With the minor league season coming to an end, I thought a quick update on my “adopt-a-prospect” would be good.

It was back in early March when I was looking forward to providing “bi-weekly(ish)” updates on Twins prospect Felix Jorge. I had predicted that we would see him at some point in 2018 with a September call-up being the worst case scenario. Not too long after that, he was placed on the disabled list for the Twins AA affiliate Chattanooga with soreness in his right triceps, which is his pitching arm. After about two and a half months, he was able to debut and pitch 3.0 innings for the Gulf Coast League Twins in late June. In his two appearances, he struck out two and allowed two base runners while giving up one unearned run. His rehab was short lived as a week later he was taken off the 40-man roster and eventually released from the team. It was only five days later that the Twins then re-signed him to a minor league deal and assigned him back to AA Chattanooga. In the two months since he has not been able to come back from his triceps injury.

Why did the Twins and Jorge part ways just to sign again five days later? It was actually nothing that either party had control over as Mike Berardino explains:

Felix Jorge was on the AA DL when he was designated for assignment. Per CBA,player must either be activated off DL or passed through release waivers at that point.— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) https://twitter.com/MikeBerardino/status/1016500107850801152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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The Twins have a good problem ahead of them and that is that they have a lot of options for starting pitchers going into the 2019 season. You have the mainstays from 2018 in Odorizzi, Gibson, and Berrios while also expecting Pineda to be healthy as well as Meija, Gonsalves, Stewart, Slegers, Littel, and Romero all possible candidates to fill out the final spot. This is bad news for Felix Jorge, who will no longer be defined as a prospect in 2019, who also will be coming off a lost season. At this point, it is hard to project what Jorge will become in the future but the Twins must still have hope that he will contribute at some point if they re-signed him back in July knowing that he wasn’t going to pitch for a while. Depending on whether or not he can get healthy this offseason, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Felix Jorge back in Spring Training in what may be his final shot at making the big league club.