Top 20 Twins Prospects

I am not a Major League scout – obviously. This, technically, makes me very much under-qualified to rank Twins prospects.

In many ways, there are few armchair analyses more arbitrary than creating a list of top baseball prospects. Unlike, for example, Seth Stohs of www.sethspeaks.net, I have neither the connections, nor the acumen for research, to put together a credible list of top Twins prospects.

The list I have created here is based almost completely on statistical analysis, and the limited scouting reports I found online without subscribing to any websites.

Doing research with limited online resources puts me on the same level with most baseball fans, so I suppose from that standpoint I am neither more or less qualified than most. And, because I am far more knowledgeable about baseball than the average person, I suppose on some level I actually am qualified to rank prospects.

What is my point? I don’t really know.

I think I am just manifesting my personal feelings of inadequacy on the prospect matter through this rambling introduction.

My feelings stem mostly from my not really feeling comfortable analyzing a player until I have actually seen the man play. Statistics, after all, can only tell you so much.

Regardless, prospects are always a hot topic (especially for the Twins) so I decided to create a list for my readers. Plus, Seth was nice enough to offer my inclusion in his excellent prospect handbook, so this gave me more motivation to create a list.

As I stated, most of my analysis comes from statistics and limited scouting reports. But also, from the intangible standpoint, I am a big believer in a person’s name being important to their success; which is one of the reasons Shooter Hunt didn’t get cut from the list (I am 30% serious about this).

In ranking players such as Miguel Sano and Max Kepler-Rozycki, for whom no stats were available, I had an issue because neither has played a second of baseball in the U.S. Basically, all I know about Kepler-Rozycki is that he was the top European prospect. This means (a) he accidentally signed up for baseball instead of soccer as a kid, and (b) he is the luckiest bastard alive because he wasn’t subjected to soccer. Also, going back to the name theory, Kepler-Rozycki needs to drop the Rozycki if he ever wants to play Major League Baseball.

Similarly, all I know about Sano is that he can’t decide on a last name.

However, both were so highly touted in their home country, and are still so young, that their ceilings are quite high. I’m sure their rankings will change – for better or for worse – in the next year or two.

Now that I have given you all a glimpse into my thought process, and completely undermined my already limited credibility, let’s move on to the list. I didn’t include any information on the players, but if you are looking for a good site for Minor League statistics, I recommend the Baseball Cube.

Enjoy.

20. Shooter Hunt, RP
19. Max Kepler-Rozycki, OF
18. Steve Singelton, IF
17. Joe Benson, OF
16. Carlos Guietterez, SP
15. Rene Tosoni, OF
14. Tyler Robertson, SP
13. Alex Burnett, RP
12. Danny Valencia, 3B
11. Rob Delaney, RP
10. Chris Parmelee, OF
9. Anthony Slama, RP
8. David Bromberg, SP
7. Adrian Salcedo, SP
6. Angel Morales, OF
5. Kyle Gibson, SP
4. Wilson Ramos, C
3. Miguel Sano, SS
2. Ben Revere, OF
1. Aaron Hicks, OF