With all the focus on the current season’s struggles, the team’s bracing for the trade deadline, and Eddie Rosario’s snub from the All Star game, little attention has been paid to the international free agent signings, which is too bad, because the Twins grabbed one of the most highly touted players available this year.
Misael Urbina was rated as the third best prospect by MLB Pipeline , and ended up getting the 2nd highest bonus of all international free agents signed at the beginning of the month. If you hadn’t guessed, the Venezuelan outfielder ultimately signed with the Twins.
Urbina is still a teenager, so his arrival into the Majors is still many years in the future. Nevertheless, his skill profile is one that the Twins have long been comfortable with. Urbina is a speedy outfielder with projectable offensive skills. The Twins paid enough that one assumes that they believe those tools will round out.
The Twins had one of the largest available pools for all teams in the game, and aside from Urbina were relatively quiet on the international market. This should provide an opportunity to either invest in the offseason Asian market, or leverage their space by trading to teams with limited capacity, as they did in the offseason last year as the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes heated up.
The new front office has received mixed reviews so far, as they’ve been met with middling success. The pitching is a lot better, but the touted prospects they have brought to the majors under their stead have mostly fizzled. If nothing else, however, one can say that they are innovative and certainly different iterations of Twins front offices in their attempts at roster building.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
