Prospecting for Gold

Baseball Prospectus recently released their annual Top 50 Prospects list. The good news for Twins fans? Francisco Liriano is ranked #4. The bad news? He's the only Twins prospect on the list, which, including honorable mentions, totals 65. And, it looks like it might take an injury or two for Liriano to join the starting rotation this season.

Baseball America just published their Top 10 list for the Twins organization, and here's John Sickels' top 20 list. Matt Moses, Denard Span, and Trevor Plouffe are all ranked higher than I expected. Twins fans know the system is loaded with pitching, but how nice would it be to develop a third baseman?

It's easy to get excited about these lists, but then you notice some of the former Baseball America top-ranked Twins prospects: David McCarty (twice), Rich Becker, Luis Rivas, Adam Johnson...

Aaron Gleeman has been doing a feature on the top 40 Twins players of all-time, which has been fun to read. The one rule: only stats with the Twins count (it sucks looking up franchise leaders on Baseball-reference.com, and seeing Walter Johnson's name everywhere). So far, seven players have been chosen by Gleeman: Randy Bush, Scott Erickson, Eric Milton, Jimmie Hall, Dave Boswell, Steve Braun, and Matt Lawton. That leaves 33 players, and I thought it would be fun to speculate. There are some very obvious ones, like Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett, Jim Katt, Bob Allison, Kent Hrbek, Tony Oliva, and Bert Blyleven.

Current Twins who should make the cut: Torii Hunter, Johan Santana, and Brad Radke. Joe Mauer will undoubtedly make the list very soon, but he doesn't even have 600 ABs yet. Jacque Jones may make the cut, since he ranks #11 for career home runs. (He also ranks 6th all-time in strikeouts, despite having a fraction of the ABs of the 5 guys ahead of him in the category.)

Other possible old-school Twins include Zoilo Versailles, Earl Battey, Jim Perry, Mudcat Grant, Camilo Pascual, Cesar Tovar, and Larry Hisle.

Rick Aguilera and Eddie Guardado are the only relievers worthy of this list, although Jeff Reardon has an outside shot. He was an important part of the '87 team, but he only played three seasons in a Twins uniform.

Frankie "Sweet Music" Viola definitely belongs, and Kevin Tapani will probably finish in the top 30.

The rest of the guys I've got pencilled in are from the 80s and 90s: Gary Gaetti, Tom Brunansky, Chuck Knoblauch, Brian Harper, Roy Smalley, Shane Mack, Greg Gagne, and Dan Gladden. Playing on 2 World Series Champions certainly helps. Gladden stole a fair amount of bases, and was certainly an emotional leader, but he was not a very effective lead-off hitter- his career OBP for the Twins was .318, barely ahead of Ron Coomer (.315) and Denny Hocking (.310)!

That's 32 players, so I'm one short. Corey Koskie's #15 in career HRs, and had a good glove, so maybe he makes the cut, but I'm sure I'm missing deserving players from the 60s and 70s.