Top Prospect
Alert
Luis Rivas: The future shortstop of the
Minnesota Twins, the only question regarding Rivas is his hitting as he
moves up the ladder closer to the majors.
A 20-year-old, he has already completed a full season at Double-A New
Britain (.254, 7 HR, 49 RBI, 30 2B, 7 3B, 78 R, 41 BB, 92 SO and 31 SB in
527 AB). Rivas, who stands at just 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds, has shown
very good power for his size. What I found most surprising while looking
over his stats was that he equaled Michael Cuddyer's extra-base hit total
(44). Cuddyer can be consider a possible future Scott Rolen.
This righty was signed out of Venezuela in 1995 and has more potential
than the other young shortstop in the Twins system, Cristian Guzman. In
the field, he has the ability to be a very good fielding shortstop, but he
does tend to boot the routine ball. This could be just a lack of
concentration as young middle infielders commonly have this problem (even
Rey Ordonez did).
Give him one more full season in the minors (at Triple-A) before he
competes for the starting shortstop spot. However, if Guzman shows
improvement at the plate, you could see Rivas get an extra half-year of
seasoning in the minors at the beginning of 2001.
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