Article: Six Minnesota Twins Among MLB.com's Top 100 Prospect

[gunnarthor]

The scouting director for the last 6 years has been Deron Johnson if you want to give credit to someone for finding the talent.

 

Good point. Johnson really has changed some of the Twins approach to the draft. He's targeted hard throwers much more than Radcliff had (although there were exceptions to both - Johnson drafted Wimmers, Radcliff grabbed Garza). He drafted guys like Williams, Tootle, Hunt, Bullock, Bashore, Boyd, Bard etc, not caring if they weren't always starters or college arms. He still went after toolsy position players but also used our first #1 pick on a college bat (Levi Michael) for the first time since 96. I had always liked his drafts but there hadn't been a lot of actual results yet. That hopefully changes this year when Hicks/Gibson make the majors.

 

If you agree that our top 10 are (in some order) Sano, Buxton, Meyers, Gibson, Hicks, Arcia, Rosario, May, Kepler, Berrios then Johnson is responsible for guys like Buxton, Hicks, Rosario, Gibson and Berrios.

 

Sano, Arcia, Kepler were signed by our international department. And Ryan added Meyer and May.

[old nurse]

Johnson was a big reason the Twins drafted Adam Johnson In 2000:shoot:

 

 

But seriously you are right. Too often people are giving too much credit or blame to GMs for the success or failure of drafts. The GM his little or no input on the draft.

 

In the 2000 mlb draft first round there were only 3 players in the 40 pick first round that ended up very good players(Adrian Gonzales #1. Utley and Wainwright), 5 if you want to call Rocky Baldellli and Kelly Johnson very good players. Shows you how hard the job is

[old nurse]

Right, the draft is on the scouting director, and how bad the GM is at assembling a good MLB roster. Trades are on the GM. So, between being awful at the ML level, and trading from the ML roster, Ryan has had a role in rebuilding the farm system. My issue is that it is not either or. You can do all that, and still sign free agents......Clearly the farm system is better. Clearly it should go up in the next two years as they ads two more top 5 picks, and Sano and Buxton are still in the minors.

 

A GM is as only as good as the material he is given to work with. It is hard to trade when you have so few tradable assets. The trades made this year are not going to be determinable if they are good or bad for a few years. The free agent argument is something I am not going to rehash. As Nick said, not everything is black or white.

[PseudoSABR]

People aren’t allowed to criticize his approach to the MLB roster while acknowledging that he and his staff have done a very good job rebuilding the farm system? This is not a black-and-white issue.

Right, but we really haven't that kind of nuance from the pessimist, and even I think you've been cringing at the negative-nancy-ism lately.

[CwK]

Eddie was robbed, but experts are using his injury as an excuse to leave him off the list. Which is understandable. Either way, I am hoping he gets comfortable at 2B while getting on base. Fort Myers should be a fun team to pay attention to.

[ashbury]

Right, the draft is on the scouting director, and how bad the GM is at assembling a good MLB roster. Trades are on the GM.

 

The GM has more than a little say in setting the tone for the draft, and the scouts have a lot of input on any trade. Internal "scouting" of our own players has a role too. It's all about talent evaluation, and everyone involved needs to contribute no matter what their official title says. While this speaks to accountability, I'm not inclined to draw lines quite like that.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

Within the first two minutes of last night's show, it was obvious that this list isn't Mayo's, but a compilation of '30 scouts and front-office types'. Apparently the list is compiled in a poll-type way, like the basketball polls, and Mayo 'breaks the ties'. Without knowing who exactly has a vote, it would be tough to represent all levels and geographical areas fairly with only 30 'voters'. Name recognition is just as likely to help (see D'arnaud) as a great season. MLB.com would be better off letting Mayo make his own list.

[Kwak]

Ryan credit for being GM? He began as GM in the late 90's. The GM is responsible for selecting the rest of the staff of the FO as opposed to every player. The GM also defines the operating philosophy within the restrictions imposed by the owner. The staff is tasked with doing "the leg-work" on personnel and making their case to the GM for his approval. Summing up, those in the FO were Ryan's appointees because the Twins move haven't made wholesale personnel changes recently. If there were "faults" in the personnel area from the late 90's on--those are actually on Ryan. To claim that "he" fixed the minor league system is premature and ignores that Ryan bears much of the blame for the state of said system when he resumed his role as GM. Smith did spend money on internationals. Ryan--I don't remember anything except he quit bidding against the Angels for F. Rodrigez.

 

Revere signed for about $1MM--not 3rd round money. M. (Giancarlo) Stanton (Marlins) signed for several hundred thousand less than Revere when selected a few selections later. Basically, the Twins preferred a little, really fast guy, with a throwing disability who will steal many bases over a big, fast guy, with a great arm that will hit HRs, but rarely steal a base. Revere did state that if he was a lower draft selection that he would go to college instead.

[snepp]

By "about $1MM" you really meant 750k, or about 65% of the recommended bonus for that slot? And by "a few selections later" for Stanton you really meant 48 selections later, right?

 

 

Just double checking, facts can get a little fuzzy sometimes.

[bird]

The Twins drafted in the bottom third of the draft order almost every year for a decade until last year. The Royals had the opposite situation. Does this not have a lot to do with the strength of the farm systems? Does a superior talent evaluation organization also play a role? One year in ten, a top 10 selection.

 

I keep hearing about how bad the Twins are at drafting and development. If that's the case, then why is their ranking so high? Could it be that, like perhaps Boston and St. Louis, the Twins are better at it than, say, KC, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and a bunch of other organizations?

[Mike Sixel]

If they were so good at it, where are all the regular starters that have come up since Mauer? Why do they have almost no good, young players on the roster or at AAA?

[gunnarthor]

If they were so good at it, where are all the regular starters that have come up since Mauer? Why do they have almost no good, young players on the roster or at AAA?

 

It's cyclical. And since Mauer was called up, the Twins have added a ton of young talent. All of these guys have had at least one decent year - Bartlett, Garza, Slowey, Blackburn, Perkins, Baker, Liriano, Span, Revere, Kubel, Ford, Ramos, Neshek, Crain, Swarzak, Duensing, etc. They also traded prospects for guys like Pavano, Cabrera, Castillo, Rauch and Fuentes.

 

The 05 and 06 drafts stand out as the real problems right now - Garza was traded for Young, which didn't work out and the 06 class - Parmelee, Benson and Robertson haven't really helped much yet. We did get one nice year from Valencia. Gibson, 09, should make his debut this year. Dozier already has. Bullock from that draft was traded for Diamond. Hicks, 08, should debut this year. Revere was 07, was solid and traded for Worley and a prospect.

 

Worrying about young players at AAA is a bit of an over reach. They have several good prospects that'll be at AA or higher this year - Gibson, Hicks, Arcia, May and Hendriks - who could all be called up at any time.

[IdahoPilgrim]

How is your post relevant?

 

How is any post on this (or any other internet BB) relevant? Might as well ask, "What's the meaning of life?"

[IdahoPilgrim]

People aren’t allowed to criticize his approach to the MLB roster while acknowledging that he and his staff have done a very good job rebuilding the farm system?

 

Of course they are. Those are obviously not the people I was making a tongue-in-cheek comment about.

[Mike Sixel]

Lots of should come up in the future there.....if you will not sign free agents one or two guys need to come up every year and be good for more than 1 year, or you are going to lose 90 plus games 3 or 4 years in a row. I have no idea how that is acceptable. This system has not developed enough good players, do people disagree with that?

[TheLeviathan]

Right, but we really haven't that kind of nuance from the pessimist, and even I think you've been cringing at the negative-nancy-ism lately.

 

Um...it's happening in this thread? What are you talking about?

 

Does every post have to list a pro-con for Ryan before pursuing the main point or can we stick on the topic of each thread and save this nonsense?

[gunnarthor]

Lots of should come up in the future there.....if you will not sign free agents one or two guys need to come up every year and be good for more than 1 year, or you are going to lose 90 plus games 3 or 4 years in a row. I have no idea how that is acceptable. This system has not developed enough good players, do people disagree with that?

 

It probably depends on how you look at the system. Generally, over the last decade or so I would say that the system has generated enough good players. That doesn't mean there can't (won't) be down times but from 01-10, the team's worst season was 79 wins and that was its only losing season. That's a pretty solid run that you can't reasonably expect to continue indefinitely. And the system is designed to prevent that by making good players more expensive as they get more experience and making good teams draft later. Good teams are also likely to make win-now moves by trading prospects for rental players. If the team didn't have payroll concerns, they could arguable still have a rotation in which Garza, Baker, Santana and Liriano were all competing for spots in, this year. So I think that the Twins system has generally created enough talent over time.

 

I don't think a few bad years should be looked at in isolation. To do so would cause overreactions. The 11-12 Twins were bad and the 13 Twins will be too. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the Twins system is itself broken. The 11-12 teams were hurt badly by the washouts of Young and Liriano, injuries to both Mauer and Morneau, and the slow development of the 06 group - Parmelee and Benson. Most teams will take a hit if you remove their two MVP players and two top 5 overall prospects (Young and Liriano) regress to beyond bad.

 

The Twins haven't been able to draft near the top of the draft and ownership has usually adhered to the slotting system. That took it's toll on the system as well. It's nearly impossible for a team to continue to restock itself from the minors without a hitch. That the Twins actually managed to change nucleus without much of a hitch in the mid 00s was pretty impressive. So I do think that the Twins system is generally ok and that most of the problems aren't structural but rather cyclical.

[Mike Sixel]

Gunnathor, that is a fair stance, I just do not agree that it has to be cyclical, nor do I agree the down cycle should last 4 years, at least. But, that is not a fact, and we are so far off of celebrating that they do have a better system now, that I am probably done with this part of the discussion on this thread.

[ThePuck]

anyone else find it weird Gibson was ranked 49th but wasn't even ranked in the top 10 of right handed pitchers by the same exact guy?

[gunnarthor]

anyone else find it weird Gibson was ranked 49th but wasn't even ranked in the top 10 of right handed pitchers by the same exact guy?

 

No. There were more than 10 RHP ahead of him. #10, Noah Syndergard, was #29 overall.

[ThePuck]

No. There were more than 10 RHP ahead of him. #10, Noah Syndergard, was #29 overall.

o

 

Okay, I meant...wow, lot of RH pitchers in the top ranks for that to happen...and since the list favors RF pitching, how far back in the RH pitcher rankings does May have to be to not make the top 100 if Gisbon could be out of the top 10 in RH pitcher ranking and still in the top 50 overall :-)

[Wookiee of the Year]

Piggy-backing somewhat off of Cap'n Piranha's comment, Parker, I wonder why we saw such large drops from year-to-year by the Cardinals and Indians. Is it because prospects flamed out or shot up in their projected abilities and rankings, indicating the list is subjective and not a great guide? Or is it because those prospects became major leaguers or were traded away, draining the farm system to stock the major league roster?

[TwinsFanInPhilly]

How is your post relevant? You think he deserves more than that after two 90 loss seasons and another possible?

 

He doesn't know that only negative comments are tolerated here.

[Old Twins Cap]

I'm not sure how long I've been clicking around this site trying to find the 52 comments listed on the main page, but it's been too long, and this issue has persisted for too long. At some point, you just need to fix your site or people like me are just going to give up on you guys.

[snepp]

I'm not sure how long I've been clicking around this site trying to find the 52 comments listed on the main page, but it's been too long, and this issue has persisted for too long. At some point, you just need to fix your site or people like me are just going to give up on you guys.

 

You should report any occurrences of this happening in the "Questions About Twins Daily" subform.

 

More specifically, there's a thread in there where others have reported similar problems.

[Kwak]

It's cyclical. And since Mauer was called up, the Twins have added a ton of young talent. All of these guys have had at least one decent year - Bartlett, Garza, Slowey, Blackburn, Perkins, Baker, Liriano, Span, Revere, Kubel, Ford, Ramos, Neshek, Crain, Swarzak, Duensing, etc. They also traded prospects for guys like Pavano, Cabrera, Castillo, Rauch and Fuentes.

 

The 05 and 06 drafts stand out as the real problems right now - Garza was traded for Young, which didn't work out and the 06 class - Parmelee, Benson and Robertson haven't really helped much yet. We did get one nice year from Valencia. Gibson, 09, should make his debut this year. Dozier already has. Bullock from that draft was traded for Diamond. Hicks, 08, should debut this year. Revere was 07, was solid and traded for Worley and a prospect.

 

Worrying about young players at AAA is a bit of an over reach. They have several good prospects that'll be at AA or higher this year - Gibson, Hicks, Arcia, May and Hendriks - who could all be called up at any time.

 

Examine some statistics and let's see if we can decipher if the Twins Draft is effective. What is the average lengthof a ML career assuming we toss out all of the guys who don't last more than a full year? Is it 10 years? Or how about 8.33 years? I choose these numbers because the Active Roster is 25 and they represent something close to reality. If my assumption is too high (maybe 6.25 years is correct) then this will only skew things even higher. If 10 years: then the Twins must successfully find 5 players every 2 years that are promoted to the ML club and stick. I should add at least one guy per season for those "callups" who won't last more than one season, or about 3.5 promotions per year. That would be the ML average because FA were promoted by someone.

 

If a career was only 8.33 years (excluding the short-timers) then 4 players per year must be promoted. So, my question is: How many players do the Twins promote per season? Do the Twins successfully promote the needed 3.5 to 4 players from their draft every year? If not, then their draft is below the major league average for number of players. In order to successfully compete long-term any deficit has to be made up by FA signings, trades that result in more players received that relinquished, or Twins players have significantly longer career that other teams.

Ryan has stated that the Twins can't be built by adding FAs as a normal operating policy. The Twins must consistently "out-draft" the major league average. The names provided from recent Twins drafts do not indicate that the Twins were "out-drafting". Many succesful players are not selected in the 1st round (Morneau for a Twins' example)--indicating that any team could have selected that guy. I could be wrong, but I think that there is a dearth of Twins' players (today on the roster) who were selected later in their draft than Morneau was selected in his year (99) especially those that play regularly. The closest example I can think is Jason Kubel ('00), who has left the Twins.

 

To sum up, I don't think the Twins have performed adequately in the draft since the new millenium and the "disasters" of '11 and '12 are the result.

[gunnarthor]

 

To sum up, I don't think the Twins have performed adequately in the draft since the new millenium and the "disasters" of '11 and '12 are the result.

 

I'm not sure how much of this to go into. Drafting isn't the only part of minor league development, the team has also added international talent, waivers and trades. That said, I think it's hard to say that the team hasn't drafted well since the new millennium if they had only one losing season between 01-10. But I could be wrong. In 01 they took Mauer and Blackburn. In 02 they took Span, Crain, Neshek. 03 was Baker. 04 was Perkins, Plouffe, Swarzak, Tolbert. 05 was Garza, Slowey, Duensing. 06 was Parmelee, Benson, Valencia and Robertson. 07 was Revere. So they drafted 1 HOF catcher, an all-star pitcher in Garza and 3 decent starters in Baker, Slowey and Blackburn. 2 good center fielders (who were also turned into SP prospects later). They also grabbed several good relief arms and some iffy infielders. And they also traded some 2nd rounders (Landengraf and Bullock) for Diamond and Cabrera. That seems to be fairly respectable. Not included in that were traded for talent and international signees like Liriano, Boof, Ramos, Ford, Casilla and Bartlett. The 06 draft stands out as the draft that really hasn't produced anything for us yet although maybe Benson and/or Parmelee turn into regulars this year. Robertson is probably a part of the pen for the next few years. 04 could have been better but all 4 pitchers got hurt and Plouffe developed slowly.

 

I think a better way of looking at this would be to look at how each team was built. The 2010 Twins, for instance, had 42 players play in at least one game. 6 of them were signed as free agents. The other 36 were either drafted by the Twins, signed as international free agents, minor league free agents, claimed off waivers or traded for. It might be fairer to break that up by impact, after all Thome had a lot more influence on that team than Matt Fox did, but you get the idea. In any event, the minor league system did seem to support the Twins pretty well for 10 years.

[bird]

gunnarthur, I wish everyone who believes the Twins are woeful at drafting and development would read your comments with an open mind. Factual, fair, and astute.

 

One year in ten, drafting in the top third of the draft order, will impact even the best organizations, unless they hit homeruns with international signings.

 

Read John Mayo's report, people. MLB's top 100 contains only a handful of players drafted in later rounds. 25% are international signings, and 50%, I recall, are first-rounders, most of them low first-rounders.

 

It's a fact that the Twin's farm system went through a rough period.It's NOT a fact that the primary reason for this was their ineptitude. Based on the more current facts, like their high ranking among farm systems, it's much more reasonable to conclude that they're actually pretty good, relativeley speaking, than to conclude they're lousy at it, like so many of you guys like to say.

[bird]

By the way, the Twins signed two international prospects ranked among the top 25 this year: Amaurys Minier (#7) and Mauricio Silva (#23).

[drjim]

Gunnathor, that is a fair stance, I just do not agree that it has to be cyclical, nor do I agree the down cycle should last 4 years, at least. But, that is not a fact, and we are so far off of celebrating that they do have a better system now, that I am probably done with this part of the discussion on this thread.

 

It is fair to think this and as a fan you should be demanding but it might be unrealistic expectations. Only a handful of teams can match the sustained success the Twins had and even fewer have avoided a lull for multiple seasons. It is the nature of the industry. A few missed picks, some bad trades, and some injuries and here we are. The key is getting out wuick or you can stay buried for a while.