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It's been almost four years since I last did my own podcast. For a variety of reasons, I stopped at that time. Twins Daily was taking off. Listeners were low. We were contemplating Vikings and Wild and Wolves websites. Life. But the reality is that I really liked my podcast. It was something that I liked listening to. I liked talking about the Twins. I loved talking to players. And that's what I'm planning to do again with this podcast. Tonight at 8:00 central time, I was joined by three members of the Minnesota Twins organization, a senior on his year's Minnesota Gophers baseball team, and MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo. We just talked baseball. It should be a lot of fun. If you're able to listen live, that would be great. If you have a football game to watch and don't want to mute the TV, you can always download it later. You will be able to leave questions in the page's chat room, or feel free to send questions in the comments below and I will be happy to ask them for you (if they're fair questions, of course).In tonight's podcast, Get to know a little more about minor league outfielder LaMonte Wade, two-time Twins Daily minor league pitcher of the year Stephen Gonsalves, minor league pitcher Tyler Wells, and Minnesota Gophers senior second baseman Luke Pettersen. LaMonte Wade was the Twins 9th round pick in 2015 and has quickly moved up the system. He ended 2017 in the Arizona Fall League. Stephen Gonsalves was the Twins 4th round pick in 2013. He went to big league came in 2017 and reached AAA late in the season. He was added to the Twins 40-man roster in November and should make his Major League debut in 2018. Tyler Wells was drafted by the Twins in 2016. The big right-hander had a quality season in Cedar Rapids and looks to jump to Ft. Myers in 2018. Finally, Luke Pettersen is a senior on the 2018 Minnesota Golden Gophers roster. We discuss his final college season and how the Gophers might fare in the Big Ten this year. Also, MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo talked about the Twins 2017 draft as well as another one of his projects. In this return podcast, I was joined by the following: 8:00 - Gophers second baseman Luke Pettersen (1:35 - 12:17) 8:15 - Twins minor league outfielder LaMonte Wade (14:58 - 31:15) 8:30 - MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo (32:05 - 47:45) 8:45 - Twins minor league pitcher Stephen Gonsalves. (48:20 - 1:02:08) 8:30 - Twins minor league pitching Tyler Wells (1:03:33 - 1:24:40) A special thanks to Travis Aune and Chad Smith who are letting me use their Minnesota Sports Weekly platform for now. Upon the show's completion, it will be available on iTunes as well. I will provide those links as they are available. Click here to view the article

The 2016 season mercifully came to an end, and Twins fans hope to someday be rewarded for suffering through the worst season in team history. Because in baseball, sometimes in the long run it pays to lose. Thanks to their impressive ability to rack up losses, the Twins "won" the first overall pick in the 2017 Draft. Yes, it will be several years before we'll see the team's top pick play at Target Field, but that doesn't change how exciting it is that the team will have the opportunity to add a franchise-changing talent to the organization.Who the Twins may take with the first selection will probably be speculated about right down to draft day. Last week, Jeremy Nygaard did a great job of outlining a handful of players the Twins are likely looking into as potential No. 1 picks. Draft day (June 12, 2017) is still a long way away, but it appears at the moment that Hunter Greene has broken out as the guy with the highest ceiling in the class. The question is should that be what the Twins target, or should they look for more certainty and lower risk? If the Twins are searching for a player to make a more immediate impact, they'll likely pass on Greene, who will be just 17-years-old on draft day. A standout pitcher and shortstop for Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calif, Greene can flirt with 100 mph on the mound and has a home run derby crown to his credit, hitting moonshots out of Wrigley Field at the Perfect Game All-American Classic. And he appears to be a bright kid, as he was recently boasting about getting a 31 (out of a possible 36) on the ACT. For more on Greene's backstory, look no further than Hudson Belisky of Baseball America's excellent and thorough profile. Time will tell if he can maintain the 1-1 buzz, but below are quotes from some credible sources with first-hand knowledge of Greene. Each of these was pulled from articles with more information on Greene and some have reports on other players in the mix to be the No. 1 overall pick, so I would encourage you to check them out. Also, with Greene being such a high-profile player already, there's tons of video of him on YouTube to drool over. "Greene was 96-98 mph in his inning of work with a super loose arm and little effort. His delivery is too quick, so while he stays online, and threw strikes on Saturday, to remain a starter he's probably going to have to slow it down and get a consistent rhythm. But this kind of arm -- present plus velocity without substantial effort -- is rare." -Keith Law, ESPN.com, on Greene's performance at the Under Armor All-American Game [link] "Likely at the top of most boards right now. A shortstop and a pitcher, there is some debate over where he has more potential. Keep in mind a high school right-handed pitcher has never been taken No. 1 overall." -Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com [link] "His fastball is absolutely electric, sitting in the mid-90s and touching as high as 98 with good extension and movement that plays in the zone. I think Greene’s heater would be effective in the big leagues right now and, though the rest of his repertoire is middling, his body and athleticism make the entire package worthy of top-of-the-draft consideration." -Eric Longenhagen, Fangraphs [link] "Greene’s delivery starts with an athletic, well-coordinated leg lift. He folds his front leg and brings his knee to the height of his sternum, and then his hands break just as his leg comes down and his lower half begins to generate torque. He has an easy arm action, with a slight wrap in the back and explosive arm speed as he fires through his three-quarters slot. Greene lands online and spins off his front toes as his back side comes through. He gets his torso extended over his front side, giving him additional extension towards home plate. His arm decelerates well, finishing across his body without recoil or violence, and his head stays still throughout the process." -Hudson Belinksy, Baseball America [link] "Greene has an athletic-yet-sturdy build at 6-foot-3, 195 pounds to go along with his emerging three-pitch repertoire and clean delivery. He ran his fastball up to 98 mph more than once this summer, settling into the mid-90s in short stints. His low-80s slider isn’t consistent yet but flashes plus potential, and he’s also shown an advanced change-up." -Jesse Burkhart, Today's Knuckleball [link] "He has shown two potential plus pitches and another bonus is that he will still be 17 on draft day. On upside alone, there is not a better player in this class." -Jeff Ellis, Scout.com [link] "He sat at 94-96 mph with his fastball with considerable movement and touched 98. His slider was inconsistent at best during the Under Armour All-American Game the previous month, but it flashed plus here, and he was able to locate the pitch for strikes for the most part. He also showed a change in the mid-80s that he buried down with good arm speed, and although he didn't have great feel for it, you can see the makings of a quality third offering." -Christopher Crawford, ESPN.com, on Greene's performance at the Area Code Games [link] Of course, Greene's status as a potential top pick isn't written in stone. It's more like written in sand at high tide. There's another dozen or so players who have the opportunity between now and the draft to establish themselves as the top pick between now and June. Whoever ends up with that honor will hopefully one day help Twins fans make this 103-loss season worth all the suffering. Click here to view the article

This article was written by Jesse Lund. One of the fascinating aspects of ranking farm systems of every organization across baseball is that, to some level, it's kind of subjective. There's a general understanding on the level of Cubs-good-Padres-bad, but what's the real difference between each team? How do you mark the difference in system quality between, for example, Minnesota and Cleveland? Part of the challenge in finding that differentiation is that there is no single consensus on how prospects themselves are evaluated. Jonathan Mayo and Keith Law and John Sickels and Chris Mitchell will all rate prospects differently, which impacts how the system as a whole is ranked. The best part is that all of the experts understand that prospect ranking isn't an exact science, which is why we see a vast majority of any team's top prospects weigh heavily towards the 45 to 50 range on the 20-80 scale regardless of who's doing the ranking. There's a real desire to separate those few gems at the top of the pile.Have a look at the distribution of the ratings of every club's Top 30 prospects, according to current lists at MLB.com. For the uninitiated, keep in mind that 50 is considered average. Every step down is a step below average, and every step up is another mark above. If that chart's results look heavily skewed, it's because they are. Out of 900 prospects, 590 of them (66%) were rated as a 45. 184 (20%) were given a rating of 50. Only three out of every 20 prospects end up on either side of that range. Separating the good and elite (or otherwise) players is not only an exercise in minimizing risk in evaluation - can you imagine a world where there were 50 prospects rated as a 70, for example - but because the middle is so overwhelming it impacts those subtle separations between organizations as a whole. Moving on to how this can help us to determine the individual strengths of any organization's minor league system, it's pretty clear that we're running into a couple of issues: We're only looking at a club's top 30 prospects, those ratings are only sourced from one outlet, and there's no standardized way to, for example, award or penalize a club based on how their top 30 prospects were graded. Whatever we end up with here, there's no result that's going to resolutely identify exactly how well or poorly an organization's farm system is doing at any given time on an objective scale. What a study like this can do, however, is give us an idea of the differences are between a grouping of teams. Even though we're looking at the results of subjective data, it can be useful in helping us understand just how an organization that rates as a top five system differs from one that's middle of the pack. For anyone who's curious: no, the Twins' Top 30 does not include Byron Buxton. He's officially expired his rookie status, thereby eliminating his status as a prospect, so everybody slides up a spot and our friend Lewin Diaz joins the list at number 30. I've kept it simple. Each prospect is awarded a number of points equal to his overall rating. Corey Seager is worth 70. Exactly ten - yes, ten - Angels' prospects were awarded 40. Totals are divided by 30 to get an average, which is a nice reference to show how teams rank on a scale that no doubt moves by increments every few weeks. There are other ways to award value - 7 points for a 70, 5 points for a 60, -2 for a 40, whatever you like - but I wanted to stay away from arbitrary values. The strongest system here belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 1,475 total points give them an average of 49.2. The weakest system is, of course, the Angels, whose 1,315 points give them an average of 43.8. What we find is that the difference between a top five team, like the Rockies, and a club in the middle, like the Yankees, is actually fairly significant. They differ by just 35 points overall, but that's asking the Bombers' system to slide seven of their top 30 prospects up a level. Maybe it's tempting to think it would be easy to slide seven of those 45-rated players up to a 50, but that would give the Yankees 15 prospects with a 50 grade. It's not realistic considering the distribution of players with that mark across the league. Instead, the Yankees would have to turn one 45-rated player into a 65 and another into a 60. Considering there are only 20 of 900 prospects (2.2%) right now who are rated 60 or higher, magically finding two of them to drop into a system is highly unlikely. Turning three 45s into 55s might sound more doable, but that would be asking the Yankees to double the number of prospects already at that level. When a front office is challenged to turn around a system, I think looking at information like this helps us to see how big of a task that can be. There are a couple of next steps available that I'll try to take up in coming weeks. I'd like to incorporate more information from other systems, and I'd also be curious to look at the age and level of prospects to give a larger cross-section. Click here to view the article