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Mr. Ed -> RE: Players and prospects III (5/29/2018 7:02:20 PM)
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Former Twins’ first-round pick Alex Kirilloff is handling the demands of right field just fine for Class A Cedar Rapids in his first full season after undergoing Tommy John surgery 15 months ago.
“He’s got enough arm strength,” minor-league outfield coordinator Mike Quade said during his latest monthly visit to work with the Kernels. “We’ve looked closely at his arm strength, along with all the kids. I think it’s plenty acceptable.”
Kirilloff, rated the Twins’ No. 3 overall prospect by Baseball America before the season, has the third-best weighted offensive production in the Midwest League, according to Fangraphs.com. His left-handed stroke has produced a .945 combined on-base/slugging percentage, second-best in the league.
But it’s on the defensive side where the 20-year-old from Pittsburgh has the most room for improvement.
“Sometimes people with not as much arm are going to have to quicken up their footwork and get rid of it quicker,” said Quade, a former Chicago Cubs manager (2010-11) who spent the past three seasons managing the Twins’ Triple-A Rochester affiliate. “We can think of guys we’ve seen over the years, big-league guys, a Johnny Damon or whoever, that just have to close and get rid of it quick to be effective. I don’t think Alex is going to be that guy. I think he’s going to be OK.”
Kirilloff’s release times have consistently been under the 1.3 seconds the Twins require, and his routes and jumps are improving. After making a sliding catch on a sinking liner over the weekend, Kirilloff went right to Quade and broke down the play.
“He recognized it as soon as he came in the dugout,” Quade said. “He did not get a great read. His direction was good but the ball was hit off the end of the bat. It didn’t carry the way he thought. Ideally, being the perfectionist that I am/he is, he can recognize that one step sooner. If he recognizes it two steps sooner, he’s probably going to play center, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Kirilloff, who can be hard on himself, brushed aside a compliment a day later with a reminder that he “made that play harder than it needed to be.” That kind of personal expectation is another reason the Twins gave him a $2.82 million signing bonus as the 15th-overall pick in 2016.
“A lot of times young kids, when they don’t have a great read on a ball, instinctively they go, ‘Ah!’ and then they don’t finish,” Quade said. “He didn’t do that. He recognized, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to close on this ball,’ and he was able to finish, even leaving his feet. It wound up being a play he needs to make, but it was a little more exciting than I hope it will be for him two years from now.”
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