Twins are sending Byron Buxton, AJ Achter, Alex Meyer, Trevor May, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario, and Zach Jones. Sooooo, let's talk about these guys.

1. We all know Byron Buxton, but he's interesting in this case because it shows that the Twins are all in for an accelerated timeline if he's up for it. His adjustment period in high-A was brief but convincing. After an uncharacteristic about of swinging and missing, he has drawn 19 walks in August to 12 strikeouts. Shit, he stole more bases in August than he had strikeouts. There's been less homerun pop, but he's hitting a ton of triples and nothing in continuing scouting reports indicates his power profile (25ish homers?) has changed.

2. AJ Achter is a guy. He has shown good results. We'll see.

3. Meyer is a cool add because it indicates the organization is satisfied that his shoulder is fine and wants him to resume getting innings. Now, I'm not ready to trust them that his should *is* fine, because this is the Twins medical staff we're talking about. But them thinking it's fine is probably better than thinking it's injured. Right? Anyhow, he pitched well the other day, scraped 100mph, and will probably get one more AA start. Surviving the AFL intact puts him on track to get a debut in 2014.

4. May is an interesting case because he's thrown a lot of innings this year. I think the team would have loved to see the consistency to jump him to AAA, but there's been some really good starts and high-K numbers mixed in with the bad. And he seems like he's profiling as a workhorse. What's odd about him is that people kind of skip over an optimistic middle ground where he doesn't end up in relief but is a high-K guy who is 3/4 in the rotation. That actually is a thing elsewhere, but not in Minnesota. Remember Boof Bonser? Anyhow, he's going to get bombed in the AFL because flyball pitchers have a rough time there, but a guy who can strikeout 7-8 guys over nine innings and throw 200 MLB innings isn't a reliever.

5. Max Kepler is an oddity here. They apparently have to make a 40-man decision on him, but he's only at low-A and seems pretty unlikely to get scooped up in the Rule 5. The scouting reports have remained great, but he's been banged up a lot and the results have been inconsistent. If there's a such thing as an organization being high on a player but still being very open to trading him, I'm guessing this is it. But he also missed a lot of playing time with a lingering elbow injury, so it could just be the Twins getting him more plate appearances. You're only supposed to get one exception per team for a player who hasn't advanced past A-ball, but I'm guessing Buxton was good enough that he didn't count?

6. Eddie Rosario is my conspiracy theory choice. Generally speaking, players who come from places with a viable winter league aren't supposed to go to the AFL. We like being able to send Americans to the Dominican Winter League or the Venezuelan Winter League or the Puerto Rican Winter League, so we don't steal their players for Arizona Fall. Rosario "played" in Puerto Rico last year because he is a Puerto Rican and a good player, but not only did he see pretty sparse action - they didn't play him at second. That's their prerogative, of course. Those teams want to win games and not develop players for the Minnesota Twins. But he needs reps at second if he's going to stick there. So, AFL it is. There'll also be time to play in Puerto Rico after, so this is less a conspiracy theory than an acknowledgement that he needs to actually play in the infield and this might be Minnesota's only chance of guaranteeing that happens.

7. Zach Jones is a reliever who throws really, really hard and strikes out everybody. If we had the same system we did in 2008, we'd talk about Zach Jones a lot. But having the liberty to kind of "meh" at relief prospects is nice. He's also not pitched above A-ball, so I'm guessing we're just shrugging our shoulders at that "rule" this year?