Minor League Baseball League Top 10 Prospects: Southern League
6. Fernando Romero, RHP, Minnesota Twins
A year ago, Romero was coming off of Tommy John surgery and put up one of the more remarkable walk rates for a TJS survivor that most had ever seen, leading many to wonder if Romero may, in fact, surpass his Chattanooga teammates Gonsalves and Gordon to become the #1 Twins prospect.
His innings were managed this season, and as he got to the end of that limit, it was obvious that he was tired. Still, he finished the season with a 11-9 record over 24 games, 23 of them starts, throwing 125 innings, with a 3.53 ERA and a 1.35 WHIP. He also posted a 45/120 BB/K ratio. He had maintained a strikeout rate well over 1 per inning until his final four starts, where he struck out just 8 over 19 1/3 innings.
Romero was handled very carefully by the Twins this season, never throwing more than 5 innings after the first of July and keeping his pitch count low, never exceeding 100 pitches on the season (his high being exactly 100 on 6/25 vs. Pensacola).
Romero works with a dominant mix of pitches, featuring a blazing fastball that can bump against triple digits, but routinely sits in the 94-96 range deep into games. His best secondary offering is a wipeout slider that comes in around 90, leaving hitters purely baffled, especially from Romero’s 6′ frame.
Romero is still working on his change, but it is quite good now, and with more polish, he could have the makings of a plus change, giving him three plus pitches to work with. Romero did lose nearly all of 2014 and 2015 in his development, so he will enter 2018 as a 23 year-old pitcher and on the 40-man roster. Most likely the Twins will have him open in Rochester, barring an exceptional spring, and Romero will continue to build up the stamina to go with his stuff and reach his feasible frontline ceiling.
5. Stephen Gonsalves, LHP, Minnesota Twins
For some unknown reason, Gonsalves gets a reputation as a soft-tosser in many circles, though that couldn’t be farther from the truth. While he doesn’t run up a fastball that eclipses triple digits, he can reach mid-90s pretty consistently, sitting in the 91-94 range in most of the games I viewed on him this season.
Gonsalves got a late start to the season, and he just barely crept in with the minimum innings threshold, but there’s no ignoring the work he did for Chattanooga while he was there. On the season, Gonsalves went 8-3 for the Lookouts with a 2.68 ERA and 1.03 WHIP over 87 1/3 innings, finishing with a 23/96 BB/K ratio.
Drafted in the 4th round out of high school in San Diego, the Twins have moved Gonsalves up step by step through the system, and he’s been showing well at every level. He works from a low 3/4 arm slot, which gives righty hitters fits, and his change from that slot is near impossible for right-handed bats to deal with.
Gonsalves worked with his curve over the offseason to sharpen it up, but he was obviously working with other secondary pitches this season, featuring a slider/cutter hybrid on a number of views that was hard on lefty hitters.
His long, lanky 6’5″ frame, easy delivery, and excellent pitch mix gives Gonsalves a fairly high floor as a back end starter, but if he can see even a touch more grown on the secondary stuff to go with his plus change and plus fastball, he has the opportunity to be a #2/#3 guy for the Twins for years to come.