Twins Minor League Report (7/31): Barnes and Jeffers Headline Wahoos, Vets Pace Red Wings

Nick Gordon has 29 doubles, 14 steals in 18 attempts, a .304 average, an OPS over .800, and is still just 23.

He has also spent more time at short than second this season.

I'm kind of glad he's still a Twin prospect.

I went to Beloit with my 8 year old son to watch the Kernals get shellacked.  I guess I am a good luck charm for the Snappers.

It looked like Kody might have been OK had Wander not almost airmailed a throw he had plenty of time to make and made the first baseman leap for the ball taking his foot off the bag.  Things just seemed to unravel from there.

Cabezus is a plucky guy but he looks far more suited to the pen than starting.  He also gave up some pretty loud contact but was far superior to Kody this night.

Funny thing is I think Casanovo pitched better than both of them and he is the catcher.

Wander didn't look good in the field at all and while he batted OK it seems like he has a crap load of work to do if he wants to be even a good not great player at this point.  I know he is young but he has bust written all over him from what I saw.  He doesn't look great defensively at short either.  Honestly I don't think I would have him in my top 30 right now and if I did it would be in the high 20's.  Maybe he just had a bad game but I didn't like what I saw tonight.

Ricky De La Torri one of my favorite players looked liked he couldn't make contact with a ball in a softball beer league, but he did look good defensively at third base.  He was swinging at air all night.  Some one needs to work with him on that swing you can't miss the ball as much as he does and consider that a competitive at bat.

Isola, Akins and Weiss looked decent at the plate but lots of popups and long fly balls for them tonight and only one went over the fence.  They are all long shots but they look like they can make it to the next level.

The only guy that looked really good at the plate I mean really good was Spencer Steer.  Good eye with the strike zone, always making contact, actually had a clue at the plate.  I know he went 0 for 3 but he looked good.  He looked like a player that could move up. 

Everyone needs to improve quite a bit from what I saw hopefully things start to click for some of those young guys.  I really want to see them succeed but what I saw tonight was pretty discouraging over all.

Nick Gordon has 29 doubles, 14 steals in 18 attempts, a .304 average, an OPS over .800, and is still just 23.

 

He has also spent more time at short than second this season.

 

I'm kind of glad he's still a Twin prospect.

He's batting .419 in his last 10 games and is having a really, really good season up to this point.  And yes, still only 23.  40 games at SS and 28 games at 2B, about a dozen errors on the year, not great, but not terrible either.

Good for him, and good for the Twins.  Here's hoping he keeps developing and moving forward.  

The Red Wings certainly are going to miss Davis, as are we fans.  Any word if Raley is near a return as he could be a very good replacement.  And kudos to Gordon who seems to have forgotten that he normally went into a slump this time of year.

The Kernels are going to miss Teng.  Expect his exit will hurt come playoff time.  On the other hand, am glad it is Teng who is gone and not Escobar.  Really appreciate Dman's first hand report of the Kernels, even though his comments about Javier were more than disappointing.  

This Kernels team hasn't had anyone jump off the page statistically all season, until Steer arrived.

 

How did Steer look in the field?

 

I ask this because looking at the 2B/3B/SS options currently at Fort Myers, it doesn't appear that any of the above should be blocking Speer from a promotion to A+ level in August. His plate numbers this year and his remarkable improvement in his junior year at Oregon suggest he's made a quantum leap forward in 2019 offensively.

 

The big drawback is his apparent lack of power. Does his glove work suggest he can provide quality help to the Twins in a "Adrianza utility role with a better bat" in the next couple of years?

He made a nice play ranging far to the first base side during the game but not many balls were hit to him so it is hard to say just how good he is defensively.  There were a couple of balls hit past him but the Snappers were just pounding the ball so not much of chance to do anything about those.

It looked like he might have been working on his power stroke as I believe most of his outs were fairly long fly balls.  He didn't seem to have the power of Akins, Isola, Weiss or Snyder so I think your assessment of not great power is likely correct but really hard to tell from limited at bats in just one game.

The thing that impressed me was his ability to swing at pitches in the zone and get contact.  So many of the others wiffed on a lot of pitches but he always seemed to find ways to contact the ball and he didn't strike out when I watched him.  To me he had the best approach at the plate and always seemed able to put the ball in play. Even though he didn't get a hit in this game he was the most impressive batter on the team IMO.

Javier has a month-plus remaining in his 4th professional season, and he's just passing 400 plate appearances. I think it's going to be hard to tell for a while if he's going to be a bust...or simply a late-developer based on the extreme injury issues he faced early on.

Meanwhile, I wish there was a lower league for the high school kids that sign. Part of the problem is that I don't think there are enough HS kids that sign any more. The GCL is mostly 2nd/3rd-year HS signees and late-drafted college guys. Many (most?) of the first-year HS signees are not Lewis or Kirilloff...they're not ready for the GCL, let alone the Appy or Midwest leagues. Case in point...Keoni Cavaco. I'd like to see him playing games regularly, and I'd like to see him succeeding some when he plays them. Neither of those things are happening at this point.

Nick Gordon has 29 doubles, 14 steals in 18 attempts, a .304 average, an OPS over .800, and is still just 23.

 

He has also spent more time at short than second this season.

 

I'm kind of glad he's still a Twin prospect.

He's batting .419 in his last 10 games and is having a really, really good season up to this point.  And yes, still only 23.  40 games at SS and 28 games at 2B, about a dozen errors on the year, not great, but not terrible either.

 

Good for him, and good for the Twins.  Here's hoping he keeps developing and moving forward.  

Relative to his league, Gordon's offensive performance in Rochester is similar to what Lewis did in Ft. Myers. 

I wonder what the plan for him is. He seems ready to try and take on MLB pitching, but we have no room for him.

I'm OK with these kinds of problems.