The Twins Could Lose An Overlooked Pitching Prospect In the Rule 5 Draft

The Minnesota Twins have player decisions to make before Tuesday. MLB has set its deadline for teams to protect players eligible for the Rule 5 Draft lands on November 19, and the Twins have up to 15 players who could be eligible for teams to select at the Winter Meetings on December 11.

Typically, a team only chooses two to three players to add to their 40-man roster to protect them from entering the draft lottery pool. Last off-season, the Twins did this with outfielder Emmanuel Rodriguez and first baseman Yunior Severino.

Marco Raya is Rule 5 eligible this year, and the Twins must add him to the 40-man. Per MLB Pipeline, Raya is Minnesota’s top pitching prospect. However, Travis Adams is another pitching prospect with a compelling case for the Twins to add him to the 40-man roster before Tuesday’s deadline.

“We see the numbers, and we’ve seen how the fastball has played,” said DJ Engle, pitching coach for the Twins Double-A affiliate, Wichita Wind Surge. “I know it hasn’t played as well in Triple-A as it did in Double-A, but I think he was getting close to 35% miss on his fastball in Double-A, which is pretty unheard of.”

Adams will turn 25 in January and spent most of the last two seasons with Engle in Wichita before the Twins called him up to Triple-A. He earned the call-up after Minnesota named him the Minor League Pitcher of the Month award in August. Adams has been a starter for most of his minor league career but made four relief appearances this season between Double-A and Triple-A, which was a change of pace for him.

“It’s quite different,” said Adams on moving to the bullpen. “Just having to figure out a routine, not having as much time before to warm up, throw, and stretch, having to condense it. I think I did a pretty good job for one of my first couple of times having a relief outing.”

Adams’ final outing for the 2024 season came out of the bullpen. He piggybacked off Randy Dobnak, who started the September 21 game against the Pittsburgh Pirates Triple-A squad. Adams pitched three innings and allowed only one run, which impressed Saints manager Toby Gardenhire following his previous three starts with the team.

“I don’t know how much he’s come out of the bullpen before, but he’s got good stuff,” Gardenhire said after Adams's final outing on September 21. “I don’t know if we’ll use him as a starter next year or if it will be a bullpen-type thing. But he’s got good stuff, and he threw the ball well tonight, got out of some jams. [He’s] a good young pitcher. I like him.”

There are conversations in the Twins organization on how Adams could become an effective reliever. Not because he’s performed poorly as a starter. He has a 3.83 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 112.2 innings in 22 starts. It’s more about how close they are to calling him up and who’s ahead of him on the depth chart.

Andrew Morris, Cory Lewis, and Raya are ahead of him in the starter pecking order. If things continue to go well for these prospects when they reach the majors, it may be hard for Adams to get an opportunity to start games. That would set him up to transition to full-time reliever with a slider and changeup as effective secondary pitches.

“Just working on the slider, getting the changeup down, and I definitely think working with the pitching coaches and stuff, they helped lock those things down,” said Adams. “Those were a big help for this year to help me have success.”

“When you learn a new pitch, you have to figure out the movement because you don’t really know where it’s going because the movement is inconsistent,” Engle said about Adams's slider.

“You don’t know where the ball is going to end up so you start to harness in on all those movement characteristics and then find a way to really get it into that sweet spot in the zone or just below it. It really makes swing decisions tough on hitters, and Travis did a really good job of that.”

Under the Derek Falvey regime, the Twins organization has grown fond of pitchers who can throw effective sliders. Adams has developed his slider into an effective off-speed pitch, which helps support the argument to keep him in the organization as extra relief depth.

Adams is still working on getting more swings and misses with his slider than his fastball. He averaged 35% swing and misses on his fastball in Double-A this season. During his final start with the Wind Surge, he got 20 swings and misses with the pitch and five on his slider.

The work Adams put into his slider with Engle this year has earned his Double-A pitching coach's confidence that it will eventually become an effective weapon against Major League hitters.

“He had an incredible month of August and the month of June, and I love Travis to death,” said Engle. “I had a long year with him trying to figure out that slider, but once he got it, it was pretty evident he was ready to go.”

The Twins have five open spots on their 40-man roster ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for the Rule 5 draft. The 40-man roster currently has 19 spots occupied by pitchers.