Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations, arrived with an acumen in pitching development from a franchise known for solid starting staffs. He agreed it has taken a little longer than he wished to implement something similar with the Twins.
“I think back to when I first got here and, you know, kind of figuring out what the what the construct was in the minor leagues, what we were doing to develop, how we were syncing that up with what we’re doing in scouting,” he said, “and making sure that we were looking for certain types of traits, knowing what we could do developmentally in the minor leagues, knowing what we were good at, and making sure that we leaned into that. That takes a lot of time, you know.
“That took me over the course of years in Cleveland with a whole group of people there. A handful of years to even build up the infrastructure to get to a place where we could really start to hum. That was true here, too.”
To come up with a batch of promising starting pitching prospects, you need to begin with about a dozen of them. Some won’t be good enough. Some will succumb to injuries. Some, like Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran, will end up as relievers. Guiding them up the minor league ladder isn’t simple.
The Twins aren’t willing to spend market value for quality free agent starters, and they deserve criticism for not being more flexible at times. Consequently, they must be better than most of their opponents at scouting and developing pitching prospects.
The Twins’ setup is beginning to click.