The Minnesota Twins acquired RHP Jhoan Duran in a trade Friday and in his debut Monday night he showed off what the front office likes about him.
The Minnesota Twins were very active over the weekend and through the trade deadline as they made five separate trades which brought in a flurry of prospects. Each trade should help the Twins build towards being a contender again in 2019. One of the acquired players is already making noise as he begins his Twins tenure starting games for the Cedar Rapids Kernels.
Right-handed pitcher Jhoan Duran came over from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Eduardo Escobar trade. Duran took right to winning over the loyal fans in Cedar Rapids as he threw seven innings of no hit baseball while facing off against I-80 rival the Quad Cities River Bandits on Monday night.
Duran’s final line was 7.0 innings pitched, 0 hits allowed, 0 runs allowed, a walk and eight strikeouts. He got things started with a swinging strikeout of the River Bandit’s Marty Costes and didn’t look back from there. It wasn’t until the 5th inning when Duran would put the only blemish on his clean stat line as he would issue a walk to Chandler Taylor. Duran would finish the game strong striking out four of the final six batters he faced.
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The 20-year-old native of the Dominican Republic came over to the Twins ranked as the 19th best prospect in the Diamondbacks farm system according to MLB Pipeline. As he enters the Twins farm system he is now newly ranked as the Twins 23rd best prospect in the same rankings.
MLB Pipeline mentions that Duran has plenty of potential to become a good MLB pitcher but is yet to realize that potential. Pointing to the need to harness his offspeed stuff in order to get there. He already has a potent mid-90s fastball. If he can pair that fastball with some good offspeed offerings Duran will certainly be able to keep hitters off-balance.
It appears in Duran’s eighth strikeout of his brilliant outing Monday, the good and the bad of the right-hander’s development was on display. In the video of Duran’s sequence against his final batter of the night his first two pitches, which go for balls, were good examples of his control getting away from him. Without seeing velocity readings it is hard to tell exactly which pitches miss to begin the at bat, but it could be a combination of something offspeed followed up by his fastball. He does battle back well to record his eight and final strikeout of the night and end the inning.
Duran has a long ways to go before he will be impacting the Twins pitching staff. In his first outing in the organization, he showed fans exactly why the Twins targeted him as a return for Escobar. His opening performance may help lessen the blow of losing the fan favorite just a little.