Minnesota Twins Top 50 Prospects

Jenkins’ writeup on our preseason Top 100 led with the line that his “career has been defined by his frequent trips to the IL and excellent performance when healthy.” True to form, Jenkins was hitting .256/.396/.389 with a 18.8% chase rate and 93.3% in zone contact rate as a 21-year-old at Triple-A when he slammed into the wall and suffered a Grade 2 AC sprain in his left shoulder at the start of May, sidelining him just as he was heating up. He’s recently started hitting live pitching again and could be set for a rehab assignment soon.

The former fifth overall pick still has rapturous control of the strike zone, tracks and whacks breaking balls beautifully, and has walked more than he has struck out at the Triple-A level. Along with a long-levered and strongly built frame, those are good bones for offensive stardom. But Jenkins was running a .333 xSLG at the time of his injury, and while his present top-end exit velos have scraped the big league average, the shakiness of the third pillar in his offensive profile is as much about his swing as it is his physicality. His lower half setup is fairly spread out, his leg drive is conservative, and he inside-outs fastballs more than he pulls and lofts them at this point, producing hard-hit rates that are just ok. Teams that value prospects who make great swing decisions and plus rates of contact have recently been reaping the rewards of waiting for more power to arrive, and Jenkins’ reps have been limited, though admittedly that’s because he’s been racking up injuries that could further stagger the development of impact power.

Maybe he won’t need it right away. Jenkins isn’t pushing Byron Buxton anywhere, but he has the polish to be a passable range-limited fill-in option in center field, and he hurt himself making a great catch on the run. He’s just an average runner, but his defensive acumen and hit tool are enough to make him an eventual 3-WAR player in an outfield corner, even if it feels like there should be another level he can unlock.

Playing an age-appropriate Triple-A assignment as a 23-year-old after sneaking on to the back of the Top 100 this winter, Culpepper got off to a slow start before really turning it on recently. He’s hitting .268/.372/.489 with 14 home runs through 58 games at a mildly hitter-friendly St. Paul ballpark, with performance that looks a little less boffo under the hood but is also backed by a lot of foundational improvements that make an everyday regular projection feel sturdier than ever.

Culpepper pairs enviable K-BB rates with 55-grade raw pop, and has been doing a better job of staying closed through his leg drive this year, helping him drop his chase rate under 30% for the first time in his career. One way Culpepper’s on-field athleticism manifests is in the amount of bend at the waist he has to reach and scoop pitches low and away, and he makes enough contact on the outer edge to drive a near-80% contact rate. But that can sometimes work hand-in-hand with his inclination to expand the zone on breaking balls, and managing chase remains the central concern of his offensive profile. Culpepper is an exceptional rotational athlete. His best moments usually involve exploding on middle-in pitches to the pull side, and the push-pull of his adjustment to the major league level figures to center on how disciplined he remains against outer-half secondaries.

Culpepper is primarily playing shortstop at St. Paul, but the Twins have been getting him more acquainted with second and third base. His bat is a shakier fit at third, but the position makes a better use of his plant-and-fire throwing strength than second, where it feels like a lot of his balletic body control and ability to throw on the run goes under-utilized. Between his first step inconsistencies and occasional struggles with hot shots, Culpepper isn’t a finished product at short, but he’s such an incredible athlete that he should still be a very good one despite these flaws. He should soon be given an opportunity to be Minnesota’s everyday shortstop.

Flipping local-boy-made-good Louis Varland so that he could become the Blue Jays’ bullpen MVP during their World Series run wasn’t a popular move in Minnesota last July, and Alan Roden’s injuries kept the Twins from seeing immediate major league benefits from the swap, but Rojas’ quick ascent to looking like a potential rotation solution could soothe those grievances in hindsight. A bevy of injuries has stalled his progress as he works to refine his secondaries, including a triceps strain that currently has him on the major league IL, but such is the power of an already effective fastball that has seen a meaningful velo bump.

Rojas has remarkable hip mobility, and is able to open his front foot toward the third base side while his arm stroke is still hidden behind his back before snapping forward. With good raw carry (16-17 inches of induced vertical break) and above-average extension on top of his natural deception, Rojas’ heater was a minor league bat-misser when he was sitting 93 mph from the left side, and is playing similarly to big league hitters now that he’s sitting 95-96 mph and popping 99, albeit in shorter stints due to injuries halting his ramp-up.

Both of Rojas’ secondaries are quite firm, with his changeups often cracking 90 mph but with good, late action, while his slider tends to flatten out to a horizontal shape that plays better to lefties. His command can still be erratic, as his 10 walks in 14.1 major league innings suggest, but provided he can stay healthy, his on-mound athleticism and the playability of his fastball – further protected by a sinker variant – should give him the tools to be an effective control-over-command no. 4 starter with some potential for a little more. He moves into the Top 100 with this update.

Half of the return in last July’s Jhoan Duran trade with the Phillies, Tait has physical ability that jumps off the screen even as excessive chase has him scuffling in the Midwest League. Some extra allowance should be given for the fact that he won’t turn 20 until August, but Tait also has red flags, and while most of them seem improvable, especially given his tools, they could nevertheless drag at his profile on either side of the ball.

Big and burly with an implausible 6-foot, 175-pound listing, Tait has some room to grow stronger still, but he already touts above-average pull-side juice thanks to the impressive separation he creates when his hips rotate. Some of his innate barrel mobility is evident in how he is able to square up pitches above the belt, and a more closed setup with less pre-pitch movement has curbed some of the delirious chase in the teenager’s game. That said, he’s still chasing north of 37% of the time, he has limited feel for adjusting to secondaries mid-flight, and he’s expanding the zone on fastballs in a manner that’s worrisome, with his contact rate plummeting to under 70% as a result. At least the risk that his bat would pop too quickly for his defense to catch up has been reduced.

Speaking of defense, the fluidity and explosiveness Tait displays shifting his weight in his crouch for lightning-fast backpicks hints at him possessing the lateral mobility and arm strength to be a stalwart behind the dish. But his footwork popping out of his crouch can get sluggish, his arm action can grow long, and his sidearm release can produce two-seam movement that hampers his accuracy to second base. Tait’s blocking often depends on picking the ball with his glove and is thus only fair, and his framing can be disjointed in the upper part of the zone. But in each case, he’s a big and powerful teenager who moves extremely well and should figure it out over the next several years. That principle applies writ large here. Tait is one of the most exciting catching prospects in professional baseball, but he’s also a year or two further away from being a viable big leaguer than your average Top 100 guy.

Between a TJ in college and an internal brace surgery in pro ball, Prielipp’s prospect status has been hampered by never pitching more than 82.2 innings in a season, despite possessing elite spin talent and mid-90s left-handed velocity. The 25-year-old is already more than halfway toward setting a new career high as of list publication, including 43.2 perfectly mid-rotation-ish innings (a 5.15 ERA, but a 3.70 xERA and 3.43 FIP) in the majors, where he’s been sitting 95-96 mph.

In those returns, it’s clear that Prielipp’s spin will play, and he’s at or above a 30% miss rate on both his slider and curveball. His slider will clip 90 mph with ample two-plane break that he nevertheless commands well enough to use it a plurality of the time. His low-80s curveball has above-average sweep, but its tight 3,100-rpm spin has still allowed it to carve up right-handers thus far.

The relief risk tag has mostly been placed on Prielipp due to his injury history and the related inconsistency in his stuff quality, but the first impressions of his fastball’s playability offer their own questions. He’s a short strider with a bit of a stiffer lower half, and his four-seamer has sort of generic shape that doesn’t give it the steam to outplay his spurts of poor location, leading to more appearances of a sinker variant. Similarly, while his change has good raw movement, it’s fairly firm and he often pushes it up onto the thigh line where it’s vulnerable. Prielipp’s spin quality is supreme and plays to both sides, but there’s too much trickiness to his process of getting ahead in counts and inconsistency in his health track record to nudge him past the no. 4 starter line as he graduates from prospect eligibility.

Coming out of high school, Quick had offers from Florida, Florida State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Auburn to play offensive line, but he wanted to play baseball at ‘Bama. Good decision, as he appears to be in the express lane to the big leagues thanks to the rapid refinement of his secondary stuff.

Some of Quick’s sinkers have incredible tail and draw embarrassing swings from righties, who nearly get hit by the pitch. He can work east/west with his sinker and a sweeper-style breaking ball with big two-planed movement, a pitch that has already gotten much better than when he was in college. He can also pepper the top of the zone with the four-seam version of his fastball and a cutter, which Quick has already developed surprisingly cogent feel for locating. His changeup was his best amateur pitch and remains excellent, sinking and tailing in the 86-88 mph range. You wouldn’t expect nominative determinism to be at play for a prospect named Quick who was once a legit offensive line prospect, but in this case it applies to the rate at which the right-hander has improved as a craftsman. He entered his draft year coming off TJ and with just 25 collegiate innings to his name. Now he’s been promoted to Cedar Rapids, is commanding improved secondry stuff better than he was in college, and moves into the Top 100 on this update as a quick-moving mid-rotation starter.

Houston ranked 26th on last year’s Draft Board and was selected 16th overall, garnering a $4.5 million bonus. The Twins quickly elevated him to High-A Cedar Rapids, an appropriate early-career challenge for a guy who had a 1.055 OPS as a junior at Wake. He’s thriving for the Kernels and hitting over .300 as of list publication, as his plus contact skills have carried over into pro ball. His 86% in-zone contact rate and 77% overall rate are both in line with the big league average at shortstop. His approach is geared for contact; he cuts his stride with two strikes, tracks pitches well, moves the barrel all over the zone, and his swing has an abbreviated finish that produces doubles contact. Houston is not only a lock to stay at shortstop, but he has a chance to be plus there. His average range plays up due to a quick exchange, great body control, and an ability to make acrobatic throws. This is a low-variance prospect who is either going to be a second-division regular at short or a damn good utilityman.

If Rodriguez had grown up in Tampa rather than Santiago, he might be coming off a couple of seasons with 2,000 yards from scrimmage in the ACC instead of repeating Triple-A; he has deceptive and decisive first-step quickness in the outfield despite a powerfully built and maxed out 5-foot-11 frame. Then again, baseball has already been hard enough on Rodriguez’s body. He’s yet to play 100 games in a season and this year appears unlikely to break the streak, as surgery to repair the UCL in his left thumb (he had surgery on his right thumb in 2024) has limited him to 25 games at St. Paul, while injuries to his right hip, oblique, abdomen and left knee have dogged the 23-year-old in previous campaigns.

Rodriguez’s extreme brand of three true outcomes offense — he’s a career .253/.423/.490 hitter with a walk rate over 20% and a strikeout rate over 30% — was already divisive entering the year because of upper-third zone coverage issues and general passivity levels that have few big league peers. His injury froze him in media res of some recommended (and needed) approach tweaks to become more aggressive, which unsurprisingly took the initial form of more chase and a contact rate that had slipped into what you might be inclined to describe as The Murakami Zone (sub-65%).

While he doesn’t have the straight line speed of a typical major league center fielder (and it only figures to back up from here), Rodriguez has the defensive skill to provide some runway for his offense to take root. He has tremendous power and operates with a plan at the plate, it’s just that top pitchers will have a few ways to put him on his heels. He has an extreme bottom-hand swing that often has a one-handed finish. Triple-A fastballs have performed like 80-grade bat-missers against Rodriguez, and he is going to be vulnerable at the top of the zone for his whole career.

Where the injury troubles have really come home to roost is in his roster timeline, as Rodriguez will be out of options next spring. Still, the Twins aren’t awash in alternatives better than offering Rodriguez some runway, which should help him stave off an Everson Pereira-type of transient existence, even though he has Everson Pereira-type offensive issues he’ll have to clean up at the major league level.

At first blush, Mendez seems like a strangely overlooked gem. The 22-year-old has regularly paired 90% in-zone contact rates with non-existent chase out of a big, strapping 6-foot-3 frame that is already producing above-average raw power. Added to the 40-man roster this past offseason, he’s hit the ground sprinting after a recent promotion to Triple-A, slashing .330/.438/.477 with more walks than strikeouts. Yet he came to the Twins from the Phillies as part of the two-prospect return for a rental Harrison Bader, the second of two relatively minor trades he’s been packaged in, after the Brewers swapped him and Robert Moore for utilityman Oliver Dunn in 2023.

Mendez has put a prodigious amount of his contact on the ground throughout his pro career, with subtle stretches of progress seeing him trim his groundball rate into the low 50s the past two years. His late hand load has him late and chopping down on a lot of fastballs, and his hips also bail out toward the pull side; the combination often makes his barrel drag through the zone and produces a fair amount of inside-out contact on pitches on the outer third. It’s a wonky looking operation, but it has understandably only undergone small tweaks because he has yet to really fail offensively at any minor league stop.

It’s a brand of demerit that many in the game regard as fixable to some degree. But in a major league reality where infield defenses are stingier than ever and the likes of Justin Crawford and Chandler Simpson are struggling to provide offensive value with similar groundball rates despite elite speed, there’s some bust risk for Mendez, as he doesn’t offer alternative routes to value. He’s a lumbering left field-only defender, and while he has a solid chance to stick there, his feel for tracking balls over his head is raw and his arm is below average. If you consider the three basic pillars of offensive value to be swing decisions, contact, and power, Mendez seems to have too many raw gifts to dismiss as a potential middle-of-the-order threat. If you consider those pillars to be swing decisions, contact, and damage, then he has a potentially fatal flaw.

Reyes was easily the most physically impressive prospect on the Twins’ DSL roster last season at a broad-shouldered 6-foot-3. He had the most exciting long-term physical projection, with room for tonnage, but he struck out at a scary rate. He has started to make good on that projection and has not only hit the baseball harder — at 110 mph, his max exit is up three ticks compared to last year, his EV90 is up seven ticks to 108 mph, and his hard-hit rate is up 18 percentage points to 50% — but his added strength has seemingly helped him shorten up. Reyes’ hands stay a bit closer to his body throughout his swing (which now looks like a version of Riley Greene‘s cut), he’s making more contact (from 67% to 73%), and he’s more often on time to pull the ball (his air pull percentage is up from 31% to 50%) than he was last year. As of list publication, Reyes has seen about a third of the pitches he did all of last season, so your mileage may vary when it comes to taking some of these statistical changes at face value. Because they coincided with both a tweaked swing and added physicality, we’re seeing them as real improvement. There’s still strikeout risk here, stemming from Reyes’ difficulty to stay on secondary pitches, against all of which he has a sub-60% contact rate in 2026. This looks like a late first-round high school hitter.

After starting for most of his professional career, Morris has broken into the Twins’ bullpen as a short reliever. It seems like the right fit for him, though perhaps not for the reasons you’d think at first blush. He has a short, violent arm action with a significant head whack, but he has always thrown an above-average number of strikes. That might be because he can use a cutter and sinker variant to get ahead in counts, though that’s not necessitated by four-seamer vulnerability. Instead, his unique vertical slot gets great backspinning action (18 inches IVB, 4.5 arm-side horizontal) on a four-seamer that has recently touched 100 mph and generates a surreal amount of chase. His softer secondaries lag behind, as he generates below-average spin and his changeup lacks separation, and he often looks more comfortable just working fastball-cutter. With the velo bump on an already lively fastball, Morris’ control-over-command approach could sneak its way to leverage work.

Gallagher didn’t pitch after the 2024 draft, but he was already up to Double-A in the Cubs system when they flipped him to the Twins last July alongside Sam Armstrong for utilityman Willi Castro. After two years as a yeoman strike-thrower at UC Santa Barbara sandwiched around losing his sophomore season to TJ, Gallagher is throwing a paltry rate of strikes (13.2% walk rate) early on in St. Paul, with just enough flashes of mid-90s velo on his 20-inch IVB heater to dream on a rotation future.

In some ways, Gallagher is a throwback prospect, but the throwback is to sometime like 2018. He produces extreme levels of fastball carry from a vertical slot and spends the bulk of his time hammering the top rail of the strike zone. As a result, he bears the consequences of being a fly ball pitcher (25 homers in 172.2 pro innings), and is best when he can get hitters to expand the zone vertically, creating room to swing over his short and cuttery slider and a screwball-style 77-80 mph changeup that gets awesome velo separation. When he isn’t at his best, Gallagher hovers around 90-94 mph, which, along with the narrow nature of his attack plan, requires a level of precision that his longer arm action struggles to meet consistently. That and very extreme platoon splits give him the look of a swingman.

Hill was maybe the most projectable player in the entire 2024 draft 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 during his senior spring. The Twins gave him $2 million to eschew a commitment to Dallas Baptist and quite aggressively assigned Hill to full season ball for his pro debut in 2025. Though his monstrous stuff helped him post a 2.77 ERA in the Florida State League, he struggled badly with walks there, and this issue has come home to roost at Cedar Rapids as Hill issues a free pass per inning and has an ERA approaching 7.00.

Hill may very well end up with four plus pitches at maturity — indeed all four of them are generating plus miss again in 2026 — but whether or not they play that way is going to depend on whether he can refine his control, and even then it’s possible some of his repertoire (especially his fastball) will always play down due to the upright nature of his delivery. Hill is sitting in the upper 90s (for just a couple innings at a time), but the downhill plane of his fastball makes it more hittable than you’d think. Conversely, his breaking pitches have awesome depth in part because of his high release. They are often so far away from the strike zone that they don’t elicit chase. The same is true of Hill’s changeup, which has nasty finish at times but too often sails on him.

This is still a very young, very projectable lefty who has room for 30 or more pounds on his wispy frame before he’s reached maturity. It’s not unusual for pitchers this young with this kind of arm speed to struggle to command it. There’s a power reliever outcome waiting here in the event Hill can’t improve his feel for location, though in order to be trusted in big spots, he’ll need to improve his command at least a little bit compared to where it is currently.

Bohorquez set career-best marks for innings (71.1 frames) and walk rate (9.9%) last year as he split the season between both A-ball levels. He began the 2026 slate at Cedar Rapids, but made just three starts there in April (the last with reduced velocity) before he was shut down with a forearm strain. Bohorquez threw a one-inning rehab start on the complex in early June and his velo was all the way back (he touched 99).

Big arm strength and a power curveball give Bohorquez an exciting stuff foundation for a college-aged arm. His curve has enormous break, it spins at 2,900 rpm on average, and it has enough depth to give him a way to attack lefties. Other aspects of his profile create significant relief risk, even before we get to his recent injury. His fastball plays down a tad, forcing Bohorquez to throw a ton of early-count cutter/sliders in the 85-90 mph range to try to get ahead of hitters. The ones with more depth, which look more like sliders, are the ones that best miss bats and limit contact quality. Whether Bohorquez can improve his changeup (which is currently bad) isn’t that big a deal because of the way his curveball should play against lefties. Instead, it’s Bohorquez’s command and mechanical consistency — he’s a thicker 6-foot-1 with fluid hips and a short arm action, but he lacks great tactile feel for release — that will most influence his future role. Things looked like they were trending in the right direction last season, but Bohorquez’s injury has made it tough to discern whether that has continued. We’re leaning “no” for now and have Bohorquez projected as a reliever, albeit one whose stuff gives him late-inning ceiling.

A physical outlier at a rangy 6-foot-5, Winokur signed for $1.5 million back in 2023 rather than go to Texas Tech. He was drafted as a power projection prospect with potentially severe strikeout issues, and ominous strikeout clouds continue to surround his profile even though he has had above-average offensive production in three of his four pro seasons. That includes this year as Winokur repeats High-A and hits for meaningful power despite whiffing more than he did in a lackluster 2025 (he currently has a sub-60% contact rate).

Winokur’s lever length can make it tough for him to snatch elevated fastballs, and he has poor breaking ball recognition, but he has big juice when he makes contact. His contact issues are worse than any everyday big league regular’s, so it’s tough to project him as such even though his surface stats are exciting. Instead, Winokur’s marvelous athleticism and defensive versatility should enable him to play a unique part-time role. Even at his size, he has the agility and bend to play both third base and shortstop. He also eats up a ton of ground running around in the outfield, and he not only has the range to play center field, but great ball skills and a huge arm as well. Winokur is going to have roster utility as both a guy who hits lefties and as a late-game defensive replacement at a couple of positions.

Soto got late first-round money coming out of high school because of his upper-90s arm strength and power changeup. He struggled some with walks during his pro debut and carried an ERA over 5.00, but his underlying numbers were much better, and with a healthy and more efficient follow up season in 2025, he could have entered the Top 100 fray. Instead, Soto made three starts before he was shut down with triceps soreness, an issue that plagued him into the summer and eventually led to a surgery to remove a bone spur in his elbow. In those three starts, Soto’s arm slot had changed to a more vertical look, and there was greater demarcation between his four- and two-seam fastballs. Soto was again on the IL to start 2026, this time with a sprained wrist. He has returned for two rehab outings in Fort Myers as of list publication, and while his arm strength is intact, Soto’s arm slot and fastball shape are closer to where they were two seasons ago. That’s not ideal, because the movement on this version of Soto’s heater (which is equal parts rise and run) is vulnerable to damage when he mislocates in the zone.

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 before elevating his fastball for chase. Whether this was meant to be a permanent shift resulting from the arm slot change, or was just a temporary change in an attempt to improve Soto’s slider, we won’t know until he’s forced to go deeper into games this year. His slider usage has been ahead of his changeup again in 2026. The changeup has big tail and played like a plus pitch in 2024, while the cutter/slider is curt and more of a means of inducing weak contact, or at least it has been historically.

Soto’s health and strike-throwing track record are bullpen indicators. He’s still very young and strong, and he still has two seasons before the Twins need to decide whether or not to put him on the 40-man, so he should be developed as a starter for now, if only to see how his slider progresses. Here, Soto is graded as an eventual reliever whose fastball velo and changeup give him a late-inning ceiling.

A former Big East Player of the Year and 12th-round pick who signed for $125,000 out of UConn five years ago, Fedko launched 28 bombs last season (most of them as a 25-year-old at Double-A) to put himself on the map, if not necessarily anyone’s Rule 5 target list. Thanks to a recent surge of crushing Triple-A fastballs, he’s repeating his success so far at St. Paul to the tune of a .297/.378/.605 season line with 15 homers in 55 games despite a well-defined vulnerability to chasing secondaries that will probably limit him to platoon corner outfielder status. Fedko gets into a deep but narrow crouch at the plate that sets him up to launch low fastballs. He can move the barrel around the zone a good bit, and his contact rates are solid average, but his fondness for chasing secondaries in the dirt could make him a rather boom-or-bust offensive contributor without quite the versatility to cover center field.

Originally signed by the Mariners for $1.5 million out of Venezuela in 2021, Gonzalez was part of the Twins’ four-player return for Jorge Polanco three years later and is looking like the headliner after hit-tooling his way to a big league cameo as a 22-year-old. His age can be surprising. His stocky 5-foot-10 frame is quite physically mature, and his poor start to the season (.216/.294/.392 in Triple-A at the time he was called up) can make his game look pretty calcified. Short-levered with solid average raw pop, Gonzalez’s power is often neutralized by his tendency to chase low and away, and he’s run groundball rates in the high 40s throughout his time in full season ball. Despite his build, Gonzalez is a smooth and relaxed outfield defender who exudes ease and wields a plus throwing arm that allows him to play in right. Still, he’s already a below-average runner who only figures to slow down further with time, and the Twins have begun rotating him to first base on occasion — as if the Harold Ramírez vibes weren’t already strong enough.

Gonzalez’s contact rates have been more good than great at the upper levels, and his platoon splits make Brandon Guyer without the HBPs another viable comp. He’s made enough incremental progress with his chase for it to be a little soon to peg a talented young hitter as the hit-over-power short side of a corner outfield platoon, but that’s certainly the visible floor.

Rosario is a former fifth-round pick from Waiakea High School, which had already produced 2014 first-round pick Kodi Medeiros and two big leaguers in Kean Wong and Onan Masaoka. There’s enough raw juice to expect that Rosario can be the third, even as he scuffles through a disappointing repeat year at Double-A (.201/.367/.374) after going unselected in the Rule 5 Draft. Instead of being on track to improve upon the 25 homers he launched in 130 games at Wichita in 2025, his contact rate has dipped below 70%, which has Rosario striking out nearly 34% of the time thanks to a passive approach that still has him staring at too many pitches in the heart of the zone. While his barrel isn’t immobile, Rosario is too pull-focused to damage pitches that aren’t middle-in and is struggling with spin to a degree that has undermined his typical lefty-mashing ways. Locked in an outfield corner defensively, Rosario isn’t a liability or anything, but he isn’t rangy enough to drive any value. It’s big pop with a pull-and-lift-conscious swing, and home runs are valuable, so the path to a low-grade Randal Grichuk existence is still in play for now. But the stagnated progress suggests more of an up-down short side platoon bat future.

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. Since then, Mercedes has required time to adjust to each new level. He hit .186 in Fort Myers last year but got off to such a hot start there in 2026 (.321/.439/.642) that he was quickly promoted to Cedar Rapids.

Mercedes is built like a football player and has exciting power and speed. He has dangerous pull-side juice against pitches that find the inner third of the zone, with oppo doubles power against pitches down and away, but his feel for contact is crude. His center field defense has improved to the point where he now projects as a fringe big league fit there, which gives his hit tool some room to breath in a part-time, lefty-mashing platoon capacity.

Caraballo had an exciting pro debut in the Giants system (.264/.432/.442) last year even though he was 16 for the entire season; he came to Minnesota in exchange for access to Daniel Susac via the second pick in the Rule 5 Draft. The Twins promoted Caraballo to the FCL and he’s off to another hot start, especially from a slugging standpoint. His lefty swing especially is geared for launch. It has the classic low ball look, and Caraballo’s hands have precocious strength to them. Whether he will be able to cover elevated fastballs as he climbs the minors is in doubt, as lefties with this kind of bat path often struggle with that, and Caraballo is sporting a sub-70% contact rate as a lefty stick so far in his career. He also has work to do on defense. Caraballo is a conspicuous pitch framer, and when he completes his exchange enough to get off a throw, he does so without great pace. None of these issues are so bad to conclude he can’t catch, but he’s green enough that he couldn’t catch at an affiliate right now without it being an issue, though that’s normal for a 17-year-old. For now, consider Caraballo a low-and-slow bat-first project who might have the power of a primary catcher at peak.

Castillo ranked just inside the top 40 on the 2025 International Board and signed for a tad shy of $1 million as an advanced, contact-oriented bat of medium size. His DSL debut went as expected: Castillo slashed .283/.395/.428 with slightly more walks (14.4%) than strikeouts (13.2%), and many more doubles than homers. This year, a nagging elbow issue has kept him off the field for all but a few games at the very start of the FCL season. In the little bit of action he saw before the injury, Castillo looked considerably stronger than he did last year and was swinging harder, especially from the right side. He’s short to the ball from both sides of the plate and looking to do damage, though his barrel isn’t on plane with the ball for very long. A fringe fit at shortstop last season, Castillo hasn’t played there enough with his new physique to have an understanding of its impact. Based on film study of last year’s work, he needs to turn the baseball around with greater urgency; he’s not going to be able to take two or three steps into every throw in The Show. It’s a nit to pick on a good teenage hitter whose amateur FV grade holds serve here.

Merlo, who signed for $1.5 million in January, is a very physical, switch-hitting infielder with precocious ball-striking power. He sports an open-striding uppercut swing as a lefty and a more conservative look as a righty. Merlo’s early balls in play in the DSL have been hit hard, which is consistent with the amateur report that he has mature strength and bat speed. Defensively, Merlo is a tightly wound athlete who plays with a high center of gravity. He is more likely a long-term fit at third base.

Ellwanger was a two-year starter at DBU, and though he struggled with walks both years, he was able to sustain velo deep into both seasons, as he was parked in the 96-97 mph range during his Regionals start at LSU. He made it three starts into his first pro season before his elbow barked and Ellwanger was put on the injured list with a sprain; he’s on the 60-day as of publication. Ellwanger’s best pitch is a power curveball that resides on either side of 80 mph. It has fantastic depth and bite and appeared to mirror the shape of his fastball’s movement better this year than it had when he was in college. He supplements those with a cutter in the 89-93 mph range, which he struggles to command. His changeup feel is also scattered, with the bottom dropping out of his best ones at the last moment. This is a starter’s mix with a reliever’s command profile that had Ellwagner projected as an inefficient backend guy before the draft. There’s no reason to tweak that after three starts.

Lares pitched well as a rookie ball starter in 2022 and 2023, then had strong peripheral stats in 2024 despite a bloated ERA. He missed 2025 recovering from an elbow surgery and returned this season not long before list publication, with two rehab outings and then a promotion straight to Cedar Rapids. That’s perhaps a sign that the Twins aren’t messing around with assessing Lares, who is in his 40-man platform season.

Lares is an athletic, undersized lefty who can execute the heck out of a good slider. It has lovely length and two-planed movement in the 81-85 mph range, the kind commonly found on good specialist relievers. Because Lares throws strikes like a starter, is a starter-quality athlete, and has a gorgeous arm action that gives his changeup meaningful long-term projection, the Twins could justifiably develop him as a starter, take things a bit slow this year, stretch him out, and then have more of a two-season plan to assess whether he can be part of their 2028 40-man mix. Then there’s the version where you put him in the bullpen toward the end of this year (or in a winter league) and see if his otherwise vulnerable fastball ticks up enough to make him an immediate in-house bullpen candidate. He’s projected to the bullpen here.

After seeing an early velo bump in pro ball and building a track record of plus command, Culpepper, a 13th-round pick in 2022, was trending like a back-end starter prospect. Unfortunately, injuries (a forearm strain and a pinched nerve in his hand) have limited him to just under 60 innings in each of the last two years, and he went unselected in last December’s Rule 5 draft. After getting promoted to Triple-A in May, he is proceeding as a slider-centric reliever.

Culpepper throws two different sliders – a low-80 sweeper and an upper-80s offering with more cutter shape – that he’s comfortable moving to either side of the plate, though that hasn’t staved off platoon issues at St. Paul that make his move to the ‘pen looking prescient. Culpepper has a uniquely short stride in his delivery, remaining fully upright as he rotates onto his front foot, akin to someone doing an impression of Luke Gregerson throwing a dart. It’s a conservative, balanced movement that matches his reputation for relying on command. But early fears that his low-extension heater, which sits about 94 mph, would be vulnerable at Triple-A and above are coming to fruition, and his walks have been borne from a nibbling style. Still, Culpepper has the spin talent, pitchability, and command to carve out a swingman’s career around that.

Slightly undersized but not lacking in either velocity or spin talent, Raya was added to the Twins’ 40-man roster on the strength of a 2024 season that saw him reach Triple-A not long after his 22nd birthday. He’s in the bullpen now, still at St. Paul and still in search of a primary pitch that can avoid getting tattooed. The right-hander has largely ditched his cutter after similar struggles last year, and hitters are slugging north of .800 against his four-seamer this season despite him sitting 96 mph; the pitch has downward plane and lacks ride. While Raya can really drop into his back leg and has impressive arm speed, there’s a stiffness in his delivery that regularly has his arm late, hampering his command.

Other than that, there’s too much to like here to be dismissive of Raya carving out a bullpen role of some stripe. He has two distinct bat-missing mid-80s breakers with tight spin and real teeth, and while his changeup is quite firm, it’s what he shows the best feel for locating away from trouble. As far as developmental hurdles go, Raya’s lack of a playable fastball is a pretty big one (as evidenced by a Triple-A ERA north of 6.00 despite sub-40% usage), but there are big league secondaries here.

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 quickly climbed to Triple-A, where he struggled with walks and was demoted to Wichita late last season. He remains there, but still looks like a standard middle-inning guy with a power fastball/slider combo. His fastball doesn’t have very good shape, but it has uphill approach, and his slider has plus velocity at 87-90 mph. Fastball shape issues put him in more of an up-down bucket, but that’s a great outcome for an Indy Ball guy.

Slick-fielding with above-average speed and a great throwing arm, Ross has manned six positions in the last two seasons. He’s a plus fielder at shortstop and third base, but it’s pretty hard for him to be bad at any spot. The 25-year-old takes a good at-bat and has worked walks even while mostly struggling offensively the previous two seasons; a promising start in 2026 earned him an April promotion to Triple-A. Ross gets the ball in the air and has been wringing the most out of his 40-grade pop lately, but he’s running a contact rate around 72% at St. Paul and is felled by sliders to a degree that will accelerate at the highest level. That won’t equate to regular work, but he’s a skilled and versatile defender who could be useful band-aid to carry on a 40-man roster.

Diaw, the first player of Senegalese ancestry ever drafted by a big league team, was a big projection play coming out of Loyola Marymount because he had caught fewer than 30 games over three seasons there. A couple of years later, Diaw has progressed as a framer and receiver but is struggling both as a ball blocker and in his attempts to control the run game. As of list publication, he has allowed stolen bases at a 94% success rate due to a mix of mediocre arm strength and poor accuracy. Again, Diaw barely caught as an amateur, he was a young for his draft class, and multiple injuries (a hamstring and broken thumb) limited his action to 25 games at the position last year. But things have been rocky enough that the Twins have played Diaw more in the outfield than behind the dish so far in 2026. He hasn’t taken to center so naturally that we think Minnesota should shift his focus, and we’d rather see him catch a ton and hope he develops back there.

Diaw is a physical guy with roughly average raw power and an average contact rate over the last two years, though he’s been more exposed by elevated fastballs this year than he previously has been. He needs to play a premium position to profile as an everyday player, making it very important that he progress as a thrower. He’s a late-bloomer candidate more than a true prospect at this stage.

Sprock is a compact, multi-positional prospect with quick hands and a punchy, line drive swing. He went to high school in New Jersey at Rick Porcello’s alma mater, then was an excellent small conference two-way player at Elon, where he played both corner infield positions and started as an underclassman before shifting to relief as a junior (he bumped 96). A young-for-the-class prospect, the Twins began toying with a catcher conversion for Sprock late last summer, something they’ve leaned into this season. It’s working. Sprock has pretty quickly become a good receiver, ball-blocker, and thrower while still playing some corner infield and left field. His current trajectory suggests that catcher will be his best defensive position very soon.

Though he’s not likely to make much impact at the plate, Sprock’s short, punchy line drive swing generates enough contact that he’s an interesting offensive prospect for a catcher. It’d be nice for him to continue in a multi-positional role as he climbs the minors (he isn’t a great third baseman) because it adds fun window dressing to his profile, but it isn’t especially important to Sprock’s big league future, which early on looks like it’ll be as a contact-oriented backup catcher.

Beltre, who signed for just shy of $1.5 million in January of 2024, slashed .326/.453/.618 in his first pro season largely because of his power. He struggled in his sophomore campaign, slashing .186/.297/.326 combined between the complex and Low-A rosters, but his underlying contact rate was in a livable area (72%). He was playing a bit better for the Mighty Mussels this year when Beltre ran into a wall pursuing a foul ball and injured his knee. He required surgery and is going to miss the rest of the season. Beltre isn’t a particularly big guy, but he has volcanic hands and his best swings produce epic pull-side bombs. His barrel is currently much less precise and dangerous against pitches he can’t pull. He’s a high-variance corner outfield prospect whose profile now features even more risk because of his injury and the reps missed in its wake.

An undersized former 18th-rounder from San Diego State, Paredes doesn’t have an outlier physical trait to lean on, but he really knows how to pitch. His fastball is 93-94 mph with generic shape, and his changeup is rather firm without big time movement. Yet he easily repeats a simple three-quarters delivery, and he knows how to work an edge of the zone with his suite of pitch shapes. His sweeper doesn’t have great length, but it’s sharp and late, and when he’s toggling between it and his cutter and four-seamer low and away to righties, it’s deeply frustrating stuff for opposing hitters. The low-leverage long relief pocket he’s filled on the Twins’ roster is probably his future, but managers fall in love with guys like this.

Klein is an undrafted success story who rose from Iowa Central Community College to the majors after adding bulk and velocity to his big, broad 6-foot-5 frame. He now touts a rise-and-run heater that can touch 97 mph, but more often sits 94-96. It racks up respectable miss rates, but he doesn’t yet have the secondary arsenal to keep it out of trouble. His high-80s split-change has good action but lacks location feel, and Klein’s 80ish-mph curve has bat-missing downward bite but is mostly just a chase pitch rather than something that helps him gain the count leverage his major league opportunities have lacked. It’s an up-down profile for now, with some seventh-inning potential due to how much capacity for growth Klein has already shown.

Schobel, a former second-round pick, had seen his offense plateau at Triple-A (.254/.355/.359, 24.1% strikeout rate) until a recent upturn, but he has been tracking toward a utility infielder future for a minute now due to his below-average power. Schobel’s raw contact skill and chase rates are superior to what his strikeout issues would lead you to believe, but his swing is short-levered, rotational, and regularly gets abused by right-handed sliders. The presence of Kaelen Culpepper has more to do with Schobel’s absence from shortstop this year than diminished skill, as despite his size, he touts the raw arm strength and body control to make capable throws across the diamond. That should be enough to make him a glove-first up-down reserve option.

Built like a blocking fullback, Olivar has the skill set of a shooting star catcher, the kind who comes up and goes nuts for a few weeks before the league figures out that he swings at everything and can be run on with impunity. Olivar has performed at every minor league level thanks to his bat speed and power, but he has some underlying chase issues that would probably make it tough for him to sustain that against big league pitchers every day. Similarly, Olivar’s defense has holes. He allowed 58 stolen bases in 64 attempts during the 20 games he caught this year before he hit the injured list; he also isn’t a great framer and was eight runs below average last season. The Twins have experiemented with Olivar at other positions (most recently left field) in search of a way to make him more rosterable. Still, he plays a position of import and has enough offensive skill to make a 40-man roster as a bat-first third catcher.

Duran is a switch-hitting center fielder who takes a healthy cut from both sides of the dish. He often bats leadoff for the FCL club and is hitting for power, but he’s striking out a good bit more than he was in last year’s DSL, at a yellow-flag 24.2% clip. In the Eddie Rosario physical mold, Duran is an explosive rotator whose swing finishes back near the catcher’s shin guards. He’s struggling with spin, but he’s a dangerous gap-to-gap hitter because of his bat speed. Duran isn’t a burner; he’s an above-average runner whose ball skills and feel give him a skill-based shot to stay in center field. He glides to the spot and is positioned to throw long before the ball gets there, and he can flip his hips to change direction when his initial read is wrong. We’ll see how Duran’s straight line speed develops as he matures, but he should absolutely be playing center while he’s in the minors. There’s an Abraham Almonte or Danny Santana (if Santana only played center field) skill set brewing here.

DeBarge’s pull-and-lift offensive profile has run aground in a major way in his second full pro season, as his contact rate has plunged below 70% at Double-A and he’s generating a ton of popups when his uppercut stroke does put bat on the ball. That said, it’s important to remember there are still some strengths here. Second base is a better fit for his range and preference to avoid his backhand, but he has the arm strength to be a utility option at both up-the-middle spots, and he has dabbled in some outfield work in the past.

As vulnerable as DeBarge’s swing is to outer-half sliders and changeups, he doesn’t compound the problem by chasing, and he has made incremental gains toward being more aggressive in the zone. But there isn’t enough raw power to justify all the sacrifices of DeBarge’s lift-and-scoop swing path and predilections at the plate, which has Double-A pitchers relentlessly pounding the outer half with spin to great effect. Plus speed, good swing decisions and average shortstop defense aren’t a bad starter kit for a utility profile, but there needs to be a swing tweak of some stripe to get there from this current valley.

Dominguez is a slick-fielding teenage infielder with great plate coverage. He broke camp this year with the Fort Myers squad after two successful rookie ball seasons and is off to a similar start, making enough contact to post an above-average line in the Florida State League despite lacking power. Dominguez already has experience at every infield position. He doesn’t have the big arm strength that’s typical of shortstop and he throws a lot of intentional one-hoppers to first from there, but his hands and actions are excellent. From a body and defensive versatility standpoint, Dominguez is much like Andrew Velazquez, though we expect Dominguez’s contact skills will hold more water as he climbs the minors en route to a sixth man utility role.

Reitz is a condor-like righty with a good changeup. He spent two seasons at St. Mary’s and then one at Oregon, all as a combo starter and reliever, and ended his Ducks career with 14-K postseason outing. After missing the start of 2026 with a sprained ankle, Reitz returned in mid-May and is getting stretched out in Fort Myers. It isn’t an aggressive assignment for a prospect from a power five conference, but Reitz’s swingman status in college means he’s less cooked than many of his peers.

Reitz can really turn over a change, creating sink that sneaks under barrels regardless of hitter handedness. His breaking balls are blunt, homogeneous instruments in the 83-88 mph range that are often indistinguishable even though catchers are clearly putting down different sets of fingers at times. He generated plus miss and chase with his breakers in college, but they don’t look nasty to the eye. Though he’s athletic for his size, Reitz is an average athlete overall who generates average arm speed and velocity. He has a backend starter shot, but is more likely a swingman in the Sean Hjelle mold (literally).

Sometimes the most intriguing prospects are the least functional minor league players. Hidalgo’s high-80s split-change is simply incredible, racking up a miss rate over 50% even after his mid-year promotion to Triple-A thanks to ultra-late movement reminiscent of Drew Thorpe’s best work. His hard, cuttery slider doesn’t have great length or dominate as much from his over-the-top release point, but it also flashes plus. And after losing the 2024 season to shoulder issues and seeing his velo back up into the 93-94 mph range last summer (his 40-man platform year), Hidalgo is back to working 95-97 after a move to the bullpen. But the degree to which his downhill plane four-seamer is getting absolutely obliterated is alarming – 13 home runs in 32.2 innings suggests that the velo bump hasn’t solved the fastball playability issue, and his FIP is sitting above 7.50 across his work at two levels this year. It’s closer-level secondaries, up-down command, and Triple-A mopup reliever fastball shape. Out of that some brand of volatile single-inning bullpen arm is bound to shake out.

Bowen was projected as a middle reliever last list cycle in the midst of his Rule 5 platform year, and now he is indeed repeating Double-A out of the bullpen. The new role allows him to spam his above-average slider from a low-three-quarters slot to frustrate righties while sitting 95 with his four-seamer, but he’s still only missing an average number of bats (22.2% strikeout rate). A former Division II arm who was part of the Jorge Polanco trade with Seattle, Bowen has impressive lower half stability to keep his ultra-long arm action on time as often as he does (8.7% walk rate). But his weapons against lefties — a cutter without dynamic action, a changeup with inconsistent location feel — are a little underpowered, and he can get out and around his slider and leave it up, exacerbating his extreme fly ball tendencies. There are a lot of right-handed hitters and Bowen’s slider matches up well against them, but it’s an up-down profile until he finds an offspeed option that provides greater consistency.

Horn blew out and missed most of his junior season at Liberty and then the first two months of the 2025 season while he rehabbed from TJ. After just six starts at the Rangers’ Low-A affiliate, he was traded to the Twins for Danny Coulombe at last year’s deadline, then was immediately promoted to High-A. Horn began this year on the injured list again (shoulder tendinitis), but he returned to Cedar Rapids the last week of May and looks like his usual, healthy self.

Horn’s fastball averages just over 20 inches of vertical movement, and though a portion of that can be attributed to his very high release point, his fastball has always punched above the weight of its raw velocity. The angle and backspinning qualities of this heater have it generating miss rates around 30%, which is elite for a fastball. Horn’s injury history, high-effort mechanics, and abbreviated repertoire are all bullpen indicators. Healthy Horn is tracking for a post-2027 40-man add and debut the following year. He looks like a fastball-heavy up-down reliever.

Barr was one of the better junior college prospects in the 2025 draft, a lanky righty with exciting, if unkempt, raw stuff and physical projection. Barr sits in the low-90s, at times with natural cut. He has two breaking balls, one of which has morphed a bit since the draft. He was working with an upper-80s cutter at the Combine, but now both of his breaking balls sit on either side of 80 mph. One has mostly lateral movement, while the other is more two-planed and has some depth; both will crest 3,000 rpm once in a while. Barr has very inconsistent mechanics, and though he’s visibly bigger and stronger than he was a year ago, he isn’t throwing any harder, nor does he have better control of his body. He looks more like a long-term reliever than a potential starter, albeit one with monstrous breaking stuff.

After a back issue limited how much he pitched on the Fort Myers complex last year, Rojas is striking out well over a batter per inning in a piggyback role there so far in 2026. He has big, violent arm speed that makes it as tough for him to repeat his delivery as it does for hitters to pick it up, and so he’s also struggling with walks to an extent that makes him a likely reliever. His fastball is generating plus miss even though Rojas isn’t throwing especially hard yet, but it’s his secondary pitches that light us up. His changeup has cartoonish sink and tail, and rookie-ball hitters have zero chance against it when Rojas locates it. It can act as a finishing pitch below the zone, or as a strike-getter running off the hip of left-handed hitters. Rojas’ gyro slider/cutter thing has variable shape and velocity, but it’s occasionally very nasty. This is a starter’s mix with a reliever’s delivery (Ricky Vanasco is a fair mechanical comp) and control.

Jimenez is an husky switch-hitting catcher prospect with a balanced skill set. Originally a Tiger, he was in the midst of his second season on the complex in Florida when Minnesota acquired him in exchange for Chris Paddack at last year’s deadline and then promoted him to full season ball for the first time. A finger injury shelved him for the first six weeks of 2026, and as of list publication, he has been back for about a month, playing roughly every other day for the Mighty Mussels.

Jimenez first popped onto the prospect radar when he posted a 42% hard-hit rate during his second DSL season. That mark dipped last year but has rebounded above 50% in a small 2026 sample. Jimenez’s game is more about plate discipline and flush contact than huge raw power. He has a low-ball proclivity and strikes line drives to all fields when he isn’t walking. On defense, Jimenez has allowed an abnormally high rate of stolen bases since his promotion to A-ball despite an average, fairly accurate arm. Still, it doesn’t project as a long-term issue that will prevent him from catching. His ball-blocking has improved, and his framing is advanced for his age. It’s tough to project any of Jimenez’s skills to be plus, and so here he’s forecast more as a third catcher than a true backup.

The tiny Pena, who is repeating Low-A, is maybe the best pure contact hitter in the Twins system and has struck out just 6-9% of the time in each of his four pro seasons. He has uncommon twitch in his hands for a player his size and remarkable feel for hitting the ball where it’s pitched. A complete lack of power and physicality dilutes Pena’s offensive production below the threshold of big league likelihood. He is a singles and doubles hitter right now, and doesn’t have the obvious frame-based projection of a taller, more broadly built athlete. That isn’t ideal given the positions Pena can play. He’s gotten reps at second base and in left field, and has improved enough at the former to project there despite below-average hands. He’s tracking like a Michael Stefanic type of player.

Bruin Agbayani (Benny’s son) signed out of a Hawaii high school for $380,000 last year rather than head to Michigan. He’s a physical, lefty-hitting infielder with great hand-eye coordination and barrel feel, but below-average bat speed. He had a 90% zone contact rate across 74 pro plate appearances in Fort Myers before he injured his shoulder and was put on the 60-day injured list in May. He was getting reps at both middle infield positions, but he’s realistically going to be limited to second and third base due to throwing inaccuracy and limited range at shortstop. Agbayani is a bigger kid without a ton of room on his frame for strength, and yet he doesn’t have big power right now. He needs to continue to make a premium rate of contact to retain prospect status as he climbs.

Leon got just shy of $1.7 million in January of last year as a defense-first prospect with one of the more stable shortstop projections in the 2025 international class. He became meaningfully stronger during the commitment window, but he still looked like a glove-first prospect with plus infield athleticism and actions during his debut. Despite posting a plus contact rate, the downhill nature of Leon’s swing generated a lot of low-lying line drive and groundball contact in the DSL, which depressed his production. He has the look of a young utility infielder whose career bedrock is his defense, but he is currently on the full season injured list recovering from Tommy John.

Olivares entered 2025, his 40-man platform year, coming off his best season as a strike-thrower (he had a 10% walk rate in 2024), which now appears to have been an anomaly rather than an actual improvement. He again struggled to throw strikes, posted the worst walk rate of his career (14.7%), was left off the Twins’ 40-man and then was passed over in the Rule 5 Draft. Olivares continues to throw hard as a starter but can’t land strikes. He tries to dump gyro sliders into the top of the zone and then elevate his fastball above it for whiffs, but nobody is biting. We’re speculating that he’ll have enough of a velo spike in relief to work in up-down capacity down the road.