Article: Adopt-A-Prospect Is Back!

[Seth Stohs]

You may have noticed that the 2018 Adopt-A-Prospect forum opened up on Monday. Over the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to adopt Twins minor leaguers and write about them and promote them throughout the season.

 

Round 1 of the Adopt-A-Prospect began on Monday. About 40 of the Twins top prospects were made available for adopting. Next week, more Twins minor leaguers will be adoptable as well.Twins Daily's Adopt-A-Prospectbegan several years ago as an opportunity to let Twins Daily readers contribute, but also to allow fans to get to know more about minor leaguers.

 

Twins Daily is the the best place online for Twins minor league coverage. Part of that is because we believe that these minor leaguers deserve to be recognized for their work in season and in the offseason, when no one is looking. They don't get the big bucks, in fact, they make less than minimum wage. They get to take long bus rides around remote parts of the country.

 

The top prospects get some talk nationally or regionally. However, Adopt-A-Prospect allows us to connect with them on a different level.

 

What would we like to see from those who adopt a prospect?

• Create a thread for the player in the Adopt-A-Prospect forums.
• Write up an introductory post on the player. Information can include anything you think is noteworthy; background, stats, video or more.
• Throughout the year, watch for their name in the daily Minor League Reports and report back into your forum.
• Do the occasional online search to see if there have been articles written on him. Sometimes their local newspapers will write an article on a player that we might never see. So, if we can find those, it'd be great.
• We expect that there will be at least one update each week, but the more the better.

Sometimes the most interesting stories are from the lesser-known prospects. This is a great opportunity to contribute to Twins Daily and help our readers get to know more about the players in the Twins minor league system.

 

Please consider adopting a couple of Twins prospects this year.

 

Click here to view the article

[goulik]

Only 17 first round prospects left!! Hurry before they are gone!!

[ashbury]

I just want to speak up to say that I have taken part in this project for a few years now, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm not a prospect guru or anything, just a Twins fan. Looking after two or three players a year, especially if I manage to pick guys at differing levels of the organization, gives me a good excuse to check up on recent box scores and to see how the farm system is coming along.

 

This is mostly to entertain myself, with a hope that a few readers at least get something out of it. Bringing out my Inner Sportswriter is one aspect of doing it. For different players, I may take different tacks - for instance my log of Aaron Slegers's progress last season included a lot of ripe puns regarding his unusual height, while with my quixotic choice of Austin Bizzle (2017's final draft pick) I indulged in wordplay regarding his unusual name. Others take a more straightforward approach.

 

I've made it to Spring Training once or twice, so the opportunity to snap some action photos came in handy when I got around to adopting a prospect. But there are plenty of photos on the internet, of practically any player out there, to enliven the page you create.

 

I find it fun to read the daily box score, with my adopted player in mind. Most days, there is also a professional writeup of the game (newspapers online, etc), and I can glean nuggets about my player from it. Sometime before the minor league season starts, I should collect and share the various little tools I've bookmarked to make this kind of analysis possible.

 

Basically, the idea is to think of ways to make it fun - and then it really is!

 

Maybe some fellow "adoptive parents" will want to share their thoughts on this project, as well.

[goulik]

Different people find different aspects more interesting. Whatever gets you going is what you can make of this thing.(that is appropriate, sheds a positive light on your prospect, and is respectful) It is what you make of it so jump in and enjoy!!

 

Different players offer different options of how to follow and update them. Some adoptive prospect parents enjoy taking a starting pitcher. You can get yourself on a routine of checking his progress every 5 days or so depending on when he is slated to pitch and give a game by game wrap. Others prefer relievers and hitters. With them, you may want to just give a week by week summary. Whatever your flavor is, there are different ways to go about it.

 

I really enjoy taking guys I see as possibly making the MLB squad at some point, getting a mid season promotion within the minors or who I believe will be making noise during the season. I like to find sleepers that people don't know much about and I get to reveal to the baseball world more about them than if they had not been adopted.

 

Finding ways to make it more interesting and getting more people to click on your post may be your thing. You can watch the TD tracker and see how many people are reading about your prospect and see if you can't get the most clicks.

 

Make it what you want. Have fun and promote a guy that is busting his hump for a small reward (at least for now. Most of these guys don't make much, that's for sure.)

[Vanimal46]

Last year I took the approach goulik mentioned in his post. Adopting players that were near MLB-ready.

 

Now that Garver and Hildenberger graduated, I went out of my comfort zone and adopted a couple of kids in A ball.

 

I'll tell you what, there's a lot more excitement and participation from the community compared to years past. Looking forward to keeping up the HYPE all season long.

[goulik]

Im looking forward to seeing who sizzles and who fizzles to be honest.... There are so many prospects with high upside and yet a low floor that you have no idea if they will make a big splash this year or just plainly disappear. This years list of prospects is exciting and intriguing to me for those reasons...

[ashbury]

  On 3/8/2018 at 6:29 PM, goulik said:

Im looking forward to seeing who sizzles and who fizzles to be honest....

Then make sure to follow Austin Bizzle.

[Squirrel]

  On 3/8/2018 at 6:54 PM, ashburyjohn said:

Then make sure to follow Austin Bizzle.

<GROAN>

 

And of course you jumped right on that. You are nothing if not predictable.

 

But I would have been disappointed if you didn’t.

[Squirrel]

Round 2 is posted and will open for business Monday morning! Check it out here:

 

http://twinsdaily.com/topic/28867-round-2-adopt-a-prospect-2018-monday-mar-12/