Twins' goal for surging No. 5 prospect: Stay on the mound

This story, written by Jonathan Mayo, was excerpted from Matthew Leach's Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

For much of the past five years, Connor Prielipp has been a bit like Sasquatch. Talk about his incredible powers abounded, but he was rarely spotted.

None of it has been Prielipp’s fault, of course. He headed to Alabama for college and immediately became their No. 1 starter, but the pandemic ended his freshman season after just four starts. Then he hurt his elbow three starts into his sophomore year, resulting in Tommy John surgery. He came back in time to throw a bullpen in front of a lot of scouts and impressed at the Draft Combine, showing enough for the Twins to take him in the second round of the 2022 MLB Draft.

Since then, Prielipp has thrown 6 2/3 innings in 2023, having internal brace surgery on that repaired elbow, and 23 1/3 a year ago, which represented a career high. There were glimpses of the premium stuff everyone was excited about back in ‘20, but it was hard to keep him on the mound.

So when there was buzz coming from the Twins about how good Prielipp looked this spring, how perhaps the innings he logged last year -- when combined with those early Spring Training returns -- might represent a turning point, it would be hard to blame anyone for being skeptical, though he did jump up to No. 5 on the Twins’ Top 30 prospects list to start the year.

Prielipp has only made five starts, totaling 13 1/3 innings, with Double-A Wichita, so grand conclusions shouldn’t be made, but the early returns do suggest the reports of the mythical left-hander’s dominant stuff might be true. He’s shown off three pitches, all of which can be plus, throwing them all for strikes and missing bats with all three.

His fastball is really hard to square up coming from his left-handed slot, and it’s been sitting in the 95-96 mph range and topping out at 99 mph. His slider is virtually unhittable, sitting 87-88 mph and touching the low 90s, and his depthy changeup can also be an out pitch. It’s all resulted in a 30 percent strikeout rate vs. a five percent walk rate so far this year for the 24-year-old.

“It’s three 60s -- and the slider might be a 70,” Twins farm director Drew MacPhail said about Prielipp’s pitches on the 20-to-80 scouting scale. “He’s gotten a little slider-happy, which we understand because it’s so good. We want him to mix all three a little more evenly; the changeup is a real weapon. When he’s mixing all three, he’s pretty lethal.”

The goals for Prielipp, who pitches again on Thursday, as he’s shifting from a seven-day schedule to a regular Minor League rotation six-day schedule, are pretty simple: Stay on the mound. It won’t take him long to blow past that career mark for innings in a season. And given that he’s thrown just over 70 innings combined since he started college back in 2020, he has the chance to hit all kinds of benchmarks for durability this season, with the Twins hoping he might be able to touch the big leagues at some point in ‘25.

“There’s no obvious year-end goal, other than him finishing on the mound healthy and performing in September, if not October,” MacPhail said. “We want that to be an option too, if they’re given the call. That’s not specific to him, but to all pitching prospects in Double-A. We want him to log the most innings he’s ever had, the most starts he’s ever had and go the farthest into a game he’s ever gone. We hope he’ll pitch the most he’s ever pitched this year.”

The nod towards October does beg the question: What’s the best way to get Prielipp to the big leagues? Given the power stuff and the injury history, the temptation might be to shorten him up, put him in the bullpen, let that stuff tick up and get some return on investment here. It’s not hard to dream of a 100 mph heater and beyond filthy slider in short stints late in games.

But the Twins aren’t going there, at least not yet. That’s because of his feel for three pitches and ability to land them for strikes while maintaining the stuff. So he’ll keep building up pitch counts and innings totals towards the goal the organization thinks is still attainable: to pitch at or near the top of a big league rotation.

“Since his last surgery, Connor has been unbelievable in buying into the work,” MacPhail said. “We feel as confident as we can given the setbacks he’s had, because he’s been so incredible about his work. We feel really good with where he’s at. That’s not just lip service. We moved him more quickly to a six-day schedule than we did with others because we feel that, with the work he’s put in, that he was ready for that next transition.

“Starting pitchers are obviously much more valuable than relief pitchers. When you saw what he looked like on the back fields, I think the MLB staff joked they could use this guy right now. My job is to prepare him to be a starter in the big leagues, and we all think he has the chance to be a frontline guy until he shows he can’t.”