Meet the man behind Twins’ prospect highlight account

This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Though MLB Pipeline's No. 42 overall prospect Emmanuel Rodríguez is still some ways away from impacting the Twins’ Major League team, he got a chance to show off his future potential with a huge home run -- and equally huge bat drop and strut -- off Craig Kimbrel earlier this spring.

“He's played in the World Series; he's one of the best pitchers in the league,” Rodríguez said through team interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. “I used to play with him in video games -- with Kimbrel. Now, facing him, hitting a home run off him, it felt amazing.”

And the first thing Rodríguez did when he got off the field was to see if someone had taken a video of it and posted it anywhere, so he could share the moment with his family.

Fortunately for Rodríguez and all the other prospects coming up in the organization, the Twins have taken it upon themselves to make that available for their players -- and for their fans -- through a “Twins Player Development” account on X (formerly known as Twitter). That account’s presence continues to grow through the constant sharing of highlight clips and statistics.

“I was trying to find a video of the home run, since there's no TV or anything,” Rodríguez said. “I was looking through Twitter, I found it there and it does feel great that you can see it there.”

For many players who spend years toiling away in obscure Minor League parks and on complex backfields in the hopes of, one day, realizing their distant MLB dream, a big homer or a 10-strikeout performance is everything -- but those sorts of achievements were largely hidden away until those players would finally break into the Major League bubble.

Not anymore.

There’s a quickly growing contingent of organizations whose player development departments are establishing social media presences, and for the Twins, the vast majority of that work falls to a young, energetic, fast-talking player development research analyst named Nihar Maskara, who essentially took over the account last July and has free rein to do as he feels best with it.

“I was a fan for the longest time,” Maskara said. “I kind of just got into the industry. So, for me, when I was a fan, like, I would wonder how our prospects are doing. … For even your top guys, they're going to be in the Minors for, like, at least two years. I feel like it's a really awesome way to kind of get fans to keep up with our prospects, how they're doing, get some updates on them.”

Maskara grew up a huge Mets fan in New Jersey, and for him, those prospects about whom he would wonder included the likes of Amed Rosario, Dominic Smith and Jacob deGrom, so this sort of thing was in the back of his mind when he joined the Twins’ organization last summer following his graduation from Wake Forest University.

Twins pitching development analyst Chad Raines originally ran the account following its introduction last January, but once Maskara came into the fold, as a proud representative of Generation Z in the player development department, he felt strongly that he could take the social media reins and run with them.

“He jokes with us, ‘I actually understand social media. You guys don't,’” said Twins farm director Drew MacPhail. “He takes a ton of pride in it, and he does a fantastic job.”

Maskara will sit down following the conclusion of his analyst duties on some given day and pore through the day’s box scores, seeing if there are any strong individual performances that need to be highlighted.

One thing he’s found is that things like whiffs, strikeouts and home runs get the most general traction from fans, so those often end up making it into posts, as opposed to other feats that a player development mind would often think to be impressive -- like consistent strike-throwing by a pitcher, which isn’t necessarily as flashy.

It’s a collaborative effort, too, with suggestions taken from all over the organization.

“Oh, 100%,” MacPhail said. “We have a Slack thread; literally a Slack thread of the entire organization, and people will immediately be campaigning for guys.”

Being a quantitative analyst, Maskara obviously keeps a spreadsheet of the traction the account has gained over the past year, as compared to those of other organizations.

Maskara keeps track of the ratio between the number of followers of each organization’s player development X account to the number of followers on the main team account -- and he proudly notes that they’ve officially passed the 1% milestone, which is “honestly kind of a big milestone,” he says, though he’s always quick to deflect any credit off himself.

“It's definitely a super awesome feeling, and it's all a credit to [the players],” Maskara said. “It's like, I'm doing the easy part. Like, I'm not the one hitting the home runs, I'm not the one striking guys out -- they're the ones who are doing a great job, and it’s easy for me. I just really watch the video, download it, clip them together and just post it.”

Obviously, it’s posts like the Rodríguez blast and Walker Jenkins’ first homer that generate huge engagement -- but Maskara always tries to maintain a balance to recognize players who are perhaps lesser-known to the public, too, because at its roots, this passion project comes from a true desire to have all the effort put in by all these Minor Leagues better recognized.

“I think it's just cool to be able to kind of highlight both the guys that people know and the guys that people might not be as familiar with,” Maskara said. “Because at the end of the day, they're all professional baseball players. They've all worked super, super hard to get to the point that they are. So I just want to kind of highlight the work that they've done.”