Baseball America's Top Ten Twins prospects

The dead tree edition of Baseball America that arrived in my mailbox Monday features the Top Ten prospects list for the American League Central teams.

No surprise: Byron Buxton leads the Twins list. Indeed, a cover line makes fun of that: "Breaking: Byron Buxton Tops Twins List."

Baseball America
says J.O. Berrios
"ultimately profiles
as a No. 2 or No. 3
starter."

The full list:

1. Buxton, of
2. Miguel Sano, 3b
3. Alex Meyer, rhp
4. Kohl Stewart, rhp
5. J.O. Berrios, rhp
6. Eddie Rosario, 2b/of
7. Lewis Thorpe, lhp
8. Trevor May, rhp
9. Danny Santana, ss
10. Jorge Polanco, 2b/ss

The surprise, at least to me, is that Josmil Pinto is not on that list. A hard-hitting catcher who is at worse at the upper reaches of the minors ranks below, among others: a singles hitter who doesn't have a set position; a 17-year-old who projects as mid-rotation starter; a 24-year-old pitcher who repeated Double A with a high walk rate; a 23-year-old shortstop with a walk/strikeout ratio of 24/94; and a middle infielder who hasn't played high A ball yet.

They must be really unimpressed with Pinto's defensive chops.

I can't see ranking Pinto lower than fifth on this admittedly strong list of prospects, and I think a good case can be made that he should be fourth or even third.

This list includes five pitchers and five Latin players, three from the Dominican Republic (Sano, Santana and Polanco) and two from Puerto Rico (Berrios and Rosario), plus one from Australia (Thorpe). Two of the 10 were acquirred in trade (Meyer and May).