Twins’ Charlee Soto Has Sky-High Upside
Nearly a dozen scouts gathered in the bleachers at a backfield in Fort Myers, Fla., shortly before Twins all-star righthander Pablo Lopez was to face a minor league team.
The scouts, though, were facing the other way—watching a tall teenager finishing his own warmups on an adjacent diamond.
“Ha. They already know what Pablo Lopez looks like,” Twins president of baseball operations chuckled Derek Falvey chuckled. “This is the real show.”
Righthander Charlee Soto, drafted 34th overall by the Twins last year out of high school, was the object of their fascination—and of Falvey’s, too.
The muscular 6-foot-3 Floridian, just 18 years old, had faced opposing hitters only once as a professional. It did not go well. Soto allowed four runs in two-thirds of an inning in the Twins’ Spring Breakout Game against the Rays—but Soto’s big arm has been the marvel of his first training camp.
A 100 mph fastball will do that.
“We’ve been trying to pump the brakes a little bit,” Falvey said, “but when young guys in their first camp get on the mound, even on a back field, the adrenaline kind of boils over.
“(He has) a really good fastball, obviously, but now he’s got to command it. We’re trying to build a foundation, to teach him how to move it in and out, up and down, how to put it where he wants to.”
Soto hit 98 mph with his first four pitches in the prospect exhibition, but “he learned that professional hitters can drive fastballs in the middle,” Falvey said. “That’s a tough place to live.”
Which is why the Twins are helping Soto choose, and then develop, a few secondary pitches.
“He really can experiment with anything right now,” Falvey said. “He’s still learning exactly what he wants his slider to look like, what his curveball should look like, what a changeup could be for him.
“It’s all open to him, which at his age, is really exciting.”
