Ten years later, a look back at how 2012 draft shaped Twins, past and present

The first time Rocco Baldelli laid his eyes on Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, he saw enough to realize that he didn’t need to spend any more of his energy scouting either of them.

Back in 2011, Baldelli, now manager of the Twins, was a special assistant to baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, and as part of his job responsibilities, he traveled around to watch some of the most talented amateur players.

The Rays were in the midst of what would become a 91-win season when Baldelli showed up to scout the East Coast Pro Showcase in Lakeland, Fla., that August and it was clear they wouldn’t be picking near the top of the draft.

“We were not going to have an opportunity to pick them, so we were not going to waste a day going to see them,” Baldelli said. “At that time of the year, you’re not going to spend a day of your scouting season scouting guys that are going in the first couple of picks. They were both guys that every set of eyeballs were watching at that event.”

There was no way for Baldelli to know back then that seven years later, in 2018, he would take over as manager of the Twins, and a few years after that, the talented duo, who went first and second overall in the 2012 draft 10 years ago — Correa to the Astros, Buxton to the Twins — would become organizational pillars of the team he would manage.

After the Twins selected Buxton, who nearly became an Astro — more on that later — the Twins grabbed, among others, José Berríos (No. 32 overall), Tyler Duffey (fifth round) and Taylor Rogers (11th round), in one of their most consequential drafts in recent memory. More than any other, that draft, which took place between June 4-6, has impacted the 2022 Twins, who sit in first place in the American League Central with a 32-24 record two months into the season.

“The scouting department and the development part of it is so huge in each organization,” said Terry Ryan, who was the Twins’ general manager in 2012. “(You) always want your club to have good scouting and good development. There’s a reason for that. It gives you sustainable success if you do it well.”

‘HUGELY IMPRESSED’

Carlos Correa, now 27, was a 5-year-old kid growing up in Puerto Rico when he started dreaming of becoming a Major League Baseball player. It’s a common dream for a boy that age, but Correa was no typical kid.

At age 8, he told his father, Carlos Sr., that he needed to learn English. When he finally became a big leaguer, he reasoned, he needed to be able to speak for himself.

While others may have brushed those dreams aside as far-fetched, his father took him seriously. A construction worker, Carlos Sr. picked up another job so he could afford to send his oldest son to a school where he would learn English.

Knowing the sacrifice his father was making — he would work from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., then head to a second job before spending spend time at the ballpark with his son at night — made the younger Correa work even harder toward his dreams.

Well, that, and the fact that he had no interest in following his father’s path into construction.

“He took me one summer to work with him and he paid me like $10, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this, dad. I hate it,’ ” Correa said. “He was like, ‘Well, if you don’t want to do it, then you better put in the work at baseball because if baseball doesn’t work out, this might be it.’ It ended up working fine.”

More than fine, actually.

By his sophomore year of high school, Correa was 6 foot 1. A year later, he had grown another two inches and started attracting scouts.

Mike Elias, now the executive vice president and general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, was one the first to see the shortstop. It was on a scouting trip for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2010 to watch other players when Elias first encountered Correa. He was just 15, the youngest kid out there, but the name stuck with Elias.

Elias saw him at subsequent events and left with many of the same thoughts as Baldelli — he was “hugely impressed” by him, but the Cardinals weren’t going to have a high enough pick to select him. When Elias eventually followed former Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow from St. Louis to Houston, Correa all of a sudden was on the table.

“I came into our draft meetings, our preseason meetings, and I said, ‘Hey, (I) just saw this guy a couple of weeks ago. I think we’re going to have to keep an eye on him for the pick,’ ” said Elias, who served as a special assistant to the general manager in 2012.

At those meetings, which occurred near the turn of the new year, Astros scouts assembled and sorted players into rough categories: a grouping of potential 1-1 picks, other first-rounders, second-rounders and players they believed might land in the third to fifth rounds.

The talent was good, former Astros scouting director Bobby Heck said, but this wasn’t a 1-1 selection, like a Ken Griffey Jr., or an Alex Rodriguez or a Bryce Harper, that was going to make itself.

Luhnow can’t remember now where exactly they had Correa, but he does remember one thing clearly: “He certainly was not in the consideration set for (the) first pick,” he said.

The first time Luhnow really remembers Elias talking about Correa as a 1-1 pick was that February. Elias, Luhnow said, had been in his ear, talking to him about Correa constantly.

As the months wore on and Correa’s stock steadily rose, the Astros put together a workout for him at their facility in Kissimmee, Fla., that both Luhnow and Enos Cabell, another special assistant to the general manager, attended.

There, Correa played in an extended spring training game against minor leaguers, many a few years older than him, and Luhnow was struck by his natural leadership abilities, as well as how confident and self-assured he was.

The general manager watched, standing alongside Correa’s parents, listening to stories about his work ethic and dedication to his craft. When the game was over, Luhnow and Correa spent 15-20 minutes talking to each other in both English and Spanish.

“We always talk about makeup in baseball and how important it is,” Luhnow said. “He checked that box in a way that very few people at that age can check.”

The Twins, too, wanted to see more of Correa. They invited him up to Target Field for a pre-draft workout to get a better look. It just so happened to be a day or two after he had taken a trip to Wrigley Field.

Deron Johnson, the Twins’ scouting director at the time, was expecting Correa to be tired after that workout.

And yes, Correa admits now, he was tired, but it was a chance for him to completely change his life, and he was going to give his best effort. He remembers it well — he was “hitting tanks” in that workout at Target Field.

“That was one of the more impressive BPs that I have seen,” Johnson said. “He put on an absolute show.”

‘THIS GUY’S THE GUY’

There isn’t a whole lot to do in Baxley, Ga., a small town whose population checked in just shy of 5,000 residents in the 2020 census. The town, its most famous resident said, is “in the middle of nowhere.”

That famous resident, of course, would be center fielder Byron Buxton, who had scouts flocking to his small, rural area while he was in high school. In a town where cell reception drops in and out, Buxton was the main attraction — and the show he was putting on kept drawing repeat visitors.

“I made six trips to Baxley, Ga., that spring,” Johnson said. “I can tell you every way to get to Baxley from Atlanta, Savannah and Jacksonville.”

Buxton has always been a physically gifted athlete, one whose talents most can only dream of. But it wasn’t until the summer after his junior year of high school that he said he realized that getting drafted was realistic for him.

When a football coach told him his freshman year that if he kept with it, he had a chance to be a great player, his first response was to say that he just played sports to keep out of trouble. And football, well, he may have been the best on the field, but he really only played that to keep from getting a job.

His senior year, when it became clear he would be drafted by a Major League Baseball team and have a nice signing bonus coming his way — Buxton eventually received a $6 million signing bonus from the Twins — he tried to quit.

Felton Buxton would have none of it.

The day his teenage son came home from school and declared himself done with the sport, Felton Buxton, car keys in hand, told him they were off to get a job application. The next day, Byron Buxton suited up for football practice.

Unsurprisingly, he was an immensely talented football player — Buxton was his team’s quarterback for his sophomore and junior years, then a wide receiver and free safety his senior season — but that wasn’t the sport for him.

“Sometimes you see a raw athlete that can really run and whatnot, but he doesn’t look like a baseball player so to speak,” Johnson said. “Byron wasn’t that guy. He was a baseball player that just was a superior athlete.”

Twins vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff happened upon Buxton for the first time during his junior year. Radcliff was in Georgia to see Larry Greene, who eventually would be drafted by the Phillies in the first round of the 2011 draft, and his team just so happened to be playing against Buxton’s high school team.

“I remember the first time I saw him like it was yesterday,” Radcliff said. “I was there to see a big left-handed masher and I left the park thinking, ‘This guy’s the guy.’ ”

The Twins got extensive looks at Buxton at the East Coast Pro Showcase, the same event where Baldelli saw him. But unlike Baldelli and the Rays, the Twins had a high enough pick that they could dream about Buxton.

“I’m not going to say scouting is easy, but that was a pretty easy one,” Johnson said. “… I’ve been at this thing close to 29 years right now, 30 years next year, and I don’t think I will ever see — at least in my scouting lifetime because I’m on the back nine of scouting — I don’t think I’ll ever see an athlete play baseball like Byron Buxton.”

Buxton hit .513 in 39 games at Appling County High School his senior season, and he stole 38 bases. He pitched, too, posting a 1.90 earned-run average and striking out 154 batters in 81 innings. The Twins had someone in attendance at nearly every game.

Ryan remembers receiving scouting reports on the youngster. One word kept showing up: “Wow.”

“(Area scout Jack) Powell, he comes out of his shoes on this guy,” Ryan said. “This guy’s 16, 17 at the time. He’s got big-time range. He’s got blazing speed. He’s got a very powerful arm. He’s a pure center fielder. You see some of that and say, ‘Oh man, this guy looks like somebody we’d like to have.’ ”

The Twins knew everything they needed to about the Buxton the player, and they were enamored. They wanted to learn more about the shy kid whose athletic abilities had captivated them.

On one of his six trips to Baxley, Johnson and Tim O’Neil, now the Twins’ assistant amateur scouting director, were part of small group that went out to Jin’s Chinese Buffet & Takeout with Buxton, where they peppered the teenager with a variety of questions.

Among them, O’Neil asked Buxton, who was around 6 feet 2 and 180 pounds at the time, how big he thought he would wind up.

“Byron told him 240 pounds, and we were floored,” Johnson said. “I about fell out of my chair. I’m like, ‘If we take you, we’re taking you as a center fielder, not a linebacker.’ ”

A decade later, Radcliff would joke about youthful indiscretion.

“That’s why they have old dogs like me to temper all that stuff, right?” Radcliff said. “He’s as lithe and greyhound as you could be, for crying out loud.”

Unintentionally — Buxton, who is listed by the Twins now as weighing 190 pounds, says he truly believed this at the time — the Twins realized the kid they wanted to draft was funny, too.

DRAFT NIGHT

Carlos Correa had worked out for all the teams that held a top pick in the draft, but he had no clue where he would actually wind up when draft night rolled around on June 4. The Cubs had shown a lot of interest and he firmly believed — a thought the Astros held, too — that he wouldn’t slip past them at pick No. 6.

No matter what happened, Correa was ready for his dream to come true. He traveled with his family to the MLB Network Studios, where he awaited the news of a lifetime.

Byron Buxton was in Georgia waiting for the same news. He wanted as many people as possible from Baxley, who had been with him since the beginning, to be part of the experience with him, so he had a draft party at a local venue.

Buxton figured he was going to end the night as a member of the Baltimore Orioles. They had shown interest in him the majority of his senior year, and he had made a trip to their spring training complex in Sarasota, Fla. He took batting practice there and met Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop, who would become a future teammate.

But for all the interest the Cubs had in Correa and the Orioles, who picked fourth, in Buxton, neither team would get a chance at the talented teenagers.

When draft day rolled around, the Twins weren’t quite sure who the Astros would take. The Astros weren’t either. Luhnow believes the industry thought they would select Mark Appel, a pitcher from Stanford University, and they purposefully did nothing to dissuade that notion.

The Astros had plenty of interest in the right-hander and actually picked him first overall the very next year after he slipped to the Pittsburgh Pirates at No. 8 in 2012 and did not sign. But in 2012, while Appel was under consideration, the Astros’ final decision came down to Correa and Buxton.

Staring at a rebuild, the Astros were looking to maximize their bonus pool money and were hoping to strike a pre-draft deal with their selection below slot value. They hoped that deal would come with Correa.

Luhnow spent draft day going back and forth with the advisors of both Correa and Buxton. They were comfortable with both players. Correa was their No. 1 choice, but Buxton represented 1A. He said they offered three deals to Correa and his representation. The last was take it or leave it.

With just minutes left until the pick needed to be finalized, Correa’s advisor finally called Luhnow back, ready to accept. At the time, the Astros’ general manager said he was on the other line with Buxton’s advisor, trying to get a deal done with him.

Correa and the Astros had an agreement on a signing bonus of $4.8 million, $2.4 million under slot value. The Astros then used money they saved to sign Lance McCullers Jr. and Rio Ruiz to overslot deals.

“Growing up poor in Puerto Rico, they said, $4.8 (million) for the first pick is under slot and I’m like, ‘$4.8? We’re eating rice and eggs for dinner here. What do you mean $4.8?’ ” Correa said. “I would never say no to that.”

A pre-draft deal in place, Luhnow sprinted down the hallway to the draft room, and picked up the magnet that bore Correa’s name.

The moment after Commissioner Bud Selig announced the Astros were on the clock, they finally had their guy.

“Nobody in the room had any idea that that was going to be the pick,” Luhnow said.

And certainly, nobody outside the room did either.

As Radcliff remembers it, Correa and Buxton “weren’t really names in the Houston rumor mill.” Still, the Astros were a threat to take either player, and the Twins, who also had their eyes on both, had to plan accordingly.

The Twins had discussed Appel. They were interested in Kevin Gausman, another college pitcher, who went fourth overall to the Orioles. Catcher Mike Zunino, who landed at No. 3 with the Seattle Mariners, was in the conversation.

“But in our mind, those were the two guys,” Radcliff said of Correa and Buxton.

In the end, the Twins didn’t have a decision to make. Like the Astros did before them, the Twins got their guy.

“There wasn’t much drama in this thing,” Ryan said. “We ended up getting a guy we really thought was skilled out, which he was, and we thought his makeup was extremely high, his baseball IQ was high. He was raw. Believe me, he was raw, but he was unbelievably athletic and skilled out. He could do everything.”

REST OF THE CLASS

More interesting, Johnson believes, was the No. 32 pick, the Twins’ second selection of the night.

Correa may have been the first Puerto Rican to ever go 1-1 in a draft, but the Twins had their hearts set on another player from the island.

On a scouting trip to Puerto Rico, Johnson was blown away by the kid, both by his stuff and his demeanor — he was as driven a teenager as Johnson had ever seen. On a day when Johnson was scouting him, the right-handed pitcher threw a no-hitter against Correa’s team, which would have been a perfect game if not for a misplay on what should have been the final out.

“It was by far the best amateur performance I’ve seen by a pitcher, probably to this day,” Johnson said. “He was just … he was unbelievable.”

That pitcher was José Berríos.

Berríos, who played shortstop for much of his young life while pitching here and there, didn’t make the switch to the mound full time until January of that year, he said. There’s a chance he could have gotten drafted as an infielder, but he had a healthy, lively arm — and the money and opportunity, he was told, was in pitching.

On draft night, the Twins’ decision came down to two pitchers whom they had ranked right next to each other. There was a battle between the two, which Johnson settled by grabbing Berrios’ tag and making the ultimate call.

Johnson did not name the other pitcher, though he said he did go on to become a big leaguer not quite on the same level as Berríos.

Berríos doesn’t know what time he got drafted exactly — sometime between 8-10 p.m. By the time he checked his watch after a full night of celebrations in his hometown of Bayamon, it was 5 a.m. and he was off to Denny’s for breakfast.

“Special moment. For a kid from high school from Puerto Rico dreaming to be there and then we get there, (you) just start believing your dream, your (dreams) come true and then just I got drafted that day and I left in two or three days,” Berríos said. “It was quick. That’s why I wanted to enjoy it with my family.”

After Berríos, the Twins’ next five picks in that draft were Luke Bard, Mason Melotakis, JT Chargois, Adam Brett Walker and Zack Jones. Of that group, only Bard and Chargois (second round) cracked the majors. But it was Chargois’ Rice University teammate, whom the Twins selected three rounds later, who would make the bigger impact on the Twins.

That would be Tyler Duffey, who has established himself as an important piece in the Twins’ bullpen over the past few years. Duffey was in the middle of completing a Spanish final when he got the life-changing news.

“(Our) secretary, she was sitting up front kind of watching the draft and then I was in there on my own laptop doing (the final) and then (I) kind of hear her get excited from the other room,” Duffey said.

He believed he was going to get drafted, but still, it was unexpected. Somehow, some way, he pulled it together to finish the rest of his Spanish exam.

As the draft wore on, a future all-star was in Kentucky, keeping tabs on it with his twin brother from his college apartment.

Taylor Rogers had been drafted once already — after high school in 2009 in the 37th round by the Orioles. Back then, he dreamed of becoming a firefighter, but once he got selected out of high school, he figured he might actually have a chance to pursue a major-league career.

A couple of area scouts had called Rogers to check in during the fifth through eighth rounds. They told him they were pushing for him, but each time, he was passed up.

Shortly before the 11th round began, his phone rang again. A Twins scout was on the line.

If the Twins selected him, would he sign? Rogers had slipped further than he had expected, and spent some time thinking about going back to the University of Kentucky to finish out his degree.

In the end, he signed with the Twins.

“Ultimately, I just felt like I was ready for professional baseball, and just like everybody says that kind of fell lower than they thought they (should), I immediately kind of grew a chip on my shoulder like, ‘I can do better than this. I want to go ahead and get in there and prove my worth,’ ” Rogers said.

THE AFTERMATH

Before the draft started, Radcliff admits, the class as a whole wasn’t expected to be one of the strongest ones “both quality-wise or quantity-wise.”

And yet, the Twins ended up with a pair of all-stars — Berríos and Rogers — a quality major-league reliever in Duffey — and Byron Buxton, who but for injuries, would have been an all-star by this point, one of the game’s brightest stars.

“Baseball’s a crazy game. It’s timing. It’s luck. It’s talent. It’s work ethic,” Duffey said. “Everybody’s got a different route, which makes it fun. You see guys from 10 years ago still thriving and doing well. It’s a good thing for the game. That means guys are sticking and lasting a long time and having good careers.”

That group of draftees played together up until July 2021, when Berríos was sent at the trade deadline to Toronto for Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson, a pair of high-profile prospects whom the Twins very much consider a part of their future. Berríos signed a seven-year, $131-million contract extension with the Blue Jays this past offseason.

Ten years to the day that he was drafted by the Twins, just this past Saturday, he twirled seven strong innings, recording a career-high 13 strikeouts against his former team. Draft day, Berríos said 10 years later, felt like it was just yesterday, the beginning of his professional career passing in the blink of an eye.

“Obviously we love and we have a lot of passion for this sport, but to have the opportunity to meet (the other draftees) like that and spend a lot of time together and know each other, it’s special for me,” Berríos said.

The teenagers who were drafted together have transformed from boys to men, most now husbands and fathers, becoming brothers through baseball, even though they no longer all play together.

Rogers was dealt to San Diego the day before Opening Day this season for starting pitcher Chris Paddack and reliever Emilio Pagán. Before he was traded, when they were at the park, you often could find Rogers right next to Duffey, the two possessing a strong bond they developed over the course of the past decade.

“You hang out with the guys from your draft class on the way up, but then as it goes along, you’re like, ‘(Dang), guys don’t really get the chance to hang out for nine years, 10 years,’ ” said Rogers, who entered Monday tied for the major-league lead with 18 saves. “That’s when we knew that was a pretty special gig we had.”

And the two kids who were selected at the top of the draft?

Well, 10 years later, the Twins wound up with both of them. This year, Correa and Buxton became the fourth pair of players taken 1-2 in the draft to become teammates.

The Astros, who reached up to get Correa, wound up with the guy, who, 10 years later, has been the most productive player to come out of that draft (35.1 Wins Above Replacement per Baseball Reference).

“It was very risky and to have it pay off to this degree I think was kind of the dream,” Elias said. “He’s just a really magnetic, special guy. It’s just been fun to see all the stuff that he’s done and who he is impacting as teammates and the game and now the Twins.”

Correa helped lead the Astros to a World Series title in 2017, and Buxton, locked in long term in Minnesota on a seven-year, $100 million contract, hopes to do the same. Shortly after he signed a three-year, $103.5 million deal with the Twins in the offseason, Correa wanted to make sure one thing was clear: The Twins were not his team. They were Buxton’s.

The mutual respect shared between the two is clear. Correa called Buxton “one of the most talented players” he’s ever taken the field alongside. Buxton described Correa as a “special person,” one whose character off the field trumps the player he is on it.

And more than 10 years after Baldelli deemed it unnecessary to scout either of them because he knew they were out of reach, he now has a front-row seat to watch both stars in the prime of their careers — and he couldn’t be happier about it.

“There were some really good players,” Baldelli said of the first time he saw them play, “but I think everyone’s attention, in a lot of ways, was on them.”

All these years later, it still is.

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