Twins Daily 2022 Top Prospects #11-15

The interesting thing I'm following with all the young arms is who moves to the pen. I think 2022 will see some very creative pitcher usage, and am curious as to how all these young guys are used. Varland, Sands, Strotman, and Duran all feel like bullpen pieces to me. Which isn't a bad thing in my mind. They've all shown they can sustain for multiple innings and I'll be interested to see how they're used in 2023 and beyond as the FO tries to balance out more traditional starters/relievers and some new creative pitcher usage.

I'm not sold on Wallner and he'd be much lower on my list. The power is real, but I don't think he'll hit for enough contact to take advantage of it. With the numerous corner bats they have I think he gets pushed aside. Maybe he goes back to the mound as others have mentioned. Not a bad backup plan to have available.

Celestino was impressive at AAA and I hope he's able to use that as a springboard into taking over the 4th OF role at some point in 2022.

Miller feels like he's in the right spot to me. Real chance to stick at SS as he progresses, but no super flashy tools. Feels like a 10-15 type prospect to me. My hope for the post-lockout Twins is that they sign Story and I think it plays in well with Miller's timeline as he's not going to be ready for a number of years most likely. Story for 4 or 5 years and let Miller become part of the fold at the end of Story's deal with a natural handoff to Miller (assuming he develops. Keep drafting SSs until one makes it).

44 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I would agree that I think of prospects as kind of the game changing players, not just guys that will make it.

For example and forgive me if I missed somebody, but looking at last years all stars and when they first played in the majors it seems pretty consistent that the best ball players start their MLB career early. There are rare cases like De Grom. Which means most of the Twins prospects need to step it up this year if they hope to be future All Stars.

Age	Players
19	2
20	10
21	10
22	18
23	14
24	14
25	6
26	4
27	2
28	1

 

Wonder what covid year will do to those numbers over the next 5 to 10 years or whatever. 

It is interesting to think about how we view prospects. We certainly all want everyone in the Twins top 20 to turn into All Stars, and it gets a little wonky when we start discussing these guys as just pieces to a major league team. Debut age based WAR (or stats instead of All Star appearance in general) would be an interesting look as well. There's only so many All Star spots to go around and it's even further reduced when it comes to position availability. I'd argue there's far more star players at SS than C, but you miss a bunch of those SS stars when just looking at the AS team. Interesting things to look at, though.

I think everyone can agree that the younger the better when it comes to debut years (assuming the debut is earned and not out of injury necessity or something like that). But I think age can also be overblown. For example, Adley Rutschman is pretty universally thought of as the top prospect in baseball right now and he's 24. Service time and covid have played a huge role in that. If he played for a playoff team he most certainly would've debuted already, but the O's had no reason (other than the integrity of the game, but who cares about that?) to play him on terrible teams and start his clock.

5 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

He's also in AAA, not A+....though, yes, he 100% should be in the majors in terms of talent.

I wasn't comparing him to anyone or saying we should view the Twins prospects in this post the same way. Simply an example of age not meaning as much as we sometimes think. Spencer Torkelson is turning 23 this season and I don't think anyone is concerned about his age either. That's why I brought up the covid year. They were both effected by that.

I think the bigger thing is how you view the guys we're talking about in this specific post and range of prospects. We're not talking about the top 5 prospects in the system we're talking about 11-15. They're guys you hope make the majors and can provide some sort of productive performance. Or if they're young like Miller you hope they work their way up the rankings. Nobody is building a team around the idea that their #11-15 prospects are their core and will be all stars. If your "excitement" (for lack of better word) about any of the guys on this list is based on them being a future all star you'd obviously be very disappointed. That's not who we're looking at here. Especially with the older guys.

2 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I would tend to agree with Covid the ages might creep up, but in most cases guys that are future All Star types will still see the majors at a fairly young age at least on the offense side of things. I think where we will really see the difference is in the pitchers based on how careful teams are with them. And the idea there is no need to bring a 22 year old up when you can stretch him out in the minors a year or two and control that pitcher though his late 20's.I can see lower Revenue teams to doing that so they never really have to pay the big dollars for pitchers. Cleveland for example has kind of been doing that, it might not be intentional but Clevinger, Plesac, Civale, Morgan, Plutko, and Kluber  are examples.

For sure. The true stars of the game tend to make themselves known early in the minors and burst onto the scene quick. I'm by no means arguing that age means nothing, but Torkelson and Rutschman are big time prospects that people expect to be elite players and one turns 23 this season and the other is already 24. I think those are 2 great examples of the covid year playing a role. I'd love to see the Twins turn some of their recent international signings into young stars. The trick is balancing the high risk, high reward with the more "sure thing" guys. The Twins have tried to recently, but the high reward guys haven't looked good recently (I have hopes for Lewis this year, though). And I agree much of this is more on the position player side than pitchers. I'm not concerned about the age of any of our arms. They're a different kind of beast.

16 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

My opinion has nothing to do with "future all star" or not......But 24 year olds that strike out 100 times in A+ probably aren't even future regulars, not in a meaningful way. They can be, but how likely is it, really? I hope I'm wrong. I hope he's great. But I can't see how anyone can look at the age/stats and say he's more likely to contribute to a MLB team than Strotman or some others.

I'm not a Wallner believer so I don't disagree with your stance on him. But there are a lot more factors that go into these things. And to me its more about us currently looking at prospects #11-15. Top 5 system prospects fail more than they succeed so #11-15 should really not be expected to do much. If anyone on this list (Miller excluded as he was just drafted out of high school) becomes a legit ML contributor to a contender we should be very impressed.

Celestino as a 4th OFer would be a very nice result. Sands and Louie turning into solid relievers would be a win. But there's just so many factors. Louie was drafted in the 15th round in 2019 out of the same college where I played, and I'm no major leaguer. Him even being mentioned as a possible major leaguer is a win already. He was drafted, missed the entire covid year and saw himself rocket into prospect rankings in his first professional year. I don't care if he's 35, that's a good enough track record to get him to #15 in a system for me.

7 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

Not disagreeing with you but Torkelson might not be the best example, he was drafted in 2020, played basically all of 21 as a 21 year old and played at A+, AA, and AAA, and won't turn 23 until August, so unless Detroit is playing a service game he should see the majors at age 22.

Rutschman I believe was affected by Covid and if not for that would more than likely have been in the majors last year as a 23 year old (since his birthday was a week ago). Matt Wallner was drafted in the same draft and hasn't played above A+.

But if we're talking ages then their draft year doesn't really matter, right? So Torkelson will debut at 22. If Royce Lewis debuts before June he'd debut at the same age, but people view him very differently since he was drafted well before Spencer. Time in the minors vs age are 2 very different things to me. That's why age isn't that huge to me. And that's why I keep saying there are far more variables and rankings are more complex.

And the Rutschman vs Wallner comparison was one I was never trying to make. The Rutschman example was simply a response to the idea that the age of a prospect is uber important. Wallner is not the same kind of prospect. Never was. That's a comparison of the #1 prospect in baseball who was drafted 1.1 vs the guy TD ranks #13 in the Twins system. The expectations for them are very different. That's why I keep bringing up the fact that we're talking about the #11-15 prospects in the Twins system. These rankings are literally saying the TD writers don't have great hope in Wallner. They're saying they'll be happy if he makes the majors and has any sort of positive impact at all.

3 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I think the big difference between Lewis and Torkelson, is that Torkelson has played one year in them minors at three levels, hit 30 homers and had a .935 OPS. Lewis hasn't been played in two years, and the expectation of the two are way different going into this year. I would expect Torkelson should contribute in the majors, and IMO Lewis shouldn't be expected to even play in the majors this year. (hopefully he can exceed those expectations and prove people wrong) But that is the reason Torkelson is a top 10 prospects and Lewis is barely in the top 100.

IMO age is a huge difference, but Lewis isn't a good example, because he is still young, He can still make the majors by 23, even if it is the start of 2023.

have a good weekend.

You're sort of making my point here. You suggested age was important and provided a chart to explain why. I said there's more factors, but obviously the younger the better. I then provided examples as to why just going off the age of prospects is leaving a lot out. Now you're doing what I suggested in the beginning and using more factors to explain why age is important, but not all that important since there's all these other factors. I don't get why age is a "huge difference," but then suddenly it isn't for Lewis, or Torkelson, or Rutschman, or any of 100 other guys I could list if I wanted to take the time.

My point is that it's better to have guys reach the majors at a young age, but to simply say "this prospect is too old so he should be dropped in rankings" is leaving a lot out of the equation. And you've provided many other factors as to why you can't simply look at Torkelson, Rutschman, and Lewis' ages and compare them. Which has been my point from the beginning. Plus the fact that we're currently looking at a list of prospects that we should be happy if they even make the majors which means their ages matter even less. I mean just comparing Rutschman and Torkelson you can make the argument that their ages don't matter. I think Detroit would trade Torkelson for Rutschman straight up right now, but Adley is a year and a half older, and been in the minors longer. So age is a factor, but not much beyond the idea that it's better to have them there sooner. 

Enjoy your weekend as well!