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.

Here’s the list of every player who has been selected in the first round by the Twins since the current iteration of front office leadership took control for the 2017 season: Royce Lewis (No. 1 overall in '17), Trevor Larnach (20th overall in '18), Keoni Cavaco (13th overall in '19), Aaron Sabato (27th overall in '20), Chase Petty (26th overall in '21), No. 2 prospect Brooks Lee (eighth overall in '22) and No. 1 prospect Walker Jenkins (fifth overall in '23).

There are some huge hits in there (Lewis, Lee and, it seems, Jenkins), along with some huge misses (Cavaco and Sabato) and two who fall somewhere in between (Larnach, who took a slow path to development but has been fine as a role player this season; and Petty, who was traded out of the organization and now has diminished velocity).

Minnesota largely hit on its early picks, with things getting more tenuous further down in the first round -- and that’s where the Twins will be this season, with their successful 2023 campaign pushing their first selection down to No. 21 in a class that’s expected to see many college hitters picked early due to the dearth of high school hitters.

But it’s also been the case that Minnesota has had a lot of success much deeper down in the Draft as developmental success stories -- particularly with late-round college pitchers -- and, according to Twins vice president of amateur scouting Sean Johnson, they’re trying to learn from those developmental successes and seeing how they can apply that more aggressively.

“We are leaning really heavily into not only who our scouts think are good fits for our organization and our R&D group believes the numbers support this selection -- but we're pushing into, ‘Who are the best fits for our player development group?’” Johnson said.

The Twins’ player development apparatus has seen a lot of success with certain player types, like the aforementioned big college right-handers like Bailey Ober (12th round), Louie Varland (15th round), No. 4 prospect David Festa (13th round), and, more recently, No. 9 prospect C.J. Culpepper (13th round), Cory Lewis (ninth round) and No. 19 prospect Zebby Matthews (eighth round).

They’ve done great with hitters who control the strike zone and get bat to ball easily like Jose Miranda, Lee and, more recently, Futures Game representative Luke Keaschall (No. 5 prospect) -- and perhaps others who still control the strike zone with more swing-and-miss tendency like Edouard Julien and Matt Wallner.

So, why has the player development group found such success with those guys and not with others?

It sounds like that’s been the Twins’ focus as part of a strategy not revolving solely around projecting how good a player can be in the future, but also around how much of a competitive advantage the organization’s development apparatus can specifically give each of those guys -- perhaps drafting more toward the organization’s strengths in that regard.

“We're learning from all the players who we've taken in the past, what we've been able to enhance, what hasn't gone as well, what can our player development make enhancements on, what are the traits that they can do better with, and what are the traits that they haven't found much success in improving?” Johnson said.

The Twins have been doing that often with deeper-down picks -- what Johnson has called “low-hanging fruit” in the later rounds -- and they’ll have a chance to expand that to a larger breadth of higher-end talent this season, given they select four times within the first 69 selections, with two extra Day 1 picks alongside their standard picks in Rounds 1 and 2.

They’ve seen the quick impact such picks can have with Lee making it to the Majors within two years and Keaschall (a second-rounder) perhaps on a similarly quick path -- and this is where sustained organizational success is paved with cooperation between counting and player development.

“We really lean into that side of it, more than we ever have before, because we just think that's a great way to maximize both departments is our scouts believing in the player first, and then our player development having real buy-in on the player before they step foot in Fort Myers for a minicamp,” Johnson said.

And that’s the sort of thing that excites manager Rocco Baldelli and the other baseball lifers in the Twins' clubhouse when they see Lee and Correa -- and their baseball brains -- partnered on the left side of Minnesota's infield.

“A guy who’s been in the league for a week, and a guy that’s been a star for a long time … they both have excellent field awareness,” Baldelli said. “They know what other people are doing on the field. They know everything that’s going on around them, and they can make judgments very quickly.”