The Twins Add Top Prospect Walker Jenkins to the Roster

With Byron Buxton out with a hip impingement and no timetable for his return, the Twins were short one outfielder. Luckily for Minnesota, it just so happens that the team’s best prospect, Walker Jenkins, is a center fielder, and is looking a lot like a hitter who didn’t have much more to learn from facing Triple-A pitchers. The fifth pick in the 2023 draft, Jenkins was hitting .308/.407/.532 for a 142 wRC+ in 69 games for the St. Paul Saints when he got the call on Thursday. He started in center for all three games of the team’s weekend series against the White Sox.

Still just 21, Jenkins might have reached the majors even quicker than he actually did if not for sharing Buxton’s proclivity for landing on the injured list. Hamstring and quad injuries in 2024 held him to 82 games, while an ankle injury cost him two months of the 2025 season. An injured shoulder, earned by a collision with the Summit Beer advertisement on the right-center field wall, put him on the shelf for most of May. Since returning to the Saints in late June, Jenkins has been on a tear, hitting .335/.414/.603, topped off with an August line of .405/.484/.772 with eight of his 12 homers on the year.

While one could argue that the Twins should have called up Jenkins a month earlier — Minnesota right fielders have combined for 0.0 WAR — this is one case where I think the conservatism was warranted. With a long injury history, it made sense for Jenkins to get more time in the high minors, and his readiness only became glaringly obvious in recent weeks. His .252/.332/.394 translation through mid-July (by ZiPS) was certainly good enough to be playable, but his hot run has improved his Triple-A translation to a legitimately exciting .287/.364/.450 line on the season. Just to demonstrate what I mean by exciting, ZiPS was still on the fence with Jenkins when I published this season’s top 100 prospects list back in February; ZiPS ranked him outside the top 100, at 131st overall. But if ZiPS had known his 2026 numbers, it would have shot Jenkins all the way up to fourth on the list.

There’s more to like about Jenkins than just the raw line. Handling the high minors at a very young age means there’s a higher upside here. He’s also made great year-over-year plate discipline improvements, going from a 31% out-of-zone swing rate to 23% in the minors while also improving his contact rate, from 79% to 85%.

Called up this late in the season, Jenkins won’t get the 130 at bats or 45 days on the active roster that would cost him his Rookie of the Year eligibility next year. ZiPS at least puts Jenkins as one of the favorites for the 2027 award.

Just to compare, here’s the same five-year projection for Jenkins, but this time entering the 2026 season.

Naturally, the cohort of players that ZiPS constructs as comps for Jenkins is also more impressive than it was back in March. Right now, the top 10 of his comp list has several legitimate stars (Andrew McCutchen, Dusty Baker, Mookie Betts, Amos Otis), a whole lot of very solid players (Adam Eaton, Andrew Benintendi, David DeJesus, Dave May), with only a single outright bust in Keith Mitchell. The last one of the top 10 comps is the one that scares me a little. Chris Snelling was a terrific prospect and played well enough in the majors that it would be wrong to call him a bust, but a litany of injuries resulted in his being done in Major League Baseball and the affiliated minors at age 27. (He did appear in two WBCs for Australia and played a season in the Australian Baseball League.) Now, it’s way too soon to be in full-blown panic about Jenkins and his health, but it’s something to have in the back of your mind. Injury history is, in fact, decently predictive of future injuries. I was a big fan of Eric Davis as a kid, and it still annoys me that he’s unlikely to ever be on a plaque in Cooperstown.

A reinforcement with the potential for upside is crucial to the Twins, who have seen their October hopes fade a lot over the last week after losing seven of eight games going into Sunday’s win against the White Sox. On August 20, our Playoff Odds had the Twins with a 39% chance of making the postseason. After yesterday’s win, that probability is down to 6%. You don’t need to be a mathemagician to know that a drop like that is… not good.

The Twins have gone 9-17 in August, and though that has more to do with the pitching (5.03 ERA this month) than the offense (102 wRC+), if you can’t upgrade the pitching, you can instead improve your team by scoring more runs. Jenkins won’t save the Twins on his own, but if they have a crazy underdog surge left in them for September, they have to put all their chips on the table. If I’m the Twins, I think I’m calling up Emmanuel Rodriguez also, and figuring out how to stuff him in the lineup, in order to take advantage of one of the distressingly rare stints when he’s healthy.

The Twins have nothing to lose by checking out how much Jenkins can help them right now. They won’t win the division or grab a wild card with mere respectability. Rather, they need upside, variance, and a healthy dose of gambling. If it doesn’t work out, writing Jenkins into the starting lineup the rest of the season at least gives him a head start on holding down a permanent spot in the 2027 lineup. If the Twins are going to do something ridiculous in September, they need guys who are capable of doing ridiculous things, and Jenkins is a ridiculous talent.