Joe Mauer for MVP

One of my favorite sports writers, Joe Posnanski, writes a great article on why Joe Mauer is the AL MVP and it's not even close.

Homers, Tone, Guerra, 7 feet, 'Lexi

*The Twins already have 13 more homers this year than they had all of last season.

*Matt Tone, the Twins 14th round pick of this year, has not allowed a hit in 16 innings, and has not allowed a run in 18 innings. Even for a reliever in rookie ball, that is impressive.

*Deolis Guerra, the key prospect received in the Johan Santana trade, pitched 6 hitless innings tonight, while striking out 9. Guerra is currently at AA. He is only 20 years old. His numbers haven't been the greatest, but Guerra is the best Twins starting pitching prospect in the upper two levels. He has ace potential, but still is very raw.

*The tallest pitcher in all of the minor leagues, Loek Van Mil, was moved up to AA this week. He is listed at 7-1. He is currently a reliever, and had a 2.86 ERA in A ball this year. It will be interesting to watch him as a pitcher that tall brings something different to the table.

*Alexi Casilla is starting to look a little more confident. Over the past week, he's hitting .333 with an OPS of .972. The Twins don't have any amazing middle infield prospects who are knocking on the door for 2010, and given the Twins lack of ability to obtain solid players via trade/free-agency, their best hope is that Casilla and Harris can decently man the middle infield, with Danny Valencia taking over 3B.

Top 20 Twins Prospects

Seth over at SethSpeaks.net has posted his updated top 50 Twins prospects. It was a very enjoyable read (as always). Seth is a Twins blogger who I've been reading daily since his first week of blogging in June 2003. His blog is top notch, especially his knowledge on the Twins minor league system. Anyways it was a good read for me since I have been working on my top 20 Twins prospects list this week as well. No commentary on the prospects this time, but after the season ends I'll update the list with commentary. Anyways, here it goes:

1. Aaron Hicks, CF, Beloit

2. David Bromberg, SP, Fort Myers

3. Angel Morales, OF, Beloit

4. Danny Valencia, 3B, Rochester

5. Ben Revere, OF, Fort Myers

6. Danny Rams, C/1B, Beloit

7. Wilson Ramos, C, New Britain

8. Rene Tosoni, OF, New Britain

9. Joe Benson, CF, Fort Myers

10. Carlos Gutierrez, SP, New Britain

11. Adrian Salcedo, SP, GCL Twins

12. Tyler Robertson, SP, Fort Myers

13. Chris Parmalee, OF/1B, Fort Myers

14. Deolis Guerra, SP, New Britain

15. BJ Hermsen P, GCL Twins

16. Jeff Manship SP, Minnesota Twins

17. Anthony Slama, RP, Rochester

18. Luke Hughes, UT, New Britain

19. Rob Delaney, RP, Rochester

20. Mike McCardell, SP, New Britain