Minnesota Twins Top 43 Prospects

The fifth pick in the 2023 draft, Jenkins crushed pro ball after signing to the tune of a .362/.417/.571 line, with a 90% z-contact rate during that span. His 2024 regular season got off to a delayed start due to a hamstring strain, which Jenkins suffered in his first game at Fort Myers. He rehabbed on the complex in May, then got 150-ish PA at both Low-A Fort Myers and High-A Cedar Rapids, before ending with a six-game sip of Double-A Wichita. He slashed .282/.394/.439 with just six homers, but 22 doubles and 17 steals in 20 attempts. He dealt with a sprained ankle during 2025 spring training and was shut down again after just a couple of early-April Double-A games as he kept experiencing stiffness. He was absent for roughly two months, played rehab games in Fort Myers, and rejoined Wichita just before list publication. Jenkins’s injury history is long and dates back to high school (he’s had hamate, quad, hamstring, and ankle stuff), but he hasn’t had any one chronic issue and has looked great when he’s played.

Jenkins has the projection of a middle-of-the-order force, a well-rounded contact and power hitter with great long-term strength projection because of his size. He tracks pitches exceptionally well and can move his hands all over the strike zone, snatching fastballs up around his hands to his pull side, or spraying up-and-away fastballs to left field in the air. Jenkins posted an excellent 88% in-zone contact rate and 83% overall contact rate in 2024, backing up his fantastic 2023 debut metrics. His career sample is smaller and less reliable than if he had been playing consistently, but his performance within that sample has been steady. There are instances where Jenkins will take what he’s offered and make weak groundball contact (often on lower pitches) rather than wait for something he can drive, but he’s a very promising young hitter in basically every other way. He’s going to hit enough to be an impact everyday guy even though he’s very likely to be relegated to an outfield corner. The Twins have been deploying Jenkins in center field (when he’s not DH’ing), but realistically, he’s a left fielder with a below-average arm. He doesn’t look especially rangy or comfortable in center, and his size will likely be prohibitive at maturity. He should hit enough to be a heart-of-the-order hitter and impact regular regardless of his position.

Rodriguez is one of the more entertaining and fascinating prospects in the minors, an incredibly slick defensive center fielder who has plus power and plate discipline. He also has barely played. What would have been Rodriguez’s first pro season was squashed by the pandemic and his next two were shortened by knee and abdominal injuries, limiting him to just 84 combined games in his first three years as a pro. A right thumb sprain sidelined him for much of 2024 and required surgery in September. He’s only played more than 50 games in a single season once, and Rodriguez has already been on the IL two more times in 2025, first for a jammed thumb (the other one) and more recently for a hip injury that has him shelved as of this update.

When healthy, Rodriguez has posted huge stats. He’s a .247/.419/.493 hitter in 269 career games, and his underlying TrackMan data corroborates the power and OBP aspects of that output. Even with a bum digit, he had a 56% hard-hit rate in 2024, and hit a ball 114 mph. He’s only chased 10-14% of the time the last two seasons (roughly a third of the league average). This is like a turbo-charged version of Trent Grisham, with louder all-fields power but similar patience and defensive ability.

Wait until the MLB.TV surfers among you get to see this guy play defense. He isn’t an elite speedster with huge range; instead, he has incredible skill at the catch point. He makes spectacular plays around the wall and while going to the ground. His reads, routes, instincts and ball skills in center are all spectacular, and right now, he has the foot speed to play there. “Right now” is key, however, and this is where Rodriguez’s profile takes a bit of a turn and becomes more difficult to wrangle. At 22 years old, Rodriguez is already a stocky 5-foot-11 and 215 pounds or so. He glides around the outfield with ease at present, but whether that will still be true even three or five years down the line isn’t certain because his body is already maxed out.

The other potential issue here (and this is where his profile also kind of aligns with Grisham’s) is that Rodriguez has a well-defined hole in his swing up and away from him; his swing is bottom-hand dominant in the extreme and causes him to swing underneath these pitches with concerning regularity. Rodriguez’s compact body helps keep his swing short enough to be on time in the rest of the zone, and his tremendous plate discipline assures that he only hunts pitches he can drive early in counts. He’s going to strike out a ton, but Rodriguez’s defense will give his offensive flaws room to breath during contact dry spells, and across an entire season (assuming that Rodriguez will eventually be healthy for one), he should produce like an above-average center fielder.

Keaschall had two solid underclass seasons at the University of San Francisco before he transferred to Arizona State for his draft year, during which he hit an unbelievable .353/.443/.725. He had some first round buzz and was heavy in the mix of model-driven teams because he was not yet 21 on draft day. Keaschall ended up signing for $1.5 million as a second round pick. He raced through the minors while dealing with elbow issues that limited him on defense and ultimately led to Tommy John near the end of last season. He slashed .303/.420/.483 with 15 homers and 21 doubles last year even though he was dealing with the elbow injury. Keaschall was back when the starter’s pistol fired in 2025. He missed no time at all, broke camp with St. Paul, and was quickly needed in Minnesota. He got starts at DH and second base for a week before he was hit by a pitch and suffered a nondisplaced forearm fracture; he’s been shelved since late April.

Keaschall’s best position is “hitter.” He is a premium in-the-box athlete with a flexible and powerful lower body, as well as strong wrists that turn over through contact. His hands are punctual to the inner third, and Keashcall tracks and reacts to pitches well. At Arizona State, he would often look out of control, chasing a ton and swinging so hard that he found himself off balance. This is the area where Keaschall has improved most as a pro. His swing rate has dropped from 50% at ASU to 38-42% the last couple of years, and he’s walked a ton in pro ball. A relative lack of power may cause Keaschall’s walk rates to sag in the bigs, and also might cause his hit tool to play down because of light contact quality.

Keaschall still doesn’t have an obvious defensive home. It was reasonable to hope some of his issues at second base in the past were at least partially caused by his elbow. He’s still not throwing very well and does not look comfortable there much of the time. His outfield trial seemed worthwhile, and hopefully can be a thing again (Fall League, perhaps?) as Keaschall gets healthy. If he has to move to first base, then his production feels more like that of a second-division regular in the Wilmer Flores mold.

As a wild freshman at Alabama, Prielipp looked like he might be an eventual top five pick because of the quality of his stuff, primarily an upper-90s fastball and a devastating slider. He dealt with a couple periods of injury culminating in a Tommy John surgery in late May of 2021 that kept him out for the entire 2022 college season. He threw a bullpen for scouts near the end of the college calendar and then threw again at the 2022 Combine, in both instances sitting 92-94 mph with a shorter arm action than he showed before he blew out. Prielipp’s slider was arguably the best pitch in the entire 2022 draft, but he came with more relief risk than most of the other college pitchers projected to go in the first two rounds, and he ultimately went in the second.

Prielipp did not pitch at an affiliate after signing with the Twins but was nails during 2023 spring training. Specifically, his slider was spinning in at its usual 3,000-ish rpm, but it had added a few ticks of velocity and suddenly resided in the upper-80s, which is rare for a pitch that spins that fast. Prielipp’s changeup also looked better than it did in college. The shorter arm action helped him sell it better than he was able to at ‘Bama, arguably giving Prielipp a greater chance to start than was thought before the draft. It took all of 6.2 innings for him to blow out again, and he had the internal brace style elbow procedure in July of 2023. When he returned in 2024, Prielipp was nasty again and struck out 45% of opponents across just 23.1 innings of work before the end of the season. In 2025, he’s had some minor injury stuff again. He was put on the Development List for a spell to limit his season-long workload and is on the IL with a blister as of list update.

Prielipp’s slider remains tighter than a snare drum, his fastball averages 94-97 mph, and his changeup has performed like a plus pitch, more from command than raw stuff. Since shortening his arm action coming out of his first TJ, Prielipp has had much better command than he did as an underclassman, and even though he hasn’t pitched very much, he’s increased the chances that he can start. His lone issue here is that it’s tough to be confident in him sustaining plus velocity across 130-plus annual innings because he’s never proven he can do it. The nature of Prielipp’s fastball movement means it should still be a good pitch even if his velo sags. The Twins could use Prielipp in a long relief capacity as soon as this year (it would allow him to impact the big league team while also limiting his workload), then he could be stretched out as a starter more thoroughly in 2026. He has mid-rotation stuff and enters the Top 100 on this update, albeit down with the injury-prone crowd toward the back of the list.

With our general approach toward grading physical outliers, FanGraphs as an outlet supports the spirit of spending a first round pick on a player with Culpepper’s tools and all-out manner of play. In the case of last year’s 21st overall pick, there is some give-and-take and a few unintentional side effects from his style, especially on offense. Culpepper’s hips are exceptionally fluid, which allows him to take a healthy pull-side hack and perform against velocity. He can lose sight of the baseball from swinging too hard, and Culpepper is chase prone (he’s especially antsy with two strikes), but his ability to bend and scoop lower pitches helps him mitigate this issue somewhat because most of what he’s chasing is finishing low. Culpepper is on a 20-homer pace in his first full year of pro ball and he’s going to get to power when he makes contact, but his tendency to chase and some of the effort it takes him to swing hard will probably manifest in more strikeouts as he climbs. He has average raw power right now and will probably settle close to that at peak, as Culpepper is a compact athlete without big projection.

Culpepper is among the most entertaining defenders in the minors. He’s bold and creative, and has remarkable body control. He’ll pirouette and fire with plus arm strength, and his emphatic and precise tagging influences 50/50 calls at the bases. Culpepper has blown through his pre-draft evaluation on defense (he was evaluated on the SS/3B fringe in college) and now looks like a future impact defender at short. It gives his looming strikeout issues room to breath, so long as he is getting to power. His chase tendency will likely create big year-to-year volatility in his performance and slot him in more as a second-division regular at short when we look back at his overall production across multiple seasons, but Culpepper should have some peak seasons where he slugs and plays great defense.

Soto was shut down after his first three starts of the season with triceps soreness, but we learned a lot of new information in that window. First, Soto’s arm slot has changed and is now more vertical. In the past, Soto would be punished for mislocating his fastball, but this new arm slot totally changes the nature of how his heater plays, and it was an utterly dominant pitch in April. Soto’s velocity was also up. He bumped 100 (a personal best) and was sitting 95-97, a tick above his typical range in 2024. Soto’s secondary pitch usage also changed, though whether this was a developmental exercise or a true shift in Soto’s mix we won’t know for a while. Soto’s changeup has been his most effective pro offering and most-used secondary pitch, but to start 2025, it had taken a back seat to his slider, which he was mostly using in the zone. Soto’s changeup has always had more sink than tail, which was counterintuitive given his arm slot, and now the reverse is true, as Soto pronates through his higher release to create tail. It looked good the little bit he busted it out before he was shut down.

Soto is incredibly strong for his age but also less physically projectable than is typical for someone on this side of 20. He isn’t the most limber of athletes, but his delivery has become smoother and less violent since high school. If his new fastball keeps playing like this, it takes pressure off Soto to develop great command for his heater to thrive and for him to survive as a starter, and so even though he’s currently on the IL, he carries less relief risk here than he did before. It might be tough for Soto to check the “durability” box on the scouting card in 2025, so he’ll probably hang in this FV range for a while, even though he has mid-rotation ceiling. He continues to track toward a 2028 debut.

Hill was maybe the most projectable player in the entire 2024 draft class regardless of position or demographic at 6-foot-5, 165 pounds. His fastball was peaking in the 88-90 mph range during the summer between his junior and senior year of high school, but held 92-97 for five or six innings at a time during his senior spring. That on its own was exciting, but Hill also had a ton of room on his frame for strength, and maybe more velocity. He’s already added some, and not only has he pitched well despite a fairly aggressive full-season assignment in 2025, but Hill’s heater is averaging a shade below 96 mph so far. It’s not playing like a dominant fastball due to its sink and downhill plane, and this pitch definitely needs to be viewed in light of Hill’s usage (he’s not pitching all that deep into games), but it’s impressive that he’s throwing harder this soon.

Hill’s secondary stuff has also improved already. In fact, all of Hill’s secondary pitches (including a rapidly improving changeup that’s living off Hill’s arm speed right now) are generating huge miss, collectively north of 60% as of this writing; that’s roughly twice the big league average for secondary pitches. His slider and knuckle curve are in the low-80s, with the changeup in the mid-80s. Hill’s high arm slot helps his breakers have depth, and Low-A hitters gearing up for 97 have been early on his changeups. Hill isn’t a surgeon, but at his age and size, that’s fine. He’s throwing strikes with his slider when he needs to climb back into counts; he actually commands that pitch and the rest are more scattered. There’s developmental work to be done in the control/command department, and athletically/mechanically, Hill’s style is kind of reliever-y, but what 19-year-old this size has total control of their body? Hill has an All-Star ceiling while his profile also carries the risk and deep timeline of a low-minors pitching prospect. This is already an arrow-up prospect who likely will be again during our offseason update if Hill can sustain this stuff throughout the rest of the season (he’s on pace to work about 60 innings) and deeper into starts (hopefully for five or six innings) at least a couple of times.

Morris transferred from Colorado Mesa to Texas Tech for his fourth year of school as the Red Raiders tried to Voltron together a weekend rotation made up of transfers. The Twins accelerated his promotion pace in 2024, as he covered three levels and finished the year at Triple-A St. Paul, amassing 133 total innings, a 2.37 ERA, and great peripherals (24.5 K%, 5.9% BB%). Morris is currently in his 40-man platform year and has a good chance to debut at some point in 2025 out of injury necessity.

Most impressive about Morris has been his ability to sustain mid-90s velocity even though he’s a smaller guy. His high slot creates nearly perfect vertical movement on his fastball, which lives at the top of the zone and generates a lot of chase. Morris’ secondary mix is deep but not especially nasty; none of those pitches generated plus miss or chase in 2024 and that has been the case again in 2025. Instead, he mixes speed and shape to generate a lot of weak contact. He’ll work with upper-80s cutters and mid-80s sliders, and bend in the occasional upper-70s curveball to steal a strike. Starter-quality feel for east/west location of all those pitches gives Morris a high floor as a starter, but he’s probably not a mid-rotation guy since we’re talking about just one great pitch.

Culpepper has enjoyed a substantial velo uptick in pro ball, from hovering around 90 mph in college to topping out in the 97-98 mph range when he’s had his peak stuff in pro ball. He seemed poised to race to Minneapolis in 2024, and was dominant and efficient at Cedar Rapids during the first half before he missed two months in 2024 with a forearm strain. Then he began 2025 on the shelf due to a pinched nerve in his hand, though he’s recently back and made two starts prior to list publication.

Culpepper’s velo is down slightly compared to peak (he sat 91-94 in his FSL rehab), but not so much as to be concerned that injuries have permanently nerfed his stuff. Besides, Culpepper’s game is about command, specifically command of his excellent low-80s slider and upper-80s cutter. He lacks a platoon-neutralizing weapon but can sequence his way into getting them out. He attacks them in on his hands with cutters, bends sliders toward their back foot, and elevates fastballs up and away from them. Culpepper’s ability to attack those three quadrants of the zone with ease gives him the look of a high-floored starter prospect. He also has a sinker variant, a curveball, and a changeup, but those latter two offerings are rarely deployed, especially the cambio. Fleshing those out as his career unfolds will be the pathway to more of an impact, mid-rotation role, but at this time, Culpepper projects as a no. 4/5 starter who’ll be ready for prime time pretty soon.

Schobel is a versatile infield defender who has climbed to Triple-A with a career pro OPS around .730. Schobel is poised to play a luxury-model utility infield role. He’s a rangy and athletic shortstop with experience at second, third and a little bit of left field, the kind of defender who can basically play anywhere well. Schobel’s surface stats swooned somewhat in 2024 (.211/.301/.338 in Wichita) but nothing really changed under the hood. He has terrific plate coverage and enough pull power to yank out a dozen mistakes if he were given heavy run throughout a season. Schobel rotates well in the box, but he doesn’t have the kind of power that does routine damage the other way. It’s enough overall offense for him to be a relevant, competitive hitter toward the bottom of your lineup on the days Schobel starts, or when he fills in mid-game.

There’s a reason plus hit tools often get overrated in terms of value: They’re really fun. A $20 ticket to watch Gonzalez, who was acquired as part of the Jorge Polanco trade, spray line drives all over the yard is just good value as far as Wichita entertainment options go. The stout Venezuelan’s feel for hitting it where it’s pitched shields him from whiffs despite an over-eagerness for swinging at it wherever it’s pitched. But that approach, along with his short-levered build, is going to keep Gonzalez from average power production despite average raw. While he’s absolutely locked into an outfield corner, Gonzalez has the arm to stick in right. He’s going to be hard-pressed to produce the power necessary to be a regular in either corner of the outfield, but tagging him as a platoon bat feels like selling the durability of his hit tool a shade short. This looks like a high-level reserve who most teams would be happy to hand 300-400 at-bats to as needed.

Raya is in the middle of a fairly radical shift in his approach, as his lack of fastball command and movement has forced him to become more cutter-centric. It’s working. Raya is throwing strikes with his cutter and other breaking pitches (which are excellent), and competing in a short-outing starter role at St. Paul. Raya’s secondary stuff, including his variety of plus-spinning breakers, has long been the foundation of his prospect profile. His cutters have tight, late movement, and he manipulates his breaking ball shape between a sweeper (against righties) and curveball (against lefties) depending on the matchup. These breakers all tend to spin in the 2,700-2,800 rpm range and have plus velocity for how much they move and bend. Raya also has a power-sink changeup that sometimes confuses automatic pitch tagging, which struggles to distinguish it from a sinker. He uses it against both lefties and righties, giving him multiple ways of beating hitters of either handedness.

Raya’s workload has been handled pretty conservatively throughout his career, at times due to injury. He’s only worked more than five innings in a single outing twice in five years of pro ball. This context is important for gauging his ability to start in the big leagues. He has the repertoire but not necessarily the stamina, and definitely not the size or fastball command, of most big league starters. Still, he has multiple plus pitches and is a plus athlete who we think is more likely to be an uncommonly good multi-inning reliever.

Olivares is going to be one of the more fascinating offseason 40-man decisions because his stuff is great, but his control and command are definitely not ready for prime time. The 2024 season was his best as a strike-thrower (10% walk rate), but so far 2025 has been his worst (17.4%) as Olivares navigates High-A for roughly three innings per start. He has something close to a prototypical starter’s build and again is throwing very hard, routinely in the 94-97 mph range for the second consecutive season after enjoying a little bump in 2024. Mechanically similar to Cubs reliever Daniel Palencia except with a more tilted spine and northward arm slot on release, Olivares’ fastball features plus vertical break but also tends to run downhill.

After mixing in his three secondaries pretty evenly last year, Olivares’ slider/cutter has come to the forefront of his mix. It’s often labeled a cutter, but because of his high slot, it has enough downward bend on its way to the zone to be considered a slider. It’s often tough for pitchers with high slots like this to turn over a changeup, and Olivares struggles with this right now, but his best ones are really good and feature bat-missing tail. A strike-stealing curveball rounds out what could be a mid-rotation starter’s mix if Olivares polishes his command a great deal. If Olivares is left unprotected from this offseason’s Rule 5 Draft, it will be very tempting for a team to take him, put him in the bullpen, and then revisit starter development in 2027 and beyond. This is a high-upside pitching prospect with a great deal of relief risk.

Winokur is a physical outlier at a rangy 6-foot-6; he signed for $1.5 million rather than go to Texas Tech. Drafted as a power projection prospect with potentially severe strikeout issues, Winokur is still rough around the edges in all facets of the game. He’s an athletic marvel for his size, and the Twins have given him long runway to improve at both shorstop and in center field. His hands and ball skills are lacking, but his range and arm strength are both incredible for his size. The cement is still very wet on Winokur’s defense, as he might grow more comfortable in center with time, or he might end up at third base or (probably most likely) in right field, where he could be a special defender.

Things are similarly magmatic on the offensive end for Winokur, because while he isn’t making anything near an average rate of contact, he already has above-average power and is going to grow into a ton more. It’s reasonable to dream on Winokur’s bodily feel, and that he might one day have better feel to hit. If that feel arrives, he’s going to be an star because he’s going to have that kind of pop. He’s so far from viability right now that it will probably take several years before that happens, maybe even a few full seasons before we start to see glimpses of consistency. Winokur is among the most volatile prospects in baseball, a really exciting and toolsy but crude young hitter who will likely be a slower burn.

Beltre is a tightly wound corner outfield prospect with impressive power who signed for $1.5 million in January of 2024. He slashed .326/.453/.618 in his first pro season largely because of his power. His raw juice is shocking for a player his age, and it isn’t like Beltre is a particularly big guy, he just has volcanic hands. His best swings produce epic pull-side bombs, but Beltre’s barrel is currently much less precise and dangerous against pitches he can’t pull. He had a sub-70% contact rate in last year’s DSL but was hitting the ball so hard, so consistently (47% hard-hit rate) that he hit well over .300 anyway. The 2025 season is not going as swimmingly early on, as Beltre struggles to clear the Mendoza Line on the domestic complex, in part because of a low BABIP. He’s still hitting the ball really hard, and he has so much power already at age 18 that down the line Beltre might have enough to sufficiently counter what will likely always be elevated strikeouts. This is a risky corner prospect of extreme variance whose realistic outcome is a good team’s slugging five or six hole hitter.

Eeles is a 5-foot-5 outlier who had no Division-I offers coming out of high school and ended up at Division-II Cedarville, where he spent four seasons. He used his extra year of college eligibility after the pandemic to transfer to Coastal Carolina in 2023, where Eeles (who was listed at 5-foot-7 at the time) posted a .500 OBP as a fifth-year senior. Undrafted, he went to Indy Ball and raked in the American Association before the Twins finally signed him in May of 2024. He was quickly promoted from Fort Myers to High-A Cedar Rapids, where Eeles struck out just three times in 55 PA before Minnesota skipped him over Double-A and sent him straight to Triple-A St. Paul for the second half of the 2024 season. He never stopped hitting, and slashed .299/.419/.500 with 12 homers in 64 games at the hitter-friendly affiliate. He began 2025 on the IL recovering from minor surgery to address an issue with his knee cartilage, and after a brief rehab period, returned to St. Paul in early June.

At his size, Eeles needs to be an athletic freak and outlier in order to succeed at the big league level, and it appears he is. This guy epitomizes the “short but not small” maxim. His lower body is incredibly strong and athletic, and after joining the Twins (certainly when you compare his swing to the 2023 version at Coastal), Eeles was hitting from a deeper crouch that took better advantage of his burly trunk. The way he’s able to adjust his lower body to help move the bat around the zone (especially against low pitches) is very exciting. There’s some risk that his hit tool bottoms out a bit against big league velocity because Eeles’ swing is a little long, but that’s countered by a super compact body that allows him to push the ball just inside the third base and left field line.

Do Eeles’ surface-level minor league numbers need to be contextualized because of his age and the hitting environment at St. Paul? Yes. Readers should not expect Eeles to hit for the kind of power he did in 2024. His contact and hard-hit rates (the latter of which is more of an isolated variable) are in line with that of a Brice Turang, or a more patient Mauricio Dubón. That’s not quite enough impact to call Eeles a foundational everyday second baseman, but it’s enough for him to be a utility guy if he can play some other positions. He’ll make some highlight reel plays thanks to his effort and range, but his hands and arm strength are both below average. He’s played shortstop, second base, and left field during his healthy part of 2025, and a 2B/LF mix seems likely for him most of the time, with short as an emergency option.

Compact college infielders were the rhythm of the Twins’ 2024 draft night, as they plucked the Sun Belt Conference player of the year for $2.4 million at the start of the comp round. DeBarge is short-levered with quick wrists, and he wears it well, tucking his hands to pull inside pitches with relentless fervor. It’s a good thing, too, since at this stage, he only has the juice to leave the yard down the left field line and isn’t very projectible at his size. His contact ability is better than a 21% K-rate would suggest and his chase is worse than 17.2% walk rate would indicate, but his passive approach leads him to both outcomes frequently.

With his pull-giddiness (“pull-happy” feels like selling it short), DeBarge swings inside a lot of soft stuff away, and his bottom hand-driven swing path has produced a ton of popups on pitches in the upper-third. So despite running a 131 wRC+ at High-A in his first full pro season, the hit tool is a little shaky to carry an everyday second baseman projection, even if DeBarge is maximizing his limited raw pop. Already lacking the arm for short, the Twins have been mixing in some outfield work for a super-utility future. His routes are currently wonky, but time should reveal that DeBarge has the wheels for it. And while his acceleration is more impressive than his straight-line speed, that’s been enough to make him an absolute menace on the basepaths (35 steals in 36 attempts). If it’s a high-order utility profile, at least it’s a spunky one.

Pena is maybe the best pure contact hitter in the Twins system and struck out just 6% of the time in both his 2023 and 2024 rookie ball seasons, slashing .282/.386/.410 in 2024. He has uncommon twitch in his hands for a player his size and remarkable feel for hitting the ball where it’s pitched. He has oppo gap power if you want to work away from him, and he’ll snatch fastballs up around his hands if you dare try him in there.

A lack of power and physicality dilutes Pena’s production a good bit. He lacks typical big league strength — he’s more of a singles and doubles hitter right now — and doesn’t have the obvious, frame-based projection of a taller, broadly built athlete. That’s not ideal given the positions Pena can (and maybe can’t) play. He’s gotten reps at a mix of second base, third base, and in left field in the past, and has only played the keystone so far in 2025. A lot of what Pena does on defense tends takes a little too long to develop and unfold; he’s not especially skilled from a hands and actions standpoint. He needs to improve to stay there, and if indeed he ends up an outfielder, Pena will need to hit so much that his game power outpaces his raw, as he’s a smaller guy who’s unlikely to add a ton of strength as he matures. The amount of contact he made in 2024 made that seem like a possibility, but he hasn’t been quite as exceptional so far in the 2025 Florida State League. This is a very special contact-hitting prospect who might back his way into defensive versatility as he and the Twins search for a position, which would allow him to play a bat-first utility role.

Though it looks like he’s going to be quite the project from a strike-throwing standpoint, Bohorquez otherwise does everything you want a 20-year-old starting pitcher prospect to do. He’s of sturdy build, his delivery looks effortless, he works in the mid-90s, and he has a hammer curveball with plus depth and bite. This is a pitcher with an exciting fastball/curveball combo and a power pitcher’s attack style. Bohorquez’s curve has enough depth and pure vertical movement to play against lefties, and his upper-80s cutter acts as a bridge pitch (his changeup is bad). He’s walking nearly a batter per inning at Fort Myers as of this writing and badly needs to harness his control, but there are exciting raw ingredients here and still plenty of time to polish them.

Castillo was ranked 39th on the 2025 International Board and signed for just shy of a $1 million in January. He’s an advanced contact hitter with a medium, projectable frame and above-average bat speed from both sides of the plate. He’s been roving all over the infield so far in pro ball, and it’s been tough to get a good, fresh look at him at shortstop during the little bit of DSL play that’s taken place thus far, but amateur reports suggest Castillo is a suitable shortstop with enough arm and range. This is a well-rounded player with medium projection whose stock has risen a bit since he signed because of how well he’s performing with the bat out of the DSL gate.

Adams covered 127 innings in 2024, his second at Double-A, striking out 24.5% of the batters he faced and walking 6.3% at Wichita. He’s throwing a ton of strikes at Triple-A and looks like a stable no. 5 starter even though his velo has taken a step back and is down a tick compared to 2024. Adams commands two distinct fastballs and bends in cutters and sliders to his glove side. His best pitch in terms of raw stuff might be his changeup, which he barely uses because he commands it less well than the rest of his repertoire. He’s a four-seam/cutter/changeup guy against lefties and is more sinker/slider-heavy versus righties. A well-executed approach makes Adams successful more than his pure stuff does, but he’s going to contribute to a big league staff and would be an acceptable spot start option right now, with more of a no. 5 starter fit over time.

Ohl has a strike-throwing slider machine at Grand Canyon, but 30-grade arm strength made him a later pick. Thanks to remarkable command (Ohl’s career walk rate is just south of 4%), he climbed to the upper levels quickly before plateauing at Double-A in 2024, when his strikeouts backed up. His delivery was changed this year (his arm slot is higher), and it also appears as though Ohl’s changeup grip was, too. The changes (it’s more of a pronator’s changeup now rather than a split) have turned that into a plus pitch, easily the best in Ohl’s repertoire. Exceptional feel for location enables Ohl’s otherwise pedestrian stuff to succeed. He repeats his delivery with machine-like precision and consistency and threw strikes at a roughly 70% clip throughout all of 2024. He now has a weapon he can lean on in the new changeup and is likely to play a spot starter role in 2026.

Camargo was perhaps the most anonymous member of the Kenta Maeda/Brusdar Graterol runway-clearing deal, but he’s turned into a big leaguer. The physical Colombian slashed .259/.323/.503 at Triple-A in 2023, but his output has plateaued across the last year and a half, and he’s on the IL with a forearm sprain as of list publication. Camargo’s arm strength is an important aspect of his profile as, when healthy, he pops 1.9 and below much of the time. He’s worked to become not only a viable defensive catcher but a pretty good one. He isn’t an especially mobile ball-blocker, but he’s gotten pretty good at throwing his gut in front of the baseball, he has a great arm, and he’s become a fair receiver.

On offense, Camargo packs a wallop at the dish, but he’s still far too chase prone to rely on as an offensive player with any kind of regularity. His bat speed is ridiculous, but his feel for contact isn’t precise or skillful enough to tap into all that power. He has aspartame Jorge Alfaro ingredients and has put himself in position to be a power-over-hit backup.

Diaw, the first ever player of Senegalese ancestry drafted by a big league team, was a big projection bet out of last year’s Draft Combine if for no other reason than he caught fewer than 30 games over three seasons at Loyola Marymount. There’s a ways to go until the “Mission Accomplished” banner needs to be commissioned, but he looks like a significantly safer bet to stick behind the plate than this time a year ago. Lanky and fluid, Diaw loads his glove from the ground and shows the actions to grow into being an average receiver and blocker, though his backhand is presently unreliable. His arm strength is playing below average, but he is quite accurate and is already doing passable work despite threadbare experience.

Diaw is already decently sized and could fill out to a bit more than his presently below-average power, but he takes a long, level cut that sprays low lying contact. His chasing spikes with two strikes, but that’s possibly because he’s quite proficient at spoiling balls off the edge. That skill and his zone judgment should help maintain solid strikeout-to-walk ratios even without thump behind it, which makes for perfectly acceptable backup catcher offense.

Rosario is a physical, pull-power hitter who was committed to Cal Baptist when he signed for a little under $300,000 in the 2020 draft. He’s produced slightly above-average overall offense at each minor league level en route to his current assignment at Double-A. Rosario has K’d at a roughly 30% clip throughout his entire career, and is probably too volatile of an offensive player to get everyday playing time. He destroys lefties, though, and is best at accessing his power when he can get extended against pitches up and away from him. He also plays good corner outfield defense and has an above-average arm, which runners in the Texas League seem aware of, as it was difficult to even find examples of runners trying to take extra bases against Rosario while we were working on this list. He projects into a 200-300 PA role as the short side of a corner platoon.

Bischoff spent four years at Toledo (including the pandemic season), one at Michigan State, and then two pitching for the Westside Woolly Mammoths in the United Shore League before the Twins made him one of their many Indy Ball signees in 2023. He’s quickly climbed to Triple-A and has the look of a standard middle-inning guy with a power fastball/slider combo. His fastball doesn’t have very good shape, but Bischoff has touched 99, and his slider has plus velocity at 85-88 mph. Fastball shape issues put him in more of an up/down bucket, but that’s a great outcome for an Indy Ball guy.

Bowen was a nice Mariners’ draft find from Division-II UNC Pembroke who had something of a breakout at Modesto before he was dealt to Minnesota as part of the Jorge Polanco trade. He’s a smooth operator with great touch and feel command of his fastball and slider, which spearhead his repertoire. Bowen will run his low-90s fastball up the ladder and create tough angle that hitters struggle to parse. His slider plays nicely off the shape of his fastball and tends to live where Bowen wants it to, on either corner of the plate. He can mix and match these pitches to keep hitters off balance and try to finish them with a chaseable version of either pitch. His changeup locations are more scattered, and Bowen’s cutter (just a harder version of his slider with less length) doesn’t have quite the shape needed to get lefties out. Bowen is still starting at Double-A, but here he projects as a command-oriented middle reliever.

The barrel-chested right-hander pitched in a Division II bullpen for two years before he transferred to Campbell for his junior season. Peschl missed bats, but still racked up a 5.48 ERA in his only taste of D-I baseball. Now he’s absolutely carving against High-A hitters on both sides of the plate despite sitting 90-93 mph. His heater looks vulnerable out of a high-three-quarters slot, but Peschl pitches off of it with a variety of spin, maintaining good separation between his cutter and a low-80s slider that’s generated chase rates in the mid-30s. Peschl’s feel for a changeup or anything that works arm side is raw, but he commands his cutter into lefties well enough to project as a useful two-to-three inning reliever who soaks up spare outs in this new world of five-and-dive starters.

Almost two and a half years after coming to the Twins as a side piece in the Luis Arraez/Pablo López swap, Salas was on the verge of hitting his way off the prospect radar until he came out of the gate obliterating A-ball righties to start 2025. Even after missing the first month with a toe injury, Salas looks stronger and more athletic while rotating in his left-handed stroke, aggressively pulling the ball with 90th-percentile exit velos near the major league average, while also rolling over a fair number of grounders due to excessive chase. The improvements haven’t really extended to his flatter, stiffer right-handed stroke, making a platoon super-utility future more likely.

Shortstop and center field are becoming the less-plausible elements of Salas’ seven-position workload, but five will be enough for a bench role if a more stable left-handed swing brings better ball-tracking along with it.

The youngest player in the Marlins/Twins Luis Arraez/Pablo López swap, Chourio is a projectable, switch-hitting outfielder who showed precocious feel for contact at the rookie levels before struggling to adjust to full season baseball in 2024. Chourio’s contact performance backed up a bit, not really due to any kind of skill regression or new vulnerability, but because he simply has not gotten any stronger and is struggling to handle the bat with precision and authority. He’s still skinny and frail-looking, but he’s also barely 20 years old. Chourio has pretty good barrel feel from both sides of the plate for a gangly switch-hitter his age. He has an oppo-oriented approach from the left side, including when he’s covering pitches at the top of the zone (where most of Chourio’s power lives).

The area in which Chourio has improved pretty quickly is in center field, where he now looks more comfortable breaking on the ball and catching while running full steam ahead toward the warning track. He’s been on the prospect radar for a while and it might be easy to get fatigued here, but Chourio’s contact/defense/projection foundation still generates long-term enthusiasm, even if it’s only as an eventual part-time outfielder.

Castellanos is still a month away from turning 17 as of list publication, but he might be the best pitching prospect on the Twins’ DSL roster. In his first couple of outings, his fastball is averaging 94 and has touched 96; it has uphill angle and should have bat-missing utility as he learns to command it. Castellanos’ slider is of the slurve/sweeper variety and has good length, but it has blunt, slower movement right now. He can create action on his changeup and at times uses it as a right-on-right weapon tailing in toward their knees. He’s of medium build, but Castellanos is a good athlete with big league arm speed and bodily explosion. This is a nice, three-pitch dev project in the DSL who has a shot to be a starter long-term. Given his age, he might be ticketed for two DSL seasons.

Ross broke out in 2023 with 19 bombs at High-A Cedar Rapids, but then he struck out in roughly 30% of his 2024 plate appearances and posted a mere 74 wRC+ at Double-A Wichita. He has continued to have general issues on offense while repeating Wichita in 2025. Ross struggles with secondary pitch recognition, but he’s fairly dangerous in the middle-up portions of the zone. It’s not enough offense for a significant role, but Ross has experience at every non-catcher position and he’s a capable shortstop who is getting more frequent reps in center field so far this year. He’s a low-impact utilityman whose superlative versatility makes him a bottom-of-the-40-man fit.

There was a point during the international amateur scouting process when it sounded like De Los Santos was going to be a Yankee, but instead he went back to the open market and got just shy of $2 million from the Twins. He’s an electric athlete with plus bat and foot speed, plus future raw power, and a huge arm, but Daiber is struggling to make anything near a viable rate of contact. He ran a sub-60% contact rate in 2024 and is striking out in just over 45% of his PAs so far in 2025. An athletic fit at shortstop due to his physical tools, De Los Santos’ hit tool doesn’t even have to be very good for him to make a big league impact, but it can’t be as bad as it’s been. He’s a tooled up flier at this stage.

Roque is an exciting, high-upside rookie ball righty with a long-levered, projectable frame and big arm speed. His delivery is a very inconsistent right now, but it’s also very explosive. Roque was sitting 92-95 and touching 97 last season at age 17 and has been more consistently in the 94-97 mph range so far in 2025, though he’s struggling to throw strikes. His breaking balls have been tough to evaluate because they also vary, with some in the upper 70s with big sweep and other shorter breakers in the low-80s. It’s going to be a slow burn, but Roque has considerable long-term ceiling that will be dictated by how much he improves as a strike-thrower. It’s realistic to hope he becomes a late-inning relief prospect during the next couple of years.

McCusker was a fixture at Oklahoma State and known in the scouting community for his freakish size. He really is the only guy in baseball who bears any kind of physical resemblance to Aaron Judge, at a strapping 6-foot-8, 250 pounds. Before joining the Twins, he spent parts of three seasons playing for the Tri-City Valley Cats in the Frontier Independent League, signing with Minnesota in 2023. He hit his way to St. Paul, briefly debuted in May, and is on a 30-homer pace as of this update.

McCusker has enormous raw juice; his hard-hit rate is just under 60% as of list publication, and he’ll hit some balls 114 or 115 mph. It takes his endless limbs forever to get moving, and he’s often late to the contact point and sprays a ton of contact to right field, but he’s strong enough to do damage that way. Opposing pitchers try to crowd him around his hands as a result. He swings through a lot of sliders and has a grooved swing that limits his ability to move the barrel around, resulting in a roughly 30% K% throughout his career. McCusker will likely strike out too much to sustain long-term performance, but during his physical prime (right now), he’s going to get to enough power to have a meaningful peak as a part-time right fielder.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised for a bit stateside, Mercedes eventually settled in the D.R., where he became a prototypical right field prospect with plus potential power and arm strength. The Twins signed him for $1.7 million in January of 2022 and he had a raucous first pro season in the DSL, slashing .355/.420/.555 and swiping 30 bags. But Mercedes has struggled and required time to adjust upon each subsequent promotion, and still hasn’t really gotten traction in full season ball. He has roughly average big league raw power right now at age 20 and it plays to all fields. Some of that is out of necessity, as Mercedes’ front foot is often late getting down, and he’s not on time to the contact point. He does a fair amount of his whiffing for this reason, too. He’s tracking more like a short side platoon option with an extreme power-over-hit skill set.

Olivar is performing offensively, which has been consistent through the 23-year-old Venezuelan’s professional career. He’s making an above-average amount of contact against Double-A pitching, pairing a strikeout rate around 15% with a solid-average batting eye and raw power. But his deep and late hand load suggests Olivar’s hit tool is less than the sum of its performance metrics, and he’s had pockets of whiffing against upper-third fastballs and generally poor performance on velocity 93 mph and above.

It would still be an intriguing mix of offensive attributes for a catcher, but Olivar’s future there remains murky. He’s continued to fill out into a downright stocky build. And while he’s shown some incremental progress in framing and blocking despite below-average mobility, his footwork is inconsistent and his throwing is frequently inaccurate. The Twins have him manning left field more and more, and though he’s not lost out there, his lack of foot speed will make it hard for Olivar to ever be an average left field defender. If he can’t stay behind the plate, there isn’t a carrying tool here.

Not content to simply bang against ACC pitching, Amick transferred to Tennessee for his junior year. Bashing 23 home runs against SEC competition earned him a second round selection last July and a shade under $1.5 million in bonus money despite a defensive profile that limits him to bouncing between the infield corners. Amick has plus raw pop, feel for pulling and lifting, and an especially judicious eye and quiet load with two strikes. An oblique strain has hijacked his first full pro season, but Amick’s April found him swinging through in-zone heaters at a clip that only exacerbated our pre-draft hit tool concerns. He has a long bat path where his best contact comes when he extends his arms out and away from his body, and he was running a 28% in-zone whiff rate before the injury without seeing much premium velocity yet. This is tracking like an up-and-down profile until there’s a bat path adjustment.

Reyes is easily the most physically impressive prospect on the Twins’ DSL roster and probably has the best long-term physical projection, too. He’s already super strong at a sinewy 6-foot-3, and he has room for even more tonnage and strength as he matures. Reyes is generating impressive power in the D.R. and slowly getting feel for his body and swing. He has the same kind of hit tool risk typical of a corner-only prospect (Reyes will post some plus run times but realistically is going to be too big at peak to stay that fast) due to his length and low-ball tendencies. Learning more about how his contact feel trends over the coming weeks could dictate an offseason move into the 40+ FV tier, but there’s too much volatility for that right now.

Leon got $1.6 million in January as a defense-first prospect with one of the more stable shortstop projections from the 2025 class. He has a medium frame and became meaningfully stronger during the commitment window, but he’s still a glove-first prospect with plus infield athleticism and actions. His max-effort arm strength is above average, but his arm accuracy is a tad spotty right now, though that should iron out with time. The downhill nature of his swing is generating a lot of low-lying line drive and groundball contact in the DSL. Leon has the look of a young utility infielder whose career bedrock is his defense.

Hidalgo has returned after losing the 2024 season to shoulder soreness, but his above-average velocity has not yet returned with him. A wipeout split-change has taken the lead from the overhand curveball that once dominated his arsenal, and his breaking ball is now a slider that flashes plus. His delivery still has a reliever-y level of violence, and at this point, he has a consistent run of double-digit walk rates to match. Hidalgo’s 93-94 mph heater has downhill plane and is getting whacked. But he could live as an up-and-down single-inning splitter/slider artist, and work more medium leverage if some of the 95-97 mph heat from his past prospect heights returns.

Montano is a 19-year-old DSL righty in his second pro season, though it might as well be his first because he signed last August and threw just one official DSL inning in 2024. He is struggling early in the 2025 campaign but has good pure raw stuff for a pitcher his age. He’s a strong, lower-slot righty whose fastball sits in the 93-97 mph range across three innings of work. At times, it has big tail, while at others, it has natural cut, the symptoms of a raw young arm still learning the intricacies of release. Off of that Montano tilts in a 3,000 rpm sweeper in the low-80s, which has monstrous lateral action that he can’t yet control. He also has a low-90s sinker/changeup.

Wosinski had Tommy John in 2020 at Akron, transferred to Oakland University, struggled there, went undrafted, latched on with the Eastside Diamond Hoppers of the independent United Shore Professional Baseball League and signed with the Twins in May of 2023. The 6-foot-8 righty has since reached Wichita. Wosinski’s size and huge stride down the mound generate over seven feet of extension. He’s limber and fluid, especially for his size, and Wosinski’s low arm slot helps him create long, tailing action on his changeup and makes his breaking ball tough for righties to pick up. He has a shot to be a low-leverage “look” reliever.