The Twins signed 16-year-old left-hander Lewis Thorpe, his agency, Paragon Sports International, announced on Twitter. The Australian, who’s also represented by One Management, obtained a $500K bonus, MLBTR has learned.
Several teams considered Thorpe the top amateur in Australia for July 2, Ben Badler of Baseball America writes. The prospect has a good feel for pitching and a fastball that sits in the 86-88 mph range, according to Badler. The Twins signed Dominican shortstop Amaurys Minier for $1.4MM yesterday, so they've now spent most of their $2.9MM budget.
Sounds like a Twins pitcher.
He still has projectibality to go. You realize hes only 16?
so you don’t think he sounds like a Twins pitcher?
It was a compliment. “Good feel for pitching” is a good thing. I think the Twins have done a great job looking for pitchers with good control. Last year, they signed some kid from the Dominican who was also very advanced in his control. I forget his name.
Felix Jorge, looked it up.
The Twins have been really active recently. They seemed to do well with the draft, signed a couple of nice international players (Thorpe and Minier) and signed C/DH Ryan Doumit to a team friendly extention (2 yrs/7 mil). Now they need to start trading some guys to build up the AAA prospects!
They can start with Liriano.
And continue on with Morneau. Both players have potential, but there is no way we resign either. Liriano is gone either way the end of this year and Morneau, if he isn’t traded, at the end of 2014. Might as well get something for them.
Liriano may be peaking so far as trade value this year is concerned, so yes – get whatever is available. Morneau, there’s just no market for at what his value IF HE WERE ON HIS GAME would be. And – honestly, if he were on his game, would you trade him? I say wait, see. The guy hasn’t played for two years pretty much, give him the rest of this season and maybe even into July 2013 to figure it out and see if he’s worth more as trade bait than he is in re-signing.