With the 20th pick in the first round of the MLB Draft, the Minnesota Twins have selected Oregon State outfielder Trevor Larnach. Larnach has hit .324/.447/.637 for the Beavers so far this season.
Oddly enough, that Oregon State team is slated to face the University of Minnesota in the upcoming Super Regional this weekend — a best 2-of-3 series with the winner moving onto the College World Series in Omaha which goes from June 16-27.
Larnach teamed up with Nick Madrigal to be the first two Oregon State players drafted in the top-20 picks in school history. This is also the first time the Twins have taken a collegiate outfielder with their first pick since taking Paul Powell seventh overall in the 1969 draft out of Arizona State.
Larnach was the No. 26 draft-eligible prospect on MLB.com‘s pre-draft board and No. 27 on Baseball America’s. BA said that Larnach made a mechanical change this year to quiet his load and better utilize the power in his lower half. That has allowed to the ball to travel deeper in the zone and he’s been able to more naturally tap into the strength in his 6-foot-4, 210-pound frame.
They did, however, call his arm strength “average” — most other places have said strong enough for right field — but they do note that he had elbow surgery a few years ago.
MLB.com has his tools as follows:
- Hit – 55
- Power – 55
- Run – 40
- Arm – 55
- Field – 50
- Overall – 50
They also lauded his ability to step up with Madrigal hurt, and that he’s a corner outfielder who isn’t afraid to take walks and makes consistent, hard contact.
Oregon State hosted a regional this year, and Larnach was named to the Corvallis All-Regional Team. Last season, he was an honorable mention on the All-Pac-12 team and the All-Academic Team. Larnach is a graduate of College Park High School in Pleasant Hill, Calif. and was a First-Team All-State honoree and was All-League as a junior and senior.
Larnach is in the midst of his junior season with the Beavers, and has hit a collective .296/.417/.494 in 453 at-bats at the school. After hitting just three home runs in the 2017 season, Larnach has exploded with 17 this season, as he’s taken on a fair amount of the offensive punch in the Beavers offense after Madrigal was sidelined with a broken hand. The Beavers come into the matchup with the Gophers with a 47-10-1 record, including 25-5 at home and 9-0 on neutral playing fields.
“Well I think the power is going to continue to grow with this kid,” said Harold Reynolds during MLB Network’s live coverage of the draft.
“What an emergence this year after hitting just three home runs in 88 games the past two seasons,” said Greg Amsinger following a video of Larnach’s reaction to seeing the news on television.
“When his teammate (Madrigal) left with an injury, he really stepped up,” said Jonathan Mayo. “His strength is going to the opposite field at the plate. Then he started to drive the ball. He didn’t get out of that approach, and his strikeout rate went down this year. He’s still hitting the ball to the opposite field with a really good hit tool. The power started to emerge, and that made him a much more interesting overall prospect.
“He has an above-average hit (tool). I think the power could be major-league average. The arm is above average. He’s an outfield corner guy, but I think the bat will play wherever you put him.”
“Once Nick got hurt, I felt like it was my job to help lift the team,” Larnach told the MLB Network contingent just moments after he was drafted. “Even though he was hurt, he still had a huge impact in the dugout. Once he came back to the field, it helped us out a lot more. Just being able to do my job on the field for these guys offensively was huge to the team and to me as well.”
“Maybe the ballpark, you never know, really,” Larnach said when Reynolds asked about his opposite-field approach as a left-handed swinger. “The wind blows out to left when it comes to game day. If I can get a ball out over there, that’s great. If I can get it up in the air and it carries out, that’s awesome. But once teams started to throw me in more, I could get one out to right, too.”
“What a blessing for (Larnach) that it doesn’t, because it really forced him to stay inside the ball and develop his power the other way,” said Dan O’Dowd, former Colorado Rockies general manager who was also part of the panel on MLB Network. “The power to right will come naturally.”
“He’s a college performer,” said Twins scouting director Sean Johnson. “We think this guy’s evolution as a player is on the uptick. We saw a lot of metrics in his performance last year. He only had three home runs, but his exit velocity was actually better than (Twins 2017 first-round pick Brent) Rooker’s, which we thought was a positive. He’s somewhat of a college player that hasn’t hit his full ceiling yet. His body has gotten bigger and stronger. He’s still filling out. His raw power has taken a step forward this spring. We’re certainly excited to have him.
“Our analytics team looked at Trackman exit velocities. He had a pretty low launch angle, but his exit velocity was right in the top of the country. He was just ahead of Rooker, who obviously had an awesome spring last year. So it was a collaborative decision. We felt like this guy represented what our scouting department, with our R&D group, we kind of came together to sift through some statistics that gave us some trouble, and lined up the visual scouting performances that we had seen and evaluations. We kind of put it together to make this guy make sense at our pick.”
“The Oregon State club is probably a College World Series team. They’re really talented with a deep lineup, and he was definitely one of the guys who picked up the slack,” Johnson said about Larnach taking over when Madrigal went down. “I saw him early in Surprise, Ariz. in the tournament. That was before Madrigal got hurt, and we saw him hit some long home runs to center and left field. That’s when he kind of got on our radar for our 20th-pick slot. He’s taken a step forward. I think going into the year, he probably wasn’t in that conversation. He certainly performed to get himself into the first round. Our list was getting pretty thin there, so we’re glad he made it to pick 20.”
Defensively, Larnach will be looked at as strictly a corner guy, Johnson said. “We think he throws and moves enough to play right field,” he said. “But definitely left or right when he gets to the big leagues. He’s not going to play in the middle of the diamond. …this is really about an offensive player with some upside and real power.”
The Twins also did extensive work on work ethic, character and that sort of thing as well, Johnson said.
“We dug in deep pretty hard here,” Johnson said. “Everywhere we went to dig on Trevor was that he’s an outstanding kid with a growth mindset. He’s open-minded to being coached. That’s a big key for us when get guys on the development side. How will they fit in with our group? He’s a student of the game and a hard worker.”
Johnson also noted that the team more or less had agreed to a deal with Larnach, so signability will not be an issue.
“It’s a completely different process really,” Johnson said of drafting 20th after drafting first overall a year ago. “(Last year) we could just line the board up and create the group of players we were going to choose from. This year, it’s a lot of wait and see. This year especially, because there were a lot of picks 10-20 and even early. It started off kind of like we expected, but it got sideways pretty quick with a few picks. There’s a lot of teams picking where we’re picking who’ve had to pivot on a lot of players.
“It’s completely different. I’d say it’s more stressful than picking (at No. 1), honestly, because you don’t know what’s going to be left by the time you’re up. The first-round talent pool, I thought, was pretty flat beyond the first couple picks. There’s not much difference on our board from pick eight to say, pick 20.”
“That’s what I plan on finding out,” Larnach said on a conference call when asked about how much more improvement and development he can make after a huge breakout 2018 season. “I’ve been working my tail off ever since high school. I feel like I can go a lot higher. There are a lot more mechanical adjustments I can make, and development mentally and physically. I’m ready to find that out as soon as possible.”
Larnach said that a big reason he was looked at in high school was that he was playing with Joe Demers, a pitcher currently at Washington. While Demers was getting looks in high school, Larnach was also getting attention, though he ultimately told the San Diego Padres that he preferred to go to Oregon State to try to win a College World Series. Larnach also had an arm issue during his senior year which prevented him from playing a full season, and likely tamped down his draft status.
The Padres took Larnach in the 40th round in 2015.
“I’m a guy that just really wants to win championships, man,” Larnach said of his mentality when it came to going to college. “We won a Pac-12 championship, but that’s not the goal we’ve set our minds on. We’ve set it on a National Championship. We’re not there yet, but we’re in the running.”
Larnach said he was aware of the analytical part of his game, though as a team they aren’t too focused on that.
“From a player’s standpoint, I know about it,” he said. “From a team standpoint, it’s not that big. We’re not really focused on that. I’m well aware of that kind of stuff. I know it’s the era of launch angle and exit velocity and that sort of stuff. I’ve kind of educated myself on it just from learning my swing and mechanics and all that stuff. I’m glad I caught their attention.”
Here’s an extensive list of videos to get a good look at Larnach:
Stay tuned here as we will continue to update this story throughout the night.
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