Minnesota Twins top prospect Walker Jenkins was promoted to Triple-A St. Paul earlier this week, after hitting .309/.426/.487 in 52 games for Double-A Wichita to cement his status as a consensus top-20 MLB prospect.
Despite hamstring and ankle injuries slowing his development the past two seasons, Jenkins made his Triple-A debut Tuesday at 20 years and 188 days old, making him the International League’s youngest player. Before that, he was the Double-A Texas League’s third-youngest player.
Jenkins was also one of the Texas League’s best players, posting a .912 OPS that ranked third among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances. He had 34 walks versus 44 strikeouts, showing uncommon patience and mastery of the strike zone for such a young player, and stole 11 bases in 14 tries.
Sidelined for most of the first 2 1/2 months of the Double-A season with an ankle injury, Jenkins got rolling once fully healthy and hit .333/.446/.535 in his final 42 games there, flashing the first substantial power development of his career with seven homers and 17 total extra-base hits.
Twins top prospect Walker Jenkins got the call to Triple-A 👏
🔵 2023 Number 5 overall pick
🔵 Number 14 overall prospect
🔵 .903 OPS across 3 MiLB levels in 2025 pic.twitter.com/gDAzRC59eZ
— MLB (@MLB) August 26, 2025
Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers raves about Jenkins, a fellow North Carolinian, after training together the past two offseasons in Wilmington, making note of the top prospect’s work ethic, demeanor and “just the sheer size of him,” in addition to the obvious talent.
“He’s a guy that everyone should be really excited for,” Jeffers said. “It’s not very often that the talent on the field matches up with the person and the intangibles off the field. He’s an extremely humble young kid. But he’s just so freakishly talented that it’s not often you see those two go together.”
Jenkins, selected out of high school, was the No. 5 pick in a stacked 2023 draft and is now a top-ranked prospect due to his impressive physical tools and strong on-field performance. Even setting that aside, his age relative to the level of competition is enough to be a positive indicator of future success.
MLB teams rarely promote 20-year-old prospects to Triple A, period. And when they do, it’s almost always because the prospect is widely considered a future star for whom being pushed very aggressively through the system is needed to keep testing and challenging them developmentally.
And that’s certainly the case with the Twins and Jenkins, who batted .290 or higher with an OPS above .860 at each of the four levels of the minors below Triple A. They kept testing him, he kept passing with flying colors, and now he’s one step from the big leagues before reaching the United States’ legal drinking age.
How rare is that? Jenkins is the first Twins hitting prospect to play a Triple-A game in their age-20 season during the past 25 years. Byron Buxton and Joe Mauer, the highest-rated Twins hitting prospects in that span, finished their age-20 seasons at Double A. Some top prospects are still in college at 20.
Walker Jenkins was rocketing baseballs last night in the @WindSurgeICT win 🚀
3-4 / 2 2B / BB / RBI / R
All four of his ABs resulted in a ball in play hit 95+ MPH with two of them hit 101+ MPH‼️#MNTwins pic.twitter.com/BChJ8hcENv
— Twins Player Development (@TwinsPlayerDev) August 10, 2025
Looking at MLB as a whole, a 20-year-old has logged 50 or more Triple-A plate appearances just 41 times in the past 20 years. Some players on that list failed to become quality big leaguers, but for the most part, it’s an incredibly impressive collection of household names.
In fact, 18 of the 41 have become All-Stars, and even that’s a misleadingly low figure because many of the recent examples — Roman Anthony, Francisco Alvarez, Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo, Bryce Eldridge, Jordan Lawlar — are still way too young to evaluate their careers in any meaningful way.
Triple-A action at 20 has basically meant a 50/50 shot of being an All-Star. That includes MVP winners Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Andrew McCutchen, plus Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, Ketel Marte, Adam Jones, Junior Caminero and Riley Greene.
What’s especially remarkable about that success rate over the span of two decades is that Triple-A performance — good or bad — isn’t even factored in. Whether someone thrives or flops there, simply reaching Triple A for at least a couple of weeks as a 20-year-old is a really, really good sign.
Of course, thriving against Double-A pitching at 20 — which Jenkins did for 235 plate appearances to earn this week’s Triple-A promotion — is also a really, really good sign. And that promotion comes with the added benefit of being based on age and production, rather than age and implied production.
Over the past 20 years, Jenkins is one of just 18 hitters to crack a .900 OPS in 200 or more Double-A plate appearances in their age-20 season. Of the 14 who aren’t still way too young to evaluate fully, 10 have already become All-Stars, and there’s a decent chance that number will grow.
That puts Jenkins in the same company with the likes of Giancarlo Stanton, Julio Rodríguez, Rafael Devers, Elly De La Cruz, Austin Riley, Javier Báez, Bogaerts, Greene and the lone other Twins prospect on this list, Miguel Sanó, who had a .915 OPS at Double A in 2013 and was an MLB All-Star in 2017.
But even that may understate Jenkins’ great Double-A work. Among all 20-year-olds with 200 or more Double-A plate appearances since 2006, his 155 wRC+ is No. 7. Furthermore, five of the six ahead of him became All-Stars: Stanton, Rodriguez, Báez, Riley and Eric Hosmer. Dilson Herrera is the exception.
The #MNTwins No. 1 prospect (@MLBPipeline No. 6) Walker Jenkins flashes the leather with this diving catch! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/vJjEJFlowA
— Fort Myers Mighty Mussels (@MightyMussels) June 15, 2025
“When you start looking at top prospects, there’s just something you can tell,” Jeffers said. “They’re just more developed than their peers. There are some great hitters and great pitchers who look like your average Joe. And they might roll out there and throw 100 or hit 30 homers. But then there are the ones who look like Walker Jenkins and are just different.”
None of this guarantees anything for Jenkins. There are zero guarantees in baseball, and certainly not for a 20-year-old, no matter how good they look or how much deserved hype they’ve received. Top prospects go bust all the time, and even successful development doesn’t always create All-Stars.
Still, it’s hard not to see how quickly Jenkins climbed to Triple A, and how productive he was at every stop along the way, and not be optimistic about his chances of becoming a special hitter. That’s what MLB history suggests for 20-year-olds who mash Double-A pitching and get some Triple-A action.
And the beauty of Jenkins as a prospect is that he’s far from strictly a hitter. He’s also a good athlete with above-average speed who currently receives positive reviews defensively in center field and would profile as a standout corner outfielder if he eventually changes positions.
That would be a special all-around player, and that’s the path Jenkins is on with one more step to the majors.
(Photo of Jenkins at Twins camp in 2024: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)