MINOR LEAGUE PITCHING UPDATE PER THE ATHLETIC (sounds promising to me, fingers crossed) -
Is the Twins’ long-awaited pitching pipeline finally ready to start producing?
After five years at the helm, Derek Falvey has built a deep group of high-minors pitching prospects. Are they ready to help the Twins now?
theathletic.com
Years ago, a longtime baseball executive said something about developing young pitchers that has stuck with me ever since.
“The only proven way to have three good, young pitchers in your major-league rotation,” they said, “is to start with 10 good pitching prospects.”
Since then, I’ve seen that theory — while perhaps exaggerated for effect — play out over and over again in practice, in Minnesota and elsewhere.
Most frontline starting pitchers in the majors — like, say, José Berríos or even
Michael Pineda — were once top pitching prospects in the minors. However, most top pitching prospects in the minors don’t go on to be frontline starting pitchers in the majors.
Some get hurt, some move to the bullpen and some simply aren’t as good as everyone had hoped. Every group of talented young pitchers gets thinned out as they move up the minor-league ladder until, sure enough, by the time they reach the big leagues there are only a fraction of them left standing to become building blocks in a rotation.
It’s easy to see that math, and that reality, in the way the Twins approached the trade deadline. They had a strong group of pitching prospects already in place, including
Jordan Balazovic,
Jhoan Duran,
Matt Canterino,
Josh Winder,
Cole Sands,
Chris Vallimont and
Bailey Ober, but injuries have already begun to pile up and the front office prioritized adding arms to fight the war of attrition.
First they added Triple-A starters
Joe Ryan and Drew Strotman in the Nelson Cruz
trade with Tampa Bay. Then, via the Berríos
trade with Toronto, they got Double-A starter Simeon Woods Richardson. Baseball America
deemed them three of the four best pitching prospects traded at the deadline, and Ryan and Woods Richardson have already appeared on top-100 lists.
Suddenly the pitching-starved Twins have one of the best, deepest collections of high-minors pitching in baseball. Ober is in the majors and
holding his own. Duran, Winder, Ryan and Strotman are at Triple A. Balazovic, Sands, Woods Richardson and Vallimont are at Double A. Canterino is likely on the verge of a promotion to Double A now that he’s returned from an elbow injury.
And the pitching pipeline that Derek Falvey was hired away from Cleveland to build in Minnesota five years ago finally looks ready to begin producing results. They now have those aforementioned 10 top pitching prospects, each relatively close to the majors. Next up, turning three of them — or more! — into quality pieces of a big-league rotation.
PROSPECT | AGE | LEVEL | ACQUIRED |
---|
Jordan Balazovic | 22 | AA | 2016 (Draft) |
Matt Canterino | 23 | A+ | 2019 (Draft) |
Jhoan Duran | 23 | AAA | 2018 (Trade) |
Bailey Ober | 26 | MLB | 2017 (Draft) |
Joe Ryan | 25 | AAA | 2021 (Trade) |
Cole Sands | 24 | AA | 2018 (Draft) |
Drew Strotman | 24 | AAA | 2021 (Trade) |
Chris Vallimont | 24 | AA | 2019 (Trade) |
Josh Winder | 24 | AAA | 2018 (Draft) |
Simeon Woods Richardson | 20 | AA | 2021 (Trade) |
“We’ve added to our stable of pitching at the upper level,” Falvey said. “Guys we think are really good who can join the likes of Jordan Balazovic and Josh Winder and Matt Canterino, and a number of other guys coming back and being healthy. We hope that whole contingent, along with some of the guys already here in the big leagues who are going to be a big part of what we have going forward, gives us a chance to be sustainable and to impact us soon.”
Twins fans have understandably grown impatient waiting for young, impact arms to arrive, and the collapse of the major-league staff this season removed whatever benefit of the doubt remained. This offseason Falvey constructed the league’s oldest pitching staff, filled with regrettable free-agent signings and no prominent pieces under 25 years old. They have the AL’s second-worst ERA.
It also didn’t help that the Twins
traded away two 19-year-old minor leaguers, sending
Huascar Ynoa to the Braves for
Jaime Garcia in 2017 and
Luis Gil to the Yankees for
Jake Cave in 2018, who now look like good pitching prospects who have already found success in the majors at age 23. There are certainly no shortage of reasons to be skeptical about this regime’s eye for pitching.
However, the reality is that rebuilding a farm system capable of churning out rotation and bullpen help on an annual basis takes time, especially considering the barren pitching cupboard Falvey inherited in 2017 and the organization-wide development that was lost when COVID-19 wiped away the entire 2020 minor-league season. Most prospects went over a year without game action.
“We can’t let this season, where we’re struggling, go for nothing,” Falvey said. “We have to find a way to continue to develop young players we have, refresh our system, get more players who are going to be a part of this. And then we have a whole offseason to continue to work to build around it. It’s going to be challenging, it’s going to be difficult work as always, but we feel like we have the stable and the foundation to do it.”
Even in Season 5 with Falvey at the helm, the Twins aren’t necessarily behind schedule, although no one could be blamed for thinking it seems that way. For instance, high-school pitchers picked in the first draft under Falvey are just 22 now. None of which is to suggest that the Twins’ recent pitching progress has been unimpeachable, or even good. But it’s still probably too early to tell.
By next season, though, that will no longer be the case. Falvey has had enough time, and devoted enough resources, to building the elusive pitching pipeline that it can finally start being judged on results. Pitchers he drafted, signed and traded for are now in the high minors, and the Twins are in desperate need of rotation reinforcements.
There are no more valid excuses after this season and choosing to trade Berríos with 1 1/2 seasons of team control left, while repeatedly insisting the Twins are planning to contend in 2022, means Falvey and company are doubling down on the readiness of the pitching pipeline to begin producing tangible value. With a wide-open 2022 rotation behind
Kenta Maeda, the future is now. It has to be.