The Puckett’s Pond staff put together a Minnesota Twins Top 20 midseason list. Who came out on top?
The top Minnesota Twins prospect is something for debate among many fans, and at Puckett’s Pond, we want to foster those conversations that happen among fans, so we have them among our staff. We recently put together a number of prospect lists, and the aggregated top 20 prospects when you put all those lists together will be presented over the next few days.
While we may not all have agreed on which player goes where, these players that made these lists were the guys who were aggregated into these spots based on their placements on the various lists from writers here at Puckett’s Pond. Your list may be different, and we certainly encourage your takes in the comments section below!
In the midst of trade season, the Twins could move prospects from this list or add prospects that would qualify from this list, depending on the deal that presents itself. However, we decided to make this list at this point in time and will likely wait until the offseason to revisit the list again.
Monday, we started out with a listing of all the minor leaguers to know that didn’t make the top 20. Tuesday, the list started with #16-20. Wednesday brought #11-15. Today, we’ll crack into the top 10 prospects. Thursday brought #6-10.
We’ll start with the #5 player on our list for today’s final installment:
Just watch that video. Think back to the late 1990s/early 2000s. Tell me you don’t see the spitting image of the swing of a certain former Twins 1B/DH that moved on to Boston and had a Hall of Fame career?
In all seriousness, watching Diaz’s swing, it is surprising that he hasn’t had more success to this point. The Twins signed him out of the Dominican Republic in July of 2013 for $1.4M. He did struggle in his first two years in the org, but last season, he paired with Alex Kirilloff for a big year in Elizabethton in his second year at the level.
This year, Diaz is showing very well with his big swing, but he has struggled with a very inconsistent lineup around him. One of the incredibly impressive things with Diaz is that even with that big swing, he is able to keep his strikeout rate around 15%, which is incredibly low for a power hitter.
On the season, Diaz has hit .276/.314/.446 with 26 doubles and 10 home runs.
Drafted by the Twins out of high school in 2013, Gonsalves has taken a consistent path up the minor league system, albeit a step at a time (2013: GCL/Elizabethton, 2014: Elizabethton/Cedar Rapids, 2015: Cedar Rapids/Fort Myers, 2016: Fort Myers/Chattanooga, 2017: Chattanooga/???).
What is incredible is the production that Gonsalves has had the entire way for the Twins organization. He’s thrown 437 minor league innings at this point with a 2.22 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, a 9% walk rate, and a 27% strikeout rate for his career in the minor leagues, which is incredible to consider, never really having a slump along the way.
This season, Gonsalves has battled some injuries to start the season, but he’s shown well now that he’s healthy, with a 2.75 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, and a 14/82 BB/K ratio over 68 2/3 innings.
Gonsalves isn’t a soft-tossing lefty by any means, but he doesn’t have that sort of “stuff” that turns heads either. He works with a fastball that sits in the 90-92 range, touching up to 94-95 with excellent plane from Gonsalves’ 6’5″ frame and good late wiggle as well. He throws a change with excellent sink, generating plenty of weak contact. His curve has taken a big step forward this season, spinning much tighter while he tinkers with a slider that has a look of a wipeout slider from his high angle, which would work well, but he struggles with consistency with the pitch.
Gonsalves has come a long way in his control and command with all of his pitches and is showing very well at the upper minors. He could push for a late-season run this year.
3. Royce Lewis, SS, 18 years old
Lewis is just barely 18, having turned 18 roughly a week before the 2017 draft. Many thought the Twins drafted Lewis because he was a lesser prospect that would take less money. While the latter is true, Lewis was absolutely a legit #1 overall consideration in the draft.
Lewis is an impressive athlete at 6’2″ and 190-ish pounds. He’s a balanced athlete with excellent power and speed, likely rating as above average in the power and certainly plus in speed. Where Lewis is incredibly advanced is in his hit tool and eye at the plate, which should allow him to move quickly through the minor leagues.
There were questions coming into the spring about whether Lewis would be able to handle shortstop long-term, but he worked hard in the offseason at his defensive actions and impressed scouts that saw him throughout the spring in his work at shortstop, where his plus arm should play well with the work he’s put in to become a better defender at short. He should work up the middle no matter where he ends up, likely 2B or CF if he’s not at SS.
He’s come out strong in the Gulf Coast League with the Twins, hitting .319/.402/.556 with 6 doubles, a triple, 3 home runs, and 6 stolen bases, with an excellent 7/8 BB/K ratio.
We put out a scouting report on Romero earlier this month, and not much has changed on Romero since then. Romero was a Twins signee out of the Dominican in the winter of 2011 as a Twins scouting find at a Perfect Game international tournament outside of the normal scouting trips for international guys.
Romero has filled out well and added velocity, though that led to stress on his elbow that resulted in a Tommy John surgery that kept him out all of 2015 and a good portion of 2016.
Romero’s performance in 2016 was incredible, with a 13/90 BB/K ratio over 90 1/3 innings and a 1.89 ERA between low-A and high-A.
Romero throws a heavy upper-90s fastball with late low movement in the zone. His change has taken a huge step forward since his surgery, becoming a legit fringe-plus pitch. His slider has been able to turn multiple grips where he has flashed a wipeout version of the slider as well as the hard, short break on the pitch. He struggles to locate the wipeout version currently, and if he is able to get the pitch consistent, he’ll be able to really have multiple breaking pitch weapons.
Romero is the one pitcher near the majors with legit front line ability in the Twins system, and he should get a shot soon in the majors.
Gordon has a family background that has led to plenty of people knowing his name for a long time as his father Tom Gordon was a major league pitcher for many years, and his brother Dee Gordon is an All-Star player who has won a batting title in his career and is known for his incredible speed.
So when the Twins drafted Gordon 5th overall in 2014, there were some mistaken expectations of the player he would be based on his father and his brother. Gordon was an exceptional athlete, true, but he was a lot more polished as a baseball player than his brother ever was.
Gordon really has a skillset of being a “jack of all trades, master of none”. He’s got excellent contact skills, tremendous gap power, plus top end speed (though it takes him a few steps to get there), quality defense, and a very accurate arm.
Some questioned his ability to stay at shortstop, but a big part of that has always been that Gordon isn’t flashy at the position. He has continued to work hard at his instincts tat the position and really has shown that he could handle the position long-term if that was where the Twins choose to use him going forward. He’ll likely not be a Gold Glove SS, but he’d not hurt the team at the position.
Offensively, Gordon is not going to hit 30 home runs or steal 30 bases, but it’d not surprise me at all if he had a few seasons at his peak where he had the baseball “quadruple double” (10+ doubles, triples, home runs, and stolen bases), something that’s not incredibly common (Eddie Rosario did it in 2015, the last infielder to do such was Jean Segura in 2013).
He should have a debut with the Twins either in September of this season or soon in the 2018 season, and it would not surprise if he finished the year in AAA.
