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Minnesota Twins Land Two On Baseball America Top 100 List

By Benjamin Chase

SECAUCUS, NJ - JUNE 5: Commissioner Allan H. Bud Selig poses with the fifth overall pick of Nick Gordon by the Minnesota Twins during the MLB First-Year Player Draft at the MLB Network Studio on June 5, 2014 in Secacucus, New Jersey. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
SECAUCUS, NJ - JUNE 5: Commissioner Allan H. Bud Selig poses with the fifth overall pick of Nick Gordon by the Minnesota Twins during the MLB First-Year Player Draft at the MLB Network Studio on June 5, 2014 in Secacucus, New Jersey. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images) /
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Midseason prospect lists have been coming out. Minnesota Twins prospects have been mentioned.

During the month of July, you’ll see a lot of midseason prospect lists come out. The Minnesota Twins didn’t land a lot of prospects on offseason top prospect lists, but it will be interesting to see how many prospects will find their way on the midseason lists.

This week Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America released their midseason lists. We’ll take a look at who made the lists and a bit on what each list looks for, starting with the BP list, which came out first.

Baseball Prospectus Top 50 (released July 6th)

Baseball Prospectus is known as one of the original baseball websites that was an innovator in analytical thinking and review of players. With their prospect reporting, they tend to have a blend of analytical reporting and scouting, and sometimes they can fall victim to when their people viewed a guy as far as the scouting goes in either being over-positive or over-negative on a player due to seeing him at a particular point.

That usually will lead to BP going after a guy who puts up remarkable sabermetric-type numbers for a couple of seasons before other ranking services, who may still judge that player more harshly because of less typically “text book” size, weight, and profile.

Before the season, BP had Nick Gordon ranked #48 overall and Tyler Jay ranked #98 overall in their top 101 list. At the midseason list released this week, the only Minnesota Twin that made the list was Gordon, though he climbed up the list to #33.

Baseball America Top 101 (released July 7th)

Baseball America has by far the longest track record in the prospect community, having been founded in 1981. In just short of 40 years in the game, Baseball America has developed a reputation of excellent scouting of their own and also excellent aggregation of scouting resources throughout the game to cover tons of players that they’d never be able to see.

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That leads to Baseball America traditionally trusting the scouting process more, even when a guy struggles with a rough season, or even two, statistically, as long as the process was still good and the “stuff” was good.

Coming into 2017, BA had two Twins in their top 100, ranking Nick Gordon #60 overall along with lefty Stephen Gonsalves ranking #99 overall. Their midseason list had Gordon rocketing up the list to #19 and top draft pick Royce Lewis ranking #39 overall.

So far this season, Gordon has hit .302/.370/.464 with 22 doubles, 6 triples, 6 home runs, and 9 stolen bases with AA Chattanooga. Lewis has just opened play with the Twins’ Gulf Coast League team, hitting .303/.395/.515 with 4 doubles, a home run, and 2 stolen bases.

Next: Twins Can Work Trade Deadline For Future and Now

Players that could be on the cusp

We with Puckett’s Pond will be putting together a midseason top prospect list of our own, and our site co-expert Benjamin Chase will be doing a review of his offseason list from Call To The Pen, along with a few scouting reports to come.

Some of the guys that may not be top 100 guys on every list but could find their way on a list or two during the month:

  • Stephen Gonsalves, LHP, AA Chattanooga, 54 IP, 2.67 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 10/62 BB/K
  • Fernando Romero, RHP, AA Chattanooga, 85 2/3 IP, 2.94 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 33/86 BB/K
  • Wander Javier, SS, Advanced Rookie Elizabethton, .303/.378/.424, 4 2B, 2 SB
  • Jermaine Palacios, SS, A+ Fort Myers, .324/.364/.518, 15 2B,
    6 3B, 11 HR, 12 SB
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