Minors stuff

Alex Meyer made
Baseball America's
midseason Top 50
prospects list.

Baseball America on Monday released its midseason re-ranking of its top 50 prospects. This July's list has Byron Buxton at No. 1 and Miguel Sano at No. 3. A third Twins prospect, Alex Meyer, is No. 32.

In its Top 100 list of February, BA had Sano at No. 9, Buxton 10 and Meyer at 59. Three others in its Top 100 — Oswaldo Arcia (41), Kyle Gibson (68) and Aaron Hicks (72) have graduated to the majors, and Arcia and Hicks have both had enough playing time in the bigs that they will never be on a BA prospects list again.

Buxton and Sano have clearly moved up some because others ranked ahead of them have graduated to the majors — and also because they've established that they have greater skills than they had coming into 2013. There is no longer any serious doubt that Sano is going to play third base in the major leagues (whether he'll spend his career at the hot corner is another matter), and Buxton has demonstrated a more mature hitting approach than scouts anticipated.

Meyer's rise on the chart comes as a greater surprise. His stats in Double A are certainly not horrible, but they aren't dominating, and he's been out of action for about a month now. (He's supposed to return to pitching in games in August.) I don't think he's really hurt his prospect status, but I don't see how he should be 27 spots higher. He was likely to make the Top 50 simply by attrition, however, so my argument is more a matter of placement.

I would have thought Eddie Rosario — who, granted, didn't make the preseason Top 100 and thus had a ways to rise to make the midseason 50 — would have been a more likely Top 50 candidate. As with Sano, Rosario has largely answered the questions about his ability to handle second base defensively. And he has continued to hit.

P.J. Walters opted
not to declare
free agency.

----

P.J. Walters, designated for assignment last week, cleared waivers and opted to remain in the Twins organization.

It's the second time in less than a year that every other team passed on the opportunity to add Walters to their major league roster, and the second time that he decided that if he's going to be Triple A fodder, it may as well be in the Twins organization.

Which may be the right decision for him. But if/when the Twins dip back into their farm system for a starter, Walters isn't likely to be the man they pull up. Vance Worley and Andrew Albers, to name two, are probably ahead of him right now.