When Twins front office officials reflect on Kaelen Culpepper\u2019s 2025 season,\u00a0one of the first things brought up is how much he helped his teams win.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old shortstop led\u00a0High-A Cedar Rapids to a first-half title in the Midwest League, and then he pushed Double-A Wichita to within a game of the\u00a0Texas League playoffs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHis makeup and his leadership on the field, the way he goes about his work, have all been exactly what\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0been looking for,\u201d Twins GM Jeremy Zoll said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Twins drafted Culpepper 21st overall in 2024 out of Kansas State, and\u00a0he has\u00a0lived up to\u00a0their highest\u00a0expectations. He batted .289\/.375\/.469 with 20 home runs and 25 stolen bases in 113 games last season, winning the organization\u2019s minor league player of the year honors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the power has probably exceeded our expectations,\u201d\u00a0Zoll said.\u00a0\u201cHe knows the biggest thing for him is just cleaning up some chase on some sliders and refining his approach a little bit further.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Twins invited Culpepper to his first major league spring training this year, and a strong start at Triple-A St. Paul could put him on the cusp of the big leagues.\u00a0The Twins\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have much shortstop depth ahead of him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA\u00a0big thing for him: He had some steps he took in a really positive direction to his shortstop defense, which we\u2019re really excited about,\u201d\u00a0Twins farm director Drew\u00a0MacPhail said.\u00a0\u201cHe knows how important that is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A priority for the Twins, particularly after their 72-90 season in 2025, is becoming more athletic and improving defensively, MacPhail said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Culpepper, who has shown how much he can\u00a0lift\u00a0his\u00a0minor league teams, could prove\u00a0important to the Twins\u2019 plans this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, the offensive year was really exciting,\u201d MacPhail said. \u201cWe all knew KC had that. But I think the strides he made defensively were\u00a0really exciting\u00a0and something he can hopefully build off.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Twins front office officials reflect on Kaelen Culpepper\u2019s 2025 season,\u00a0one of the first things brought up is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,3935],"class_list":{"0":"post-557673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-organization-reports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116023382940526096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}