediction at this point is that Dollander is on the board at 5 and Twins fans lose their minds when the Twins pass and take a Brayden Taylor or Jacob Gonzalez instead.

Love the analysis and update! It will be interesting to see if the Twins would consider breaking from their trend of position players early, given there appear to be 3-4 college arms that could be top 10 picks. My gut says no, but I hope if they fall in love with an arm they would be willing to take them high despite the demographic. I doubt Dollander will be there at 5 given his pedigree, but I am highly intrigued by Skenes. He really impressed me this weekend, and I think his combination of size/athleticism on the mound is really intriguing. I thought this article on FanGraphs today really highlighted his mentality and work ethic as well. It will be interesting to see how his work with Wes impacts his growth over the coming months. Right now I think I would be happy with any of: Crews/Langford/Clark/Dollander/Skenes, but obviously a lot of time before the draft for that to change.

I mean in a pitcher-friendly league where only 18 players had double digit home runs over the full season, 9 home runs is still pretty impressive, especially when a majority of the players with more home runs had 150+ more plate appearances. Also, batting average is not the stat I would use to make an argument against this guy when he's walking at a 28% clip. First of all, .272 is still a top 15 batting average in the FSL, plus his OBP was like 80 points higher than any other player.

I think 'we must' is maybe a little strong here. If he's pitching well and the Twins are anywhere near contention, they would be off their rocker to shop him. I think you see how the first few months go, and if he's pitching well you try to extend him mid-season. If not, offer him the QO at the end of the year or try to sign him as a FA. Steer and CES were both nice players and quality prospects, but neither really had a locked in future here since they're both questionable on the defensive spectrum. Personally I like the prospect we got back in Arraez trade more than either of those two, but I'm sure others would probably disagree.

Maybe I'm looking through rose-colored lenses, but I look at Salas' profile and I see a lot of similarities to a player we're very familiar with -- Jorge Polanco. Both switch-hitting SS who were always somewhat fringy to stay at the position defensively. It looks like Polanco was always pretty young for his level, similar to Salas, and neve hit more than 9 home runs during a season in his minor league career. Salas' strikeout rates are a little hit higher so probably not quite the same hit tool as Jorge, but also looks like he has some speed that Polanco doesn't have. Probably optimistic, but I thought the similarities were interesting!

Hmm, not sure if I would completely agree with you on the Max Clark likelihood being low. We've seen this front office take high-upside HS position players 2 out of 3 times that they've picked in the top 15 and preferring the college bat route later in the first round. I think if they had a chance to take the top ranked HS player in this class they would/should. To me, Clark's scouting profile reads a lot like Corbin Carroll back in 2019. But they did pass on him for Cavaco, so maybe I am totally off-base in thinking they would have interest in Clark. Either way, moving up to #5 gives them access to some talent that definitely wouldn't have made it to the mid-1st round, so very exciting! Lots of ways they could go with it.

I think one thing to consider is that based on MLB Pipeline the Brewers top 5 prospects are all OF at AA or above, so I am inclined to think they probably wouldn't have much interest in another COF, especially with Yelich/Renfroe already in the fold at the MLB level. One guy who I think would intrigue them (as painful as he would be to part with) is Jose Miranda. They don't appear to be exceptionally strong at corner IF either at the major league level or in their system, so Miranda would make sense as a major league ready piece who could either start everyday at 3B or bounce between the corners/DH. Per BaseballTradeValues, a package of Miranda, Winder or Woods Richardson, and Jovani Moran could make sense from the Brewers perspective/philosophy. They'd be getting 5+ years of control in a young power bat at an area of weakness in their system, a possible rotation piece, and a bullpen arm (all of whom are MLB ready, which I think MIL would be looking for), in exchange for 2 years of a SP that they probably won't be resigning once he reaches FA. Personally I would make that deal in a heartbeat (with the caveat of signing Woodruff to an extension) but it would definitely hurt to lose someone like Miranda who really established himself at the MLB level this year. I would be curious to hear other people's thoughts though! Is Miranda off the table, even for someone of Woodruff's caliber?

Personally, I think this is exactly the way to think of it, and honestly I think there's a really good team to be built around this idea, with a number of great fits already in house. I think people get caught up in the "they're only going to go 3 innings no matter what" idea, when in reality I believe things would certainly be more flexible than that. I think the other item to consider is that we don't necessarily have to fill the rotation with just bargain bin pitchers. There are plenty of pitchers out there with health concerns or innings limits that I think would be perfect for this type of setup. If you're still with me at this point, let me just propose a scenario that fits this method, while also building what I think could be a strong potential playoff rotation. The way I'm thinking something like this could work is essentially with a 3-tier pitching staff consisting of: starting pitchers(5), bulk relievers(4), traditional relievers(5). First, to fill some spots internally we will have: Ryan and Ober as two of our starting pitchers, Jax and Dobnak as two of our bulk relievers, and Rogers/Duffy/Thielbar/Alcala as four of our traditional relievers. That leaves us with 3 SP, 2 Bulk, and 1 Traditional spots to fill. To fill the final reliever spot, I'm signing someone like McHugh or Knebal to function as a high leverage, proven arm. I want these 5 relievers to be lights-out arms that can shut down the 7th-9th innings. To fill one of the bulk spots, I'm swinging in a trade to bring in a guy from Miami, Elieser Hernandez. There are countless guys both in the organization already and outside of it that I think could fit these roles well, so I wouldn't read too hard into the one specific player I picked. But I did just want to show one stat line quick about why I think someone like Hernandez would be great here: 1st Time through the order: 25.3% K-BB% / .675 OPS / 2.54 FIP 2nd Time through the order: 15.6% K-BB% / .828 OPS / 6.31 FIP The last bulk spot could simply be a rotation of AAA guys as arms are needed throughout the year. I'll let you fill in the blank there, I'm not going to think too hard about it. Eventually I think these could be ideal places for Duran or Canterino to end up long-term if they end up showing they can't handle a starters workload. Finally, I think there are a number of interesting non-bargain bin candidates to fill out the rotation. I'm looking to identify players who maybe have a long injury history and have never hit the 150+ inning mark but are extremely effective when healthy, players coming off of an injury looking to manage innings and slowly build throughout the year, or young players like Ryan/Ober still building their workload. Nobody says these guys have to be scrubs. Two pitchers that I think would be perfect for this type of rotation are Alex Wood and Alex Cobb. Both have an extensive injury history, but have proven to be strong starters when healthy. Let them go out and get their ~15 outs, throw 75-85 bullets, and help to manage their workload throughout the year so they are healthy and fresh going into playoffs. Then to top the rotation off, I think a great fit for this setup could be Carlos Rodon, as someone who is coming off of an injury and maybe doesn't have the capacity to be counted on for 150+ innings. Maybe his market isn't quite what he was hoping it to be, so we swoop in and offer him a 1x$22M contract to let him rebuild his value. If he's healthy going into playoffs, there's a Game 1 starter you can feel real good about. I'm not saying this is the most realistic offseason, and if you asked me if I thought this plan was likely to be put into place my answer would be "of course not". In reality are we going to sign Rodon AND Wood AND Cobb, no definitely not! And would 1-2 of the SP spots and 1-2 of the bulk spots be more likely to be filled with the Chris Archer's of the world, absolutely! But some people are writing this off without even giving it consideration, and I think that's a mistake. We would all love to sign the Gerrit Cole's and Scherzer's of the world, but that's never going to be our reality here. I think ideas like this can allow us to be competitive in a "Rays" sort of way, while also not constraining us to a $70M total payroll. Full pitching staff for this specific scenario is included below for clarity's sake. There are a million variations of this that you could put together, but this is just something pulled together on short notice.