Legends and folk heroes are born almost instantly — and often — in baseball, whether its 1939’s Ted Williams or 2012’s Mike Trout. (Or this year’s Yasiel Puig, for that matter.) And as the 2013 season hits its stride, it seems the Twins may have one or two in-the-making.
Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton are continuing to garner very high praise around the minors and the majors as two of the top prospects in the game. And if it’s hype, word is, better believe it.
For Twins fans who can’t wait ’till next year, Sunday brought the news that the 20-year-old Sano had been promoted to Double A. And the following day, Fox Sports North aired one of Buxton’s games with the Cedar Rapids Kernals of the low-A Midwest League, marking that a 19-year-old minor leaguer had commandeered the attention of an entire television network.
For the duo, and the Twins, the hits just keep coming. Nick Nelson over at TwinsCentric is a true believer, saying we haven’t seen the kind of Buxton’s domination in the minors since … Miguel Sano.
In fact, in a rather gushing post, Nelson concludes: “rarely has any organization ever had two such players rising through its system simultaneously. By the end of the year Buxton and Sano have a legitimate chance to rank No. 1 and 2 on many national prospect lists.”
In other words, of the top two players headed to the majors, the Twins have two of them.
Elsewhere, Yahoo! Sports plays with the idea that Sano could come up late this season and skip Triple A altogether next year, like the Twins did with Aaron Hicks.
Relax, Hicks doubters: “Sano has always been considered a more elite prospect than Hicks despite Hicks being a former first-round draft pick,” reports Yahoo!, before comparing him to (seriously!) Miguel Cabrera.
“Buxton has destroyed the competition so far,” according to MinorLeagueBaseball.com, before lovingly displaying his “spray chart” and other graphics that prove how legit Buxton is.
And MLB.com joins the praise party, adding in pitcher Kyle Gibson (oh, yeah, that guy too) before declaring that “the Minnesota Twins have no shortage of talent brewing in their system.”
