Twins prospect talk with Keith Law: Austin Martin, Royce Lewis, Joe Ryan, Jose Miranda and more

The Athletic’s national prospect analyst, Keith Law, recently published his annual MLB-wide top-100 prospects list and also released his review of the Twins’ farm system. Both are must-reads for Twins fans and prospect buffs.

I put out my annual Twins top-40 prospects list in mid-January, so we thought it would be interesting to compare notes, discuss where and why our respective Twins lists differ and chat about the overall state of a system Law ranks 18th.

Gleeman: Let’s start with Austin Martin because we both ranked him as the Twins’ top prospect and you placed him No. 25 globally, which is higher than many other prominent top-100 lists. Twins officials certainly consider Martin their top prospect and chose him over several other consensus top-100 global prospects offered for José Berríos at the trade deadline.

At the time of the trade, almost everyone spoke of Martin as a top-30 prospect, but after the trade, it seemed like the focus on his weaknesses — lack of power, uncertain defensive home — intensified, dropping his stock a bit in the eyes of some. Is that natural for any top prospect in the spotlight or is there something specific about Martin that caused the change in tone?

I see a 22-year-old top-five pick with a .414 on-base percentage at Double A in his pro debut, and the strengths still seem obvious. Where do you think he’ll end up in terms of annual homer totals and defensive home? He’s likely not a viable shortstop, and the Twins have Byron Buxton in center field, but there’s a large gap between, say, 20 homers at second base versus 10 homers in left field.

Law: There are two separate issues at play with Martin. One is his throwing, which went south on him in the spring of 2020, right before the shutdown, and still hasn’t improved. He was a plus defender at third base as a sophomore, but if he can’t throw well from the left side of the infield, that’s a non-starter. It would limit his defensive homes to second base or the outfield, and your point on Buxton is well taken — when he’s healthy, of course.

The second, however, is way overblown: Martin’s lack of power, which is really about a change to his swing plus a hand/wrist injury at the start of 2021. Injuries anywhere to a hitter’s hand or wrist can sap his power for months, even up to a year, after he returns from the injury.

Jonathan India of the Reds played through a hand injury in 2019, and suddenly everyone decided he wasn’t a top prospect. I still had him on my pre-2021 top 100 because I thought he would resume hitting for power when he had his hand strength back. I believe that alone will boost Martin’s contact quality.

But Martin also changed his approach to one that favored plate coverage and contact over higher impact, from crouching to striding in toward the plate, robbing him of his ability to hit for power. It’s not a lack of strength but a conscious choice to give up contact quality in favor of avoiding the strikeout, and that can be changed — he certainly hasn’t always hit this way. I absolutely believe the Twins are already addressing this.

And one final point: The availability of selected data like exit velocity has contributed to the discourse in positive and negative ways. One of them is that anyone who hears that data can fancy themselves an expert and decide, “Hey, Martin doesn’t hit the ball hard enough — he stinks.” But we also know that many players can and do improve their exit velocities, often through changes to their swings.

In the case of a player like Martin, who has shown better contact quality in the past and has the size and athleticism to hit the ball harder, why would we assume what we saw from him in 2021 was the best he’ll ever be?

Austin Power! @austin_martin99 pic.twitter.com/R07ZHh8FNm

— Wichita Wind Surge (@WindSurgeICT) August 29, 2021

Gleeman: You were one of the first national evaluators to tout Jordan Balazovic as a top prospect before his 2019 breakout. You were right and continue to be among his biggest believers, ranking him No. 43 globally.

I agree Balazovic is the Twins’ highest-upside pitching prospect, but he’s still something of a work in progress. He’s also younger than most of the Twins’ other top starter prospects, and he has yet to log 100 innings in a season, so might Balazovic have to wait his turn a bit as they sort through high-minors starters?

Law: I agree they will and should sort through some other starters first. There’s no reason to rush Balazovic, especially given the workload issue you cited.

Gleeman: I know a lot of Twins fans were surprised to see Royce Lewis absent from your top-100 list (as well as some other prominent lists). I had Lewis at No. 3 on my Twins list and he placed No. 4 on yours, so we’re probably mostly in agreement on his status. To include Lewis in the top 100 is to assume things about his health and development that just aren’t known yet.

It’s been more than two years since he played an official game, and even before tearing his ACL last February, his lack of production above Low A and iffy swing mechanics caused many people to sour on him a bit. We both ranked Alex Kirilloff over Lewis as the Twins’ top prospect last year at this time, for instance, and that was before Lewis suffered a major injury.

With that said, he’s still just 22 and the Twins seem encouraged by his rehab, so he’s far from a lost cause. From your viewpoint, is the main question with Lewis his health, his swing mechanics or his defense at shortstop?

Law: Lewis is not a shortstop and has now lost probably a thousand pro plate appearances to injury and the pandemic. And before that, his swing mechanics were a disaster. “Iffy” is kind. His leg kick, which I’m told he instituted himself, screwed up his timing.

So, the last time we saw Lewis hitting with “good” mechanics was 3 1/2 years ago, and he still needs a position change, and there’s a chance he won’t get his 80-grade speed back after the ACL injury.

If someone thinks he belongs on a top-100 list now, with all of those factors (including an awful performance in 2019), I would say they’re not looking at the subject objectively. There are absolutely 100 better prospects out there, considering probability, performance, upside and time to the majors.

Royce Lewis blasts a homer against the Phillies! #MNTwinsST pic.twitter.com/t7TcEh9wbJ

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) March 10, 2020

Gleeman: Jose Miranda was tricky for me to rank. If you believe in his amazing 2021, he should probably be the Twins’ top prospect. But it’s hard to ignore a mediocre pre-2021 track record, even knowing the Twins saw him as a breakout candidate years before it happened. You ranked him No. 96 overall and No. 3 for the Twins, which seems like a fair compromise.

Setting aside any service-time suppression and the fact they have Josh Donaldson at his best position, do you think Miranda is ready right now? And do you think he can be an average-ish third baseman? Reports on his fielding seemed to get worse almost as rapidly as reports on his hitting got better last season, with lots of varied opinions.

Law: I’ve always liked Miranda’s swing. I saw him in Puerto Rico in his draft year, and Miranda and Brewers prospect Mario Feliciano looked like guys who could hit.

I believe Miranda could hit enough to play a corner spot of some sort in the majors right now, but you’d be living with below-average defense if he’s at third base, and I doubt the Twins want that right now.

Gleeman: I’m admittedly higher than most on Joe Ryan, ranking him No. 2 on my Twins list. As a 25-year-old with a low-90s fastball, Ryan’s upside is almost certainly lower than Balazovic’s — and some other big arms in the system — but I’m convinced the unique nature of his fastball plus his arm angle and command will allow it to play up more than the modest velocity would suggest.

With that said, I went back and forth on where to rank Ryan. I settled on No. 2, in part to make it obvious how much I believe in him relative to other lists, but mostly because the longer I’ve written about Twins prospects, the more I’ve gravitated toward valuing high floors and high-minors success as opposed to lofty ceilings based largely on theoretical upside.

You ranked Ryan much lower, projecting him as a “fourth starter.” I’m curious about what Ryan could show in 2022 to make you view him as more. But also, beyond that, how do you balance ceiling versus floor and track record versus upside questions with prospects in general? There are so many ways to approach it, and that isn’t discussed enough.

Law: I think in Ryan’s case, folks who look at his stat line are underestimating the worst-case scenario. He’s not a high-floor guy because, with his stuff, he could very easily give up 40-plus homers in a full season and end up out of the rotation.

As it is, I think he’s going to give up around 30 homers a year and be capped as a fourth/fifth starter as a result, even with low walks and more weak contact than you’d guess for a guy throwing 90-91 mph. I don’t see a path for him to be more than a fourth starter unless he suddenly adds a pitch or starts throwing 95 mph with those same secondary characteristics. He gave up a lot of power on the fastball last year in the majors.

I favor ceiling in the top 100 because this should be about identifying stars or at least very high-quality regulars more than identifying fifth starters and bench guys. Ryan is fun and interesting because of how he goes about it, but he’d need some exceptional luck in the homer-per-fly-ball department to post a 4-WAR season.

Joe Ryan: 11 K in 5 innings or less. #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/GlB0ap2CES

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) September 23, 2021

Gleeman: After last season’s pitching-driven collapse, there’s been a lot of talk about the “pitching pipeline” Derek Falvey was hired from Cleveland to build here. He inherited a farm system that had fallen way behind the times on the pitching front, in raw talent and development tactics. Having the 2020 minor-league season wiped away stalled a lot of timelines, and so many Twins pitching prospects ended last season on the injured list.

And yet Ryan and Bailey Ober are in the majors, having looked good in their first tastes, and from my point of view, this is the best, deepest group of Twins pitching prospects in the 16 years I’ve been ranking them. (Faint praise perhaps, but still.)

In reading your list, we have similar views of Balazovic, Josh Winder, Jhoan Duran, Chase Petty and Louie Varland. As noted, I’m way higher on Ryan, as well as Matt Canterino. You’re a bit higher on Simeon Woods Richardson and Blayne Enlow. But big picture, how does the Twins’ pitching talent stack up to the other 29 teams? And six years in, has this regime successfully remodeled the farm system to produce better long-term pitching results?

Law: I’d like Canterino more if I had any reason to think he could stay healthy for a full season. He’s a Rice University guy who gets hurt a lot. There are more versions of that movie than there are adaptations of “Batman.” They all end pretty much the same way.

I think most teams have their own versions of Balazovic and Winder, et al. The Twins have more pitching than, say, the White Sox or the Athletics, but they’re not above the median, at least. I don’t think the Twins have figured out, or at least telegraphed, a clear idea of what they want when drafting a pitcher, and even that list of guys you just rattled off doesn’t lend itself to a single cohesive description.

They have stuff guys and finesse guys, clean delivery guys and guys who look like pure relievers. So I don’t have a good answer to your last question. Their identity as a pitching-development regime isn’t clear enough for me to answer that.

Twins prospect talk with Keith Law: Austin Martin, Royce Lewis, Joe Ryan, Jose Miranda and more

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