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Top prospect Jenkins aiming sky-high after solid '24

January 29th, 2025

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

After a year in which he posted numbers good enough to be the highest-ranked Twins prospect in almost a decade, was dissatisfied. A campaign that took him through four Minor League levels and put him at or near the top of prospect lists everywhere, to Jenkins himself, ranked as “below average.”

Jenkins ranks No. 3 in MLB Pipeline's new Top 100. The last Twins prospect ranked higher in a Pipeline preseason or midseason Top 100 was Byron Buxton, who came in at No. 2 in 2016.

In his first full professional season, the Twins' No. 1 prospect posted a .282/.394/.439 slash line while reaching Double-A as a 19-year-old. He stole 17 bases in 20 attempts despite having an early season hamstring injury in the back of his mind all year. And as he explained Saturday at TwinsFest, he wasn’t the slightest bit satisfied with any of that.

“Being injured somewhat hindered the way I like to play,” Jenkins said. “I had to be able to manage my body, and I wasn't able to go what I felt like was full throttle all the time."

So he’s spent the offseason working on ways to stay healthy and strong over a full six-month season. He’s begun incorporating swimming into his regimen, while also doing all of the usual baseball and strength activities.

All to improve on what by any objective measure was a very good year. Just, not to Jenkins himself.

“I have extremely high expectations for myself,” he said. “I feel like last season, that was a below-average year for me. Like, I'm not happy with my performance last year. … I want to do better.

“I'm always going to set extremely high expectations that almost feel out of reach, because I think that's the only way I can get to where I want to be.”

And make no mistake, where he wants to be is where he was on Saturday: Target Field. He has all of 28 plate appearances above A ball, so it’s a huge ask to think it could happen soon. But that’s where those outsized expectations come in.

“I feel like going into this year,” he said, “I have so much of a better understanding of how to navigate Spring Training, of how to navigate a routine, how to navigate my body, how to navigate going and competing, you know, while also managing that health side as well.”

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Matthew Leach covers the Twins for MLB.com. He previously covered the Cardinals from 2002-2011.