Tom Froemming

Double-A stats Burdi: 3.68 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, 10.6 K/9, 5.2 BB/9 Kinley: 4.38 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, 10.1 K/9, 4.3 BB/9 Burdi is definitely the better prospect, as Kinley is two years older, but it's worth noting that per Baseball America Kinley has been clocked at 100 mph and he was their choice for best slider in the Marlins system.

Always have to remember the team knows more than we (or any of the other teams) do about their guys. There's a reason why Burdi was unprotected. There's a reason why he was almost traded to the Braves. There's also a reason why the Braves opted to take another prospect for Jaime Garcia. I'm sure the Twins would prefer to keep Burdi (and everybody else) rather than lose them for nothing, but there's always the chance a guy gets drafted and then returned or the Twins even have the opportunity to trade to get a guy back.

Not sure what the answer to B is, but there's a good indication to the answer to A in this Fangraphs article from last December. Listed in a tier of top potential FA SPs is Darvish, Arrieta, Danny Duffy (who signed an extension) and Pineda. The next tier of depth guys included Lynn, Cobb, Chatwood and others. So it's a good guess Pineda would have been the third-ranked SP if healthy.

I might let him start back in Cedar Rapids for a couple months just to get him rolling, but I wouldn't be shocked if he went to Fort Myers. Rortvedt's only going to be 22 when that Castro contract ends. Not many catchers that young holding down MLB gigs. Joe Mauer did, but he's a rare bird. I would avoid comparing those two. It's not fair to Ben.

I'd be willing to bet Seth's opinion of Rortvedt isn't too different than mine, there are just a ton of guys in that 10-30 range who are really close.

Passing along some stuff I already shared on Twitter ... Michael Pineda last three seasons: 9.46 K/9, 1.98 BB/9. That 4.79 K:BB ratio ranked seventh among the 78 pitchers to log 400 IP in that time frame, trailing only Kershaw, Sale, Scherzer, Kluber, Bumgarner and Carrasco. His overall numbers were far less impressive because he had the worst BABIP (.328) of that sample and the second-worst HR/FB rate (17.4%). He's given up a lot of home runs, but over his career he has a 1.6 HR/9 rate at Yankee Stadium and a 0.9 HR/9 rate everywhere else.

And the new front office continues to be unpredictable. I wouldn't have guessed they'd be shopping in the rehabbing pitcher market, but this is such a low risk/potentially high reward move. Probably doesn't help them much to get into the playoffs in 2018, but could make a huge impact in a postseason rotation if they can get in and then be a key piece for 2019 at a very reasonable price tag (relatively speaking).

As a way to look back at a great minor league season and look ahead toward the release of the 2018 Twins Prospect Handbook, I’ll be writing a series of features on prospects I seem to be especially high on. Next to receive the spotlight treatment is catcher Ben Rortvedt.Ranking prospects is a difficult task and everyone has a bit of a different methodology. This series isn’t meant to be critical of any of the other lists out there, it’s all about presenting a positive case for the featured player. We’re starting at the bottom of my list and working up from there. Here’s a look at what’s on deck: Range 41-50 spotlight: Zander Wiel Range 31-40 spotlight: Tom Hackimer Range 21-30 spotlight: Lachlan Wells Range 11-20 spotlight: Ben Rortvedt, No. 11 Range 1-10 spotlight: Coming Dec. 19 Yes, I have Ben Rortvedt just outside my top 10. I’d argue that no player in the Twins organization had the opportunity to grow more in 2017. Also, he is a catcher. There is no question about his ability to stick at the position or about how his personal and physical attributes will translate there. He’s already getting great reviews on his presence and leadership. At the time of the draft, Derron Johnson told Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com “the kid was born to catch.” Being sent to Cedar Rapids to start the year was a challenging assignment. Not only was he tasked with trying to hit against a level of pitching much higher than he’d ever faced, but the pitching staff he handled was light years ahead of anything he had worked with. A lot of the pitchers he formed a battery with were college guys four or five years older than he is. I’m sure Rortvedt benefited greatly from being around those more experienced teammates, as well as having an entire summer under the wing of Tommy Watkins, J.P. Martinez and Brian Dinkelman. It’s very rare to see a catcher this young play a full season. Here’s a quick look back at the Kernels primary catcher each year since becoming a Twins affiliate: 2017: Ben Rortvedt, age 19 season, 86 games caught 2016: A. J. Murray, 23, 45 games 2015: Brian Navarreto, 20, 84 games 2014: Mitch Garver, 23, 63 games 2013: Michael Quesada, 23, 51 games So what about the bat? Well, don’t even bother looking at Rortvedt’s full-year stat line. Through May he was hitting just .139/.214/.174 (.388 OPS). Two months of absolutely horrendous hitting and the Twins let him endure that slump because they believed in him. Things eventually clicked, and he hit .273/.324/.397 (.721 OPS) over his final 54 games. Seth went down to Cedar Rapids and caught up with Rortvedt shortly after that turnaround started. That piece is well worth your time. If that slash line above doesn’t catch your eye, consider this: That’s the exact same OPS teammate Lewin Diaz posted over the same stretch, and you don’t really see anybody questioning his future offensive potential. From June forward, Diaz hit .291/.328/.393. There’s also the fact that Rortvedt played the entire season at just 19-years-old. Other than Royce Lewis, he was the youngest player to appear for the Kernels last year. He and faced a pitcher younger than he was just eight times. Rortvedt was a little older than the typical high school player in the 2016 draft class, but he still entered 2017 with roughly the same amount of professional experience as fellow ‘16 high school draftees Jose Miranda and Akil Baddoo. While Rortvedt played 89 games for Cedar Rapids, Miranda was at Elizabethton for 54 games and Baddoo split his season between the E-Twins (33 games) and the GCL (20 games). And those two obviously play much less demanding positions. I loved seeing how much confidence the Twins showed in Rortvedt and how he broke loose from that awful start with the bat. Here’s a video from the Kernels YouTube account where Rortvedt talks about the grind of the season and that breakout: A big part of what moves the needle for me is definitely the fact that he’s a legit catcher, one who hits left-handed and has offensive upside, but I’m also encouraged about his physique and reports on his work ethic. Jeff Johnson, an excellent reporter for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, wrote this about Rortvedt in early April: “The first thing you notice about him are his forearms. They’re huge. He’s too young to understand the comparisons, but think Popeye or Steve Garvey here. Those kind of forearms. ‘I don’t know. I’m kind of a gym rat,’ Ben Rortvedt said with a sheepish smile. ‘I’m smaller, so I’ve always taken pride in being strong. Not being outworked in that way.’” And here’s what Rortvedt’s former high school coach Brad D’Orazio told 2080 Baseball when asked what makes him so special: “If he wasn’t sleeping, he was hitting the gym, hitting off of a tee, or harassing people to throw to him.” It’s a good thing he’s developed that work ethic, because there are obviously a lot of things Rortvedt still needs to work on. Some of the numbers may not look like it, but I think he’s off to a great start. He threw out 36 percent of base stealers, only struck out in 17.9 percent of his plate appearances and crushed same-sided pitching, posting a .311/.400/.393 line (.793 OPS) against lefties. For more on Ben Rortvedt and about 170 other Twins minor leaguers, be sure to pick up a copy of the 2018 Twins Prospect Handbook, which will be available later this winter. Click here to view the article

Yes to all of the above. I think the less stuff you have the more important it is to have control/command. Jose Berrios can afford to have some control/command concerns because he's so nasty. A guy like Slegers has to be an artist. He can't afford to miss spots and he's gonna get hammered if he falls behind in the count too often. In his minor league career Slegers has a 2.0 BB/9 and only gave up 38 homers in 601 minor league innings (0.6 HR/9). I'd think that suggest that along with just not walking guys he's hitting his spots in the zone too. Just for reference, those are nearly the exact numbers Adalberto Mejia posted in the minors. How many super tall guys get that part of their game figured out by the time they're 25? Basically what I'm saying is Slegers has the building blocks, now it's time to figure out how all those other things you mentioned can be manipulated to his advantage. Can they figure out how to use his unique release point/extension and tweak something to give his pitches a boost? Maybe, maybe not, but at least we know this guy can put the ball where he wants it to go. It's a good starting point.

In the sample of 315 pitchers Baseball Savant lists as starters, Arrieta ranked 73rd in average spin rate and Slegers 290th. But spin is kinda like velocity in that just because you have a high number doesn't mean you're going to be a good pitcher. Nik Turley had the third-best spin rate in that sample and Dallas Keuchel was 270th. Again I'm not a spin expert, but from what I understand there is such thing as effective spin. There may be a certain gap between your pitches you want to shoot for in terms of spin rate, so more spin isn't always a good thing. So to really break a guy down in terms of effective spin it seems you'd want to look at each of his individual pitches, which is a little out of my league at this point. But I think it's safe to say Slegers would likely benefit from more spin. The good thing is we know guys can effectively mess around with these things to a point. The Twins most certainly learned some things from having Craig Breslow around last year. Maybe they can take some of those lessons learned and apply them to a guy like Slegers and see what happens.

Aaron Slegers is one of the tallest pitchers to ever grace a major league mound, standing 6-foot-10. That height comes with some advantages, but exactly how does he stand to benefit from being so tall? Having that extreme length makes his fastball appear a few clicks quicker and allows him to throw from a unique release point without making any other dramatic alterations to his mechanics. Just how unique?Well, among the 562 right-handed pitchers Baseball Savant has data on from 2017, Slegers is one of just three who averaged a release point of at least 6.2 feet vertically and 3.3 feet horizontally. What’s especially surprising is he uses his length more horizontally. Slegers’ vertical release point was 6.33 feet, in the top 13 percent among right-handers, but his horizontal release point was inside the top three percent at 3.34 feet. It would make sense to guess that former Twin Alex Meyer is in that same class. After all, he’s 6-foot-9. Well it appears Meyer may not make as good use of his height, as his vertical (5.38 feet) and horizontal (2.13 feet) release points both trail Slegers by nearly a foot. So who are those other two pitchers similar to Slegers and how do they accomplish such a unique angle to pitch from? One of them is 6-foot-6 reliever Taylor Jungmann. He only threw 0.2 innings for the Brewers last season, so there’s not much data to dig into. The other guy, however, is much more interesting. That would be 6'4" free agent Jake Arrieta. How is that possible? He must have freakishly long arms or the ability to get incredible extension, right? No, for Arrieta it’s more about his feet than his arms. Arrieta accomplishes his release point by throwing from the extreme third base side of the rubber. During his 2015 Cy Young Award season, Rob Arthur over at FiveThirtyEight wrote an excellent piece about that release point evolution. Circling back to Meyer, the main reason why he has a less dramatic release point is the fact he pitches more in the middle, or maybe even slightly toward the first base side of the rubber. I’d guess that’s in an effort to keep more of his pitches in the strike zone. To give you more of a visual, here are the release point charts from Baseball Savant, starting with Slegers: Download attachment: SlegersRelease.png Below is Arrieta’s chart. It’s worth noting that there are likely some more inconsistencies because he threw a ton more pitches in the majors than Slegers last year: Download attachment: ArrietaRelease.png And finally, just for further reference here’s Meyer’s chart: Download attachment: MeyerRelease.png This is inconsistent to the point I would assume Meyer was tinkering around with his release during the year. Maybe something for you fantasy baseball players out there to look into over the winter. It’s usually pretty great to have something in common with a former Cy Young Award winner, but what does it mean? I’m not sure, but I want to make it clear that I’m not calling Aaron Slegers the next Jake Arrieta. The reason behind avoiding that comparison, however, may be different than you’d think. The perception seems to be that Slegers is a soft tosser. Yes, he did only average 90.6 mph on his fastballs during his time with the Twins, but his height/extension comes into play. Of 746 pitchers to log data at Baseball Savant in 2017, Slegers had the fourth-highest increase in effective fastball velocity vs. actual fastball velocity at +1.7 mph, meaning the effective velocity on his fastballs was 92.3 mph. Of the 315 players classified as starting pitchers by Baseball Savant, that mark ranks 116th, or inside the top 36.8 percent. Still not elite velocity, and Slegers is never going to be a power pitcher, but there’s nothing to suggest he can’t be successful because he doesn’t throw hard enough. Slegers actually had a better effective fastball velocity than Arrieta’s 91.75 mph in 2017, but he had much less impressive spin rates. Arrieta averaged 2,308 rpm on all his pitches, Slegers just 1,954 rpm. Lumping all their pitch types together is a very simplified way to look at it, but I’m not a spin rate expert, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Simply put, Arrieta has far superior stuff. So what am I trying to say here? Aaron Slegers is a lot more interesting a pitcher than I think most people realized, myself included. I’ve seen multiple people both at Twins Daily and elsewhere suggest he’s a DFA candidate. This is a pitcher entering his age 25 season coming off a strong showing in Triple-A. Nick Nelson made an interesting point in a recent article, noting Slegers’ strong finish and saying “I'm very curious to see if he can pick up where he left off, and what type of untapped potential might lie in him yet, especially if he returns to the Twins and jibes with new pitching coach Garvin Alston.” Arrieta clearly overhauled his mechanics in order to throw from a slot that Slegers is already able to pitch from naturally. Here's a look at how Arriet's horizontal slot has evolved over the years: Download attachment: ArrietaBBChart.jpeg It will be interesting to see if Slegers benefits from some of the changes that have been made to the pitching analysis and instruction staff. Is there someone in the org who can help him get more effective spin and improve the quality of his arsenal? It seems a lot of the lack of excitement is related to the fact that Slegers wasn’t, and still isn’t, considered a top prospect, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that he barely pitched as an amateur. According to this New York Times article, Slegers grew seven inches between his junior and senior years of high school. That put so much stress on his body he was barely able to pitch his senior year. What if instead he stayed healthy and had a great season? He ended up going to college at Indiana University and was able to pitch only six total games his freshman and sophomore seasons due to injuries. He was the Big Ten Pitcher of the Year as a junior, but do you think the Twins would’ve been able to get him in the fifth round of the 2013 Draft had there not been so many questions surrounding his ability to stay healthy? In his first four full seasons as a professional, Slegers has made 23, 25, 25 and 27 starts. How much earlier would he have gone If you could’ve assured teams he was going to be this durable? Of course none of that stuff really matters in the grand scheme of things at this point, but I do imagine if Slegers had been drafted a few rounds higher and put up these exact same numbers people would look at him much differently. Is Slegers someone the Twins should be making room for in their 2017 rotation? Absolutely not, but this is an intriguing pitcher who has had a successful minor league career and won’t even be arbitration eligible until 2021. That’s a great depth piece to have in case of emergency. Considering the Twins difficulties in developing starting pitchers, this is not somebody you just cast aside. Click here to view the article

Cheers to the moderators! Thank you all.

Not saying he should be any higher right now, but I think Ricky De La Torre could be the guy to make the biggest jump over the next year.

Care to share any thoughts on Dietrich Enns?

La Velle just confirmed that was exactly the case. Maitan took less to go to the Angels.

I believe given the unusual circumstances teams were allowed to use their 2018 international pools to sign the Braves guys if they wanted, so the Twins probably could've still afforded him even while doing these moves. But if I was Maitan I don't think I'd want to come here unless the Twins were able to overpay, given the glut of shortstops in the system. Also, I've heard people suggest Maitan will drop quite a bit in the 2018 preseason rankings from where he was on those 2017 midseason lists.

Free baseball players ... what's not to like?

I'm not certain that growth all happened in one year. He was 5-8 when he signed in 2014 and I just think nobody (MiLB/B-Ref/Fangrpahs/etc) updated his profile until right before this season. I could be wrong though. On a related note, I guess Aaron Slegers grew seven inches between his junior and senior years of high school and that absolutely crushed his development. So much stress on his tendons he couldn't pitch. Lots of injury trouble in his early years of college too.

Steve Adams at MLB Trade Rumors predicted the Twins would sign Darvish in his latest chat. Obviously he was just speculating, but it wasn't baseless. Those guys pay as close attention to things around the league as anybody. Maybe they don't land Yu, but I am to the point where I expect them to sign one of those top 4 starters. But you're absolutely right, there's a lot of competition for those guys so I doubt they get two in that class. As far as the second spot, I could see the team either trading for a Cole/Odorizzi/Straily type or it wouldn't surprise me if there's a second-tier free agent that appeals to this front office for some specific reason. Maybe they think getting Chatwood out of Denver could be a game changer for him or they can fix Chacin or Tillman's wildness. They liked Jaime Garcia enough to trade for him. Would that be overkill? Maybe, but guys are going to get hurt. If you want five decent starters all year you probably realistically need to have like 10 of them in house.

Agreed, but that's just not Lewis Thorpe right now. He's 22 and hasn't pitched 200 total innings as a professional. He hasn't reached 90 IP in a season yet. I get that he's on the 40-man roster now, but I have a hard time imagining him as a guy who has a chance at impacting the MLB team in 2018 seeing that he's behind a bunch of other guys in that regard and will certainly be on an innings limit. He's absolutely a legit prospect to be excited about, but this season will be all about staying healthy.

Yes, and I believe all the rehab coordinators/a lot of the medical staff are based out of Fort Myers, so there could be some advantage to sending a guy down there if you were concerned about his readiness. On the other hand, if you do feel like a guy is ready, sending him to Rochester to test out how he handles the cold could be kind of an effective final checkpoint. Is he really ready to come back, or are there still stiffness/soreness issues popping up?

I think the average player in the FSL is something like 23-years-old, so Thorpe and Wells would still be young for that level. Also, neither of those two have pitched healthy through an entire year of full-season ball yet. I would feel comfortable starting the year with both of them on the Miracle.

Great stuff as always, really shows Falvine are in a good spot. Sounds like they may have the financial flexibility to sign a guy or two and at the same time they have depth to use as either injury insurance or trade bait. My guess right now ... MLB: Erv, Berrios, Gibson, NEW, NEW AAA: Mejia, May (as he builds arm strength), Slegers, Gonsalves, Enns AA: Jorge, Littell, Romero, Stewart, Eades Obviously trades/Rule 5 draft stuff and injuries could open up spots, but I'd suspect the team will also sign at least one minor league free agent to add to this mix too. But the fact they let Dereck Rodriguez and David Hurlbut go says they feel pretty comfortable with their depth in the upper minors. There are arguments for all those guys I listed in the AA rotation to be in Rochester, but the five guys I listed in the Red Wings rotation need to be in AAA (though I am interested in Nick's idea of Enns in the pen). I don't think it would hurt any of those guys listed to go back to Chattanooga. Looking down into Fort Myers, I don't see anybody that really needs to move up to AA start the year. Thorpe only made 15 starts there and is still going to be building innings, nothing wrong with him going back to the FSL as a 22-year-old to open the year. If they only ended up adding one MLB SP, Mejia moves up to the Twins, Jorge moves up to Rochester and somebody like Randy LeBlanc or Sean Poppen enters the Chattanooga rotation. Phil Hughes is going to need to fit in somewhere too (Triple A bullpen until he's 100% healthy?) and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody else.