Twins Minor League Report (7/18): DSL Twins Highlight a Draft Day

[Ted Schwerzler]

With the Major League season taking a break for the All-Star festivities, the vast majority of the minor leagues follow suit as well. None of the full season leagues are in action until Friday, with the Florida Complex League returning to action on Thursday. Today's action was solely marked by the Dominican Summer League taking place.

 

Of course with virtually all of the action on hold, getting your fix from a prospect standpoint can still be had through the Major League Baseball draft. Since the league moved the draft to All-Star Week, Minnesota is currently working on an influx of new minor league talent.

The draft can be consumed today through the Twins Daily Draft Tracker, and you can catch up on picks from the first two rounds by checking out how thrilled Minnesota was with the way the board fell to them. A rundown of each pick from the first night is found by player. Check out Brooks Lee here, Connor Prielipp here, and Tanner Schobel here.

As the players sign and some of them get into action the rest of the summer, make sure to check out the Twins Daily prospect rankings as they'll begin to be included in the top 30 should merit determine placement.

DOMINICAN DAILIES
DSL Mariners 7, DSL Twins 6 (F/8)
Box Score

Leonardo Lugo was on the mound today for the Dominican Twins and worked three innings of three-hit baseball. Unfortunately three runs were also scored against him. Lugo tallied four strikeouts and two walks.

The Twins got on the board first when Jose Rodriguez ripped a single to drive in Yasser Mercedes. Rodriguez wound up going 3-for-3 today, including a pair of doubles, and now owns a 1.102 OPS on the season. The Twins scored again in the 2nd inning, this time on a wild pitch, and Bryan Acuna was plated in the third to even the score at three.

Despite having allowed runs the Twins continued to add on their own. Daniel Pena drove in Ricardo Pena with a 4th inning single, and a Rafael Cruz double made it 5-3 in the 5th inning. Junior Marino drove in Cruz on a sac fly before the frame was over and the Twins now had doubled up the Mariners.

This game featured fives errors and things were extremely sloppy on the Twins side. The Mariners tied things up at six despite tallying just three hits through 6 innings. Allowing another run in the 8th inning, the Twins found themselves walked off.

The Twins DSL team is off tomorrow before facing the DSL White Sox on Wednesday.

THE CARD MARKET
Much of the allure behind Bowman prospect trading cards from Topps is being able to capitalize on the emergence of a young talent. Collecting cards and autographs of minor league players prior to their big league debuts is what drives true prospectors.

For Minnesota, names like Austin Martin and Keoni Cavaco have been hot over the past few seasons following their acquisitions. Based on the performance thus far, that should highlight all you need to know about the difficulty to accurately project who will consistently produce. That being said, the Dominican Summer League team has been a key area of interest this season following the Twins signing of Bryan Acuna.

Brother to Atlanta Braves superstar, the Acuna name is always going to carry some massive expectations. The Twins Acuna was not a huge international signee, and he was ranked just the 39th best international prospect by MLB Pipeline. Still, with autographs and chase cards, he was among the hottest two find when the product released. Now with some of his prices dropping, the opportunity to get in appears a bit better.

With a two-hit game today, Acuna's OPS is up to .619. He's still incredibly raw and is among the youngest players in the league at just 16-years-old. Acuna turns 17 in August.

 

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