5 things we learned from Twins’ Spring Training

March 16th, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS -- With seemingly no end in sight to the indefinite delay to organized baseball activity brought on by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Twins and other clubs around Major League Baseball might very well need another approximation of a full Spring Training to ramp up for the 2020 season once things finally settle down.

With that said, there were still a month of workouts and games that did happen in Fort Myers before baseball came to a halt, and that left us with plenty to unpack about the Major League team and the organization as the Twins built towards Opening Day following one of the most dramatic offseasons in club history.

Here's a look at five things we learned about the Twins in Spring Training:

1. The present is bright. The future could be brighter.
The broad expectation is that the Twins -- seemingly in all-in mode after their offseason acquisitions of , , and others -- are poised to enter the 2020 campaign as one of the favorites to emerge from the field in the American League. This spring showed that the future is just as bright -- if not brighter.

The youngest generation of big league arms -- , and , among them -- was nothing short of spectacular in Grapefruit League play, while the next generation of power arms like Jhoan Duran, Dakota Chalmers and Edwar Colina showed promising glimpses of their fiery fastballs and quality offspeed stuff as pitchers who could also impact the Major League level at some point this season.

Oh, and don’t forget the impressive showings from the organization’s “big three” prospects. Royce Lewis (Twins' No. 1 prospect, according to MLB Pipleine) overcame a slow start to flex his power stroke late in camp, while No. 2 prospect Alex Kirilloff (1.264 OPS) and No. 3 prospect Trevor Larnach (1.175 OPS) ran laps around the competition from start to finish. This spring served as one of many indications that this organization should have the makings of a strong contender for years to come.

2. Donaldson, Hill worth their weight in gold
The Twins signed Donaldson this offseason primarily because he is a very, very good hitter and a very, very good third baseman. They inked Hill to a one-year deal because the veteran has been one of the best regular-season and playoff performers in the game over the last several seasons. Both of those veterans have also made outsized impacts in spring camp with their leadership and knowledge of the game.

On his first day in camp, Donaldson immediately took several of the Twins' top hitting prospects under his wing in the batting cage and engaged them in a lengthy discussion about his hitting philosophies and swing. In the subsequent days, he was seen on the back fields doing hands-on defensive work with infield prospects Lewis and Travis Blankenhorn.

Meanwhile, Hill has experienced some shorter days in camp due to his continued recovery from offseason left elbow surgery, and he used some of that extra time to watch some of his teammates' bullpen sessions and give guidance about breaking balls -- in essence, acting as another roving set of eyes for pitching coach Wes Johnson.

"We've got 37 guys and I can't look at them all," Johnson said. "To have a guy like him here -- heck, this catchphrase has been overused -- he's been priceless."

3. Twins arms lighting it up
Not only did the now-departed Brusdar Graterol light up radar guns last season, but the biomechanical work done on many of the Twins' pitchers by Johnson, motion performance coach Martijn Verhoeven and others also led to marked gains in velocity for many of the Twins' other hurlers. Several core members of the Twins' bullpen -- Taylor Rogers, Tyler Duffey, Trevor May and Littell -- noticeably raised their average fastball velocities, while both May (99.8 mph) and Littell (97.3 mph) reached previously unseen heights on the radar gun.

Those gains remained apparent across the board this spring, with some new faces joining in on the fun. , for example, more consistently hovered around 94-95 mph with his fastball in some later spring starts and touched 96 mph frequently after having averaged only 93.1 mph with the pitch last season. That's not to mention the flamethrowers coming up in the system: Duran touched 99 mph in the spring, while Colina flashed 100.

4. The bullpen isn't messing around
The Twins' relief corps was in flux for much of 2019 but solidified into one of the game's premier units by the end of the season and is projected to be a strength of the 2020 squad. Minnesota relievers left little question of that potential throughout the spring, considering the Grapefruit League performances of several of the Twins' projected regulars in the bullpen:

Rogers: 5.0 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 7 K

Duffey: 4.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K

May: 6.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K

Tyler Clippard: 6.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K

Sergio Romo: 5.0 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K

Littell: 7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 9 K

Stashak: 7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 9 K

Those stat lines obviously all come with the "it's only Spring Training" caveat, but this kind of dominance was certainly preferable to the alternative.

5. What is Nelson Cruz even doing here?
At age 39, went 10-for-23 in Spring Training with three homers, two doubles and a walk, good for a ridiculous .435/.458/.913 slash line. Father Time, you continue to have no bearing here.