twinstalker

Good to see a pitcher or two who actually look like they could be promoted. Twins pitching development hasn't been a problem. Wonder how that throw-in to the Bader trade did.

Why would you lump Keaschall with the other three? He's nothing like them. It's all there in the minor league stats. In all my years studying prospects, I've found almost nobody who's defied their minor league stats (barring injury, cheating, etc). The issue is with us understanding what the stats say. Everyone can have a down period, but most Twins hitting "prospects" are terribly flawed and their struggles are indicative of who they are. Keaschall and Jenkins (to a greater degree) are consistently great at young ages in the minors, and I'm not merely talking about their slash lines. Their slash lines are great, but so were Julien's, Miranda's, and Lewis'. It's more about their weaknesses and magnitude of their weaknesses. If a minor leaguer has an issue, MLB pitchers will find it. Without fail. What you see from Lewis and Julien is the pitchers figuring out their weaknesses. Lewis is enough of an athlete (inc hand/eye) to possibly overcome his issues to an extent. Julien's problems are much worse, and in a few years he might figure out how to stick somewhere and be mediocre. Miranda was really mediocre at the more projectable levels, then broke out one year in the bandboxes of Twins AA and AAA. It was too big a breakout to dismiss that he had found something, but whatever he found he either lost or the pitchers discovered how to get his new self out. Again, at the Twins most projectable levels, Miranda didn't show anything. Keaschall's issues are minor in comparison to any of these guys. Jenkins' are even less. As far as I'm concerned the Twins only have two other hitters in the system with a chance, but: As I've said before, Culpepper and G. Gonzalez are two of the tougher hitters to figure out. Culpepper apparently struggles quite a bit with breaking balls, which will kill him. His strikeout rate is decent, but it's risen considerably throughout his AA. June/July 15.4% in 123 PA Aug/Sept 21.1% in 147 PA One of those, for his profile, projects MLB success, the other projects mediocrity, but right now both have sample size and other issues to keep conclusions murky. Gonzalez lacks athleticism, is poor defensively, has only modest power, and struggles with patience at times (his walk rate is complicated). Given all that, he's had a remarkable age 21 season, tempered by the easy hitting parks in the upper minors. He reminds of Miranda in some ways but showed hitting prowess at age 19. K rate is really good (but that was tru for Miranda also, who swung at everything and had great contact rates). Again, lots of mixed signals. Really, though, the biggest knock I have against Gonzalez is that he's only hit in big time hitters parks (A, AA, AAA), or, in the case of more pitching friendly A+, didn't hit until his third try at the level. My informal study of parks has me believing that parks not only affect slash lines but also K rates, so I often ignore these lines in the stats. In fact, for Colorado hitting prospects, I only look at AA Hartford to determine my projections. Gonzalez and Culpepper could easily get off to good MLB starts. It happens frequently with hitters who probably have very little chance of actually being good at the highest level. So these guys could fit into the Lewis, Julien, Miranda category. But right now I can't say whether they're going to struggle for long periods (or forever) like the others.

Many of us here seem to not really care what stats are important and which are not for regular minor leaguers. We want to look at misleading ones and those out of context (slash lines, usually). Well, if we like that, we'll really like DSL stats. In A through AAA (four levels), BB walk rate is important only to determine who can't take a walk and who takes too many walks. There is a range the BB% should be in, and if it's outside in either direction, that projects problems. Taking a walk for your minor league team helps your minor league team win, which is fine for the minors. It's meaningless toward projecting majors. Walk rate is a big deal in the majors, which I think fools people into thinking it's good for a prospect to have as high a walk rate as possible. It's not. High walk rates in the minors is indicative of passivity. Which brings us to DSL, where you and your brother and your brother's cousin are moving from the playgrounds to professional ball. To put it mildly, the ball leaving a DSL pitcher's hand has no idea where it's going. High walk rates mean nothing. The stats that matter for a DSL batters are K rate, exit velocity, and barrel %. Think of the kids you played baseball with when you started. Those one or two kids who stood out didn't strike out and hit the ball really hard. They certainly weren't taking walks, or if they were, they were intentional or balls thrown nowhere near the plate. For the 2024 DSL one player stood out over all others with his K rate and EV (though not launch angles, ergo barrels), and that was Jesus Made. We have no idea on EVs, but K rate is easy enough. Haritzon Castillo has the best K rate, doesn't walk too much, and slashes well enough to indicate his EVs are probably at least decent. He's probably your best Twins prospect in DSL, though I don't know if he's anything at all. BTW, 10 of the 15 batters for the DSL Twins had an OBP 128 points higher than their batting avg. Walks mean nothing in DSL. Castillo wasn't one of the ten, which is a good sign.

Minor league OBP is almost always misleading and often meaningless. Now find a six-game stretch to take that to the 100th degree. If we're going to talk about "hot," let's restrict it to stats that are used in projections. Projecting using OBP is a huge mistake, unless it's inverse.

You wouldn't have to trade for the sort of reliever Larnach would bring.

Zebby is coveted by every major league team.

Congratulations to Walker Jenkins, who, because Keaschall has exceeded rookie limits, is now the only real Twins hitting prospect. The prospect list: 1: Jenkins 2 thru P+1: Every pitcher in the Twins system (there are P of them, and I've decided to include Raya -- hey, I'd be pitching prospect for the Twins if I could throw hard and let them teach me a pitch that would work at the MLB level for a while before it crippled me, I'm already as good as Noah Davis. This group and its placement here is a compliment to Twins pitching development. P+2 thru P+4: K. Culpepper, G. Gonzalez, Tait (these are guys who have a legit chance of contributing in MLB, Tait maybe being the only one with a chance to be above average, though the probability is low) P+5 thru P+4+W: the weirdos, including Eeles, EmRod, other indy players and int'l signings we know nothing about. EmRod is included here because of tools and because they are diminishing rapidly. Also includes a couple of catchers. P+W+5 thru N: everybody else, notably including first rounders Sabato, DeBarge, and Houston. Twins continue to use early draft picks on guys who don't have a chance. There are N players in the system eligible for prospect lists.

Keaschall should be good. He just needs health, reps, and maybe an offseason of working really hard at it. He seems the type that would, though I have my doubts the staff is going to prioritize it. Under Kelly (and even Gardenhire) the team didn't accept poor fielding. While I disagreed with a good amount of the mythology surrounding it, the "Twins Way" was a real thing. Fielding, baserunning, and all fundamentals were requirements.

Anybody can be a major leaguer if you don't have standards. These are three very different guys. One is guaranteed to be a good player, probably a star of some sort. One is guaranteed to disappoint if you're naive enough to think he's going to be good. One is probably a below average player but does have some variation around that, hitting-wise.

From a talent standpoint, the Twins may in fact be the least relevant team. Maybe Rockies, Pirates, but they're exceptions proving the rule.

If our future is discussing Martin vs Roden, probably better to find something else to do with our summers.

What doubters?

??? Amick makes it with nobody. He's 22 with a 26.1% K rate at A+. This won't go anywhere, and no other team will improve the issue. One thing I've found is that players are who they are. I hated the pick, and he hasn't disappointed. As for any pitcher, I'd bet on the Twins over an average team.

I think if we randomly chose a player out of the couple thousand available to be drafted and forced the Twins to draft him in the first round, we'd lose our heads and consider him a good prospect. Because, after all, he's a first-rounder.

There's only Jenkins, and he's independent of most of the mess going forward. There are some pitchers who are clearly not ready. There are a bunch of hitters who will not be anything ever, and a couple where the jury is still out. Basically, there is only Jenkins, who's coming up no matter what happens next year (barring injury). Nothing to clamor for

Buxton (for a while), Keaschall, and Jenkins. Given that the rest of the Twins will not be good, in essence Keaschall will be the first, second, or third best hitter, so...yes.

No. Cannot count on Clemens. Doesn't mean he couldn't put up another season close to this, but counting on it would be ignoring logic and probability.

It is not difficult to put up big numbers in St. Paul, as should be obvious with 1, 2, ad 3 all being Saints. But lets see if we can rule them out from contributing to the Twins: 3. Jhonny Pereda -- age 29 season, too old, esp at catcher 2. Kyler Fedko -- all his stats are average to mediocre while being too old for his levels, K rate too high for his profile, level, age vs level. 1. Kala'i Rosario -- 28% K rate, can basically rule him out. One speck of hope would be his his numbers and K rate are much better vs lhp. But I think his defense precludes that being enough to play him. He appears to be Yunior Severino. Without this info, a person could get the idea that Twins "prospects" suddenly suck when they reach MLB.

In terms of who had the best results, the best line is Francisco's. This is because he did best with the things he could control. Hits are often the result of luck. Given that he struck out the most hitters (K/9), didn't give up a run, and walked only two, there's your reliever of the month. Which is meaningless for so many different reasons. Francisco is 24 at low A. The two guys you placed ahead of him are 25. Relievers don't make the majors, except in the rarest of circumstances. Relief outings, random or correlated, will allow a nothing pitcher to have a good month by chance. More than one nothing pitcher will have good numbers for a month. There are fifty relievers in the system, probably, and none of them are good enough to make the majors, yet by chance or because they're too experienced for the league, a few will put up decent numbers. Still, I sort of like this feature.

Nick, serious (non-biting) question. How do you write an article like this ignoring that Boras is his agent? Falvey jumped in bed with Boras from the beginning, though I'll admit taking anyone but Jenkins would have been stupid. However, he didn't have to take Lewis or sign Correa. Lewis was ranked around 5th consensus-wise, and the Twins took him 1st. That is, they didn't have to take him -- very arguably at the time shouldn't have. Maybe not so much recently, but people and the writers here constantly mentioned Lewis as an extension candidate when there's zero chance. Zero chance because Boras. Boras has an understanding with each of his star players/prospects that he will do whatever he has to to get the player the best contract possible, and the player agrees with this when he signs on, or, frankly, he wouldn't sign on with Boras. Could a Boras client sign an extension to give up his first years of free agency? Sure, but that player is going to be a Yankee, Met, or Dodger, as those extension years are going to be at outlandish prices the Twins or most any team could never afford. More dollars than a projected free agent contract would get him those years, probably. Boras doesn't deal with expected values, he deals only in ceilings. Jenkins needs more minor league seasoning. His power isn't yet developed, he hasn't succeeded at AAA. If the Twins want him for seven years, they will have to wait to call him up. Next year, winning-wise, is lost anyway. Why would you want Jenkins under team control for only five years after a lost season?

I didn't view Crews as "can't-miss." I viewed him as overrated with a good chance to be mediocre. My ranking of the five was: 1. Langford 2. Skenes 3. Clark 4. Jenkins 5. Wilson Crews I sometimes put 5 when the discussion was simply about the five. Otherwise Crews was somewhere in the second five. Gonzalez I absolutely hated, and there were guesses he was going to be a Twin before the lottery. He won't even make the majors for more than a cup. I did like Schanuel but was warned he probably the next Casey Kotchman.

I see no competence toward getting proper value back. I don't think the Twins have the ability to trade them and recover. They might, but I think the probability is small. If they're going to do it, now's the time. The Twins won't win next year because no one in power understands hitting. No point in having Lopez and Ryan around, really. Then after next season, their value is diminished greatly, plus they risk injury next year.

It's really hard: 1. Twins develop their pitchers. They seem to do this well. 2. Twins overhaul from ground zero their hitting development and find someone qualified to oversee this. Haven't addressed. 3. Twins overhaul their drafting, specifically wrt hitting. Haven't addressed. 4. Twins overhaul their Latin scouting. I believe this has been done, to what success I don't know. 5. I am not a fan of Royce Lewis, but I think the managerial things that make a difference are not being addressed. Namely fielding and the attitude toward its importance. Address them. 6. They need help with the analytics. As a statistician/data scientist, I see when they so obviously implement strategies based on "analytics." I also see the fallacies they've fallen prey to. They need someone who understands the theory of probability and statistics to oversee data decisions. Address it.

Twins have very few hitting prospects if you look at the stats the right way. So minor league success almost always won't translate. Sorry. The other day I list two actual hitting prospects (Jenkins, Keaschall), and a very few others with a chance (Culpepper, Gonzalez, Tait). So expect two and don't be surprised with three. It's a sad situation. Shouldn't be closing your eyes and crossing your fingers; the numbers (K rate) tell the story. High Avg/OBP/Slg is very misleading. Also listed EmRod as someone with a very low chance.

There's a difference between criminally greedy and inept.