Minnesota Twins: Will Nick Gordon follow Brian Dozier's path?
It's been a couple weeks since Brian Dozier announced his retirement. Will Nick Gordon follow the same late bloomer track for the Twins?
An eighth-round pick in 2009, Brian Dozier did not enter the Minnesota Twins’ system as a highly-regarded prospect. He made his major league debut in 2012, eight days before his 25th birthday. From 2013-2017, Dozier was in the conversation as one of the best second baseman in baseball.
In the wake of Dozier’s retirement, Cody Christie of Twins Daily dove into the idea the Twins may have a prospect who’ll follow Dozier’s path as a late bloomer.
Nick Gordon was drafted out of high school fifth overall in 2014, so that gave him a different start than Dozier. He was rated as a top-100 prospect by the usual suspects (MLB.com, Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus) every year from 2015-2018. He spent the 2017 season in Double-A, then got promoted to Triple-A the following season at age-22.
Gordon spent the entire 2019 season in Triple-A, posting a .298/.342/.459 slash-line with 40 RBI, 14 stolen bases and 36 extra base hits (29 doubles) in 70 games. In the meantime, through no fault of his own, former No. 1 overall pick Royce Lewis has been anointed as the Twins’ shortstop of the future. Free agent signing Andrelton Simmons is going to the guy in 2021.
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I’ll let Christie elaborate on Gordon’s 2019 showing.
“In 2019, he played 70 games at Triple-A where he was nearly four years younger than the average age of the competition at that level. Even in a small sample size, he was able to post some impressive numbers. He hit .298/.342/.459 (.801) with 36 extra-base hits. Out of his 87 hits, a third of them were doubles which is impressive when all p(b)ut 24 of his at-bats came against older pitching.”
Gordon of course lost a minor league season in 2020, and he was also hospitalized after getting COVID-19. To further the Dozier parallel, Gordon is 25 years old (he’ll turn 26 in late-October).
The move of the Twins’ Triple-A team to St. Paul will put Gordon in close geographical proximity to making his major league debut this year. He’s been easy to forget about in the big picture, but a significant opportunity seems to be right there for Gordon in 2021.