#minor-league-development

#minor-league-development

During the 2021 International Free Agency period, the Miami Marlins signed the catcher to a bonus of $450,000. He received only 60 plate appearances that season with the Marlins' Dominican Summer League team, where he failed to hit a home run, but slashed .340/.450/.440 for a 159 wRC+. Duran repeated the level in 2022, slashing .224/.325/.406 with no home runs in 169 plate appearances.

The following season, Lukes had a cup of tea in the big leagues, playing 29 games where he had just 31 plate appearances. He hit below the Mendoza line, and failed to hit his first big league home run. With the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, Lukes slashed .366/.423/.530 with five home runs in 222 plate appearances that season. Lukes spent the majority of the 2024 season with the Bisons, slashing .335/.403/.463 with seven home runs in 243 plate appearances.

Rojas, who came to the Twins alongside outfielder in the trade sending reliever Louis Varland to Toronto, is a 22-year-old southpaw (23 next week) who climbed three minor league levels in 2025, topping out with his first taste of Triple-A work. The Cuban-born lefty breezed through High-A and Double-A before running into some trouble in his first 32 1/3 innings at the top minor league level. He yielded 26 runs in that time (7.34 ERA) and walked 14.7% of his opponents.

Dan Fiorito, the club's minor league outfield/infield coordinator, will be promoted to the big league staff. It was reported last month that the Yankees would be moving on from a few coaches, including first base and infield coach Travis Chapman. Per Joyce, Fiorito has been hired to replace Chapman at first and is expected to take over the infield coaching duties as well.

Jones started the year in Augusta and was a part of the speedy Augusta lineup. He played 91 games there slashing .214/.350/.260 with 54 steals and 60 walks to 78 strikeouts - of course he also had only nine extra base hits in that time. After some promotions happened he ended up spending his final 31 games in Rome, where he hit .240/.308/.256 with 15 steals and 10 walks to 28 strikeouts, though with just two extra base hits.

Coming into the year, Didier Fuentes was mostly on potential breakout prospect lists, appearing near the back of a top ten or two, but he wasn't terribly well-known nationally. By the end of the year, he had made it through three minor league levels and made his major league debut. Those four big league appearances ... didn't go very well. But did I tell you that he just turned 20 in June?

"When you go down to the minor leagues," pitching coach Ethan Katz said Sunday, "it gives you and opportunity to try some things that you maybe talk about up here that in the moment it's harder to accomplish, because you're trying to get through an inning and you're going to stick to what you feel is best, [as opposed to] trying to open up some other avenues.