Where Are They Now? The Twins Last 10 First-Round Draft Picks

Four flops from my perspective - Sabato, Cavaco, Stewart, Jay,

Three injury prone and still hoping - Lewis, Larnach, Kiriloff

One traded - Petty

One a staple on the MLB roster - Gordon

And One we have high hopes for - Lee

For this to be a good report the three injury guys have to make it along with Lee - if they all turn it around it is a good record..

This is a bit of a nitpick, but I don't think it's fair to say that a player was a disappointment. The way to think about it is which draft decisions were disappointing.

It would be interesting to look at other teams' picks from the same time frame and compare. It's really difficult to consistently get MLB value from draft picks, with injury and projectability being significant hurdles. 

For example: Cleveland used first round picks on Mike Papi (2014, has not debuted, looks to be cooked, sucked at AAA last year),  Brady Aiken (2015, out of baseball, never pitched above High-A), and Will Benson (2016, made his debut last year, was terrible in a 28 game sample size, might be decent still). Bo Naylor looks like a good pick, and so does Triston McKenzie. 

Prospects are suspects until they prove it long term on an MLB field. Human nature is to get excited about and overestimate the top prospects of your favorite club. 

What are the odds Cavaco ever puts on an MLB jersey? He was one of those really young guys we were told to "be patient" on, but he's been in the system for 5 years now and has been pretty much below average the whole time. Kind of a sad story, really. 

Will be very interesting to see how Petty turns out. Hard to tell at this point, I don't really have a guess either way. 

Lee is the most exciting 1st round pick since Royce Lewis. Speaking of Lewis, if I had to bet on any of them having a great career, he's the one I'd take. Can't wait to see him at Target Field in June. Fingers crossed. 

Elephant in the room. Twins reluctance to draft arms with their first round picks and when they do, failure or bad luck in developing them. 

If you truly want to develop top of the rotation arms, once in awhile you have to take a chance at drafting them with your 1st round picks. 

Stewart and Jay didn't pan out, but the disappointment is connected to them being high round one picks.

Cavaco was a gamble that has not worked thus far, while Sabato was a head scratcher.

The Twins have drafted decently in the overall picture. We have to wait for the emergence of a number of players and that could be this year for Kirilloff, Larnach, Lewis, and Lee. Gordon could take another step forward as well. Finally, Sonny Gray tell us how much Petty was worth for now. All in all, pretty good drafts.

4 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

Four flops from my perspective - Sabato, Cavaco, Stewart, Jay,

Three injury prone and still hoping - Lewis, Larnach, Kiriloff

One traded - Petty

One a staple on the MLB roster - Gordon

And One we have high hopes for - Lee

For this to be a good report the three injury guys have to make it along with Lee - if they all turn it around it is a good record..

I agree with Mike's assessment. 4 flops, 3 great but unlucky prospects, having their seasons taken from them. I too  hope they can complete their remaining time with a blast. 

Gordon is a staple on the MLB roster but he has been a disappointment, If he hadn't made that transition to OF he'd be gone. 1 traded with a lot of future potential, difficult to gauge how far he can rise.

Lee is a fast riser that should make (but I doubt it, unless there's an emergency) his MLB debut. This year we have a great spot in the draft, which I'm hopeful for another fast riser.

So after a bad start, we are on an uptrend. We won't always have these good draft picks but I'm hopeful that we'll have better focus on better athletes not on bats & be more fortunate.

5 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

Four flops from my perspective - Sabato, Cavaco, Stewart, Jay,

Three injury prone and still hoping - Lewis, Larnach, Kiriloff

One traded - Petty

One a staple on the MLB roster - Gordon

And One we have high hopes for - Lee

For this to be a good report the three injury guys have to make it along with Lee - if they all turn it around it is a good record..

I would say too early to call Sabato or Cavaco flops, either could still work way into MLB level.  To me they will be flops if they never make majors or just a cup of coffee and get bounced.  Although neither have flown up the minors like we would hope they are still in system.  I mean until last year, you would have called Gordon a flop, but after putting up 1.6 WAR we are calling him a staple. It took Gordon 7 years to make MLB debut out of high school.  Cavaco is entering his 4 season, 5th year removed from HS.  He still has time to give something. Sabato still has time as well.  The other 2 were busts for sure.

Lewis has had 2 missed seasons mainly due to torn ACL, I would not say that is injury prone, but had 2 long injuries.  If his injuries were of many types and constant missed time, not single big stretches, that is injury prone to me.  The other 2 have had a varity of injuries that have led to long stretches and short ones, so they kind of fall into that.  

Petty was traded, but the trade brought in Gray who has provided value.  Even if Petty never makes majors, he gave us value. 

Too early for Lee as you said.  I would say still too early to have final report on Cavaco and Sabato, and could still provide something.  Need to remember no team hits on first round picks every draft. 

1 hour ago, Trov said:

I would say too early to call Sabato or Cavaco flops, either could still work way into MLB level.  To me they will be flops if they never make majors or just a cup of coffee and get bounced.  Although neither have flown up the minors like we would hope they are still in system.  I mean until last year, you would have called Gordon a flop, but after putting up 1.6 WAR we are calling him a staple. It took Gordon 7 years to make MLB debut out of high school.  Cavaco is entering his 4 season, 5th year removed from HS.  He still has time to give something. Sabato still has time as well.  The other 2 were busts for sure.

Lewis has had 2 missed seasons mainly due to torn ACL, I would not say that is injury prone, but had 2 long injuries.  If his injuries were of many types and constant missed time, not single big stretches, that is injury prone to me.  The other 2 have had a varity of injuries that have led to long stretches and short ones, so they kind of fall into that.  

Petty was traded, but the trade brought in Gray who has provided value.  Even if Petty never makes majors, he gave us value. 

Too early for Lee as you said.  I would say still too early to have final report on Cavaco and Sabato, and could still provide something.  Need to remember no team hits on first round picks every draft. 

I am glad you are more patient than I am with Cavaco and Sabato - neither profiles as a good MLB player to me. 

As far as injury prone - the dictionary says: often sustaining injuries.  Two missed years in a row makes Lewis seem pretty injury prone to me.  Larnach and Kiriloff the last two years and minor league injuries as well for Alex make them injury prone and yes I regrettably have to say Buxton is injury prone.  

An article in the Atlantic says: "

Injury is a fact of life for most athletes, but some professionals—and some weekend warriors, for that matter—just seem more injury-prone than others. But what is it about their bodies that makes the bones, tendons, and ligaments so much more likely to tear or strain—bad luck, or just poor preparation?

A growing body of research suggests another answer: that genetic makeup may play an important role in injury risk."

"Stanford Sports Genetics offer genetic tests that can tell the average consumer about his or her risk for sports injuries, including ACL ruptures, stress fractures, osteoarthritis, and spinal-disc degeneration."

Drafting 4-5-6 over three years and producing one utility guy from that is disappointing.  

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RE: Tyler Jay  -  Last year, he made 22 appearances with a 1.64 ERA and 9.8 K/9 for the Joliet Slammers in the independent Frontier League. It seems likely that he can get another job in independent baseball if he wants to continue pitching. 
 

If he does that for too much longer, some major league team may give him a chance in their system.  Lefties with a pulse and an arm attached to the body usually get chances.  He might need to bump up that K/9 to have a real shot. 

18 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

Probably low but he's only had 700 minor league at bats. COVID probably ****ed up his development a lot. Give him more time.

Yeah I hear you, it's just that he wasn't lighting the world on fire before COVID either. Compare him to Noah Miller - both high school infielders, but coming out of the gate they've performed much differently. That said, maybe you're right. With the promotion to Cedar Rapids this year and a chance to make AA, 2023 is probably going to be a major lynchpin in Cavaco's career. 

23 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

If I'm remembering correctly, about 66% of 1st round picks even make the major leagues. With that as the bench mark, and not counting the picks from 2020-2022 as it's not realistic to expect players from the last 3 years to have debuted yet, the Twins were 5/7. This regime was 2/3. That's not too bad. Nothing to claim they're great at, but nothing to be upset about either.

That's probably right. Fans generally have unrealistic expectations of draft picks. 

Teams like the Astros, Dodgers, and Rays are the long tail of prospect outcomes in a good way, while the Royals, Tigers, and Reds are at on the wrong long tail.

Twins are pretty much smack-dab in the middle of the bell curve.

Sure, we'd all like better outcomes, but it's fantasy to call a front office a failure for hitting the league average on draft picks.

This is way too much work for me to do, but I would like to look at a graph of career major league WAR (or something similar) for each draft position over the course of time. This could be done year by year to see if front offices improve their picks as time progresses or on a collective basis over the course of many years. It would be interesting to see how well scouts predict performance and to see who the outliers are, both early picks who do not succeed and late picks who do well.