Every draft class has a few names that make scouts sit up straight, and this year that name in Minnesota was Ethan Wachsmann. The Twins made the Grandview High School righty their first prep pick of the 2026 draft, taking him 79th overall in the 3rd round, and the expectation from the jump was that signing him away from a Wake Forest commitment was going to cost real money.
Jim Callis broke the signing bonus and the eye-popping fastball number that made Wachsmann a 3rd-round target in the first place.
That expectation just became reality. Wachsmann signed with the Twins for $2.25 million, according to Jim Callis, more than double the $1,052,700 slot value attached to pick 79. That kind of overpay is the clearest signal a team can send that it views a player as talent worth over-drafting for, then paying up to actually lock down.
The traits behind the number check out. Wachsmann is listed at 6-foot-5, and his fastball climbed into the upper 90s this spring before touching 100 mph, paired with a curveball scouts already call plus. He backed it up on the mound too, going 6-2 with a 2.10 ERA and 66 strikeouts in just 36 2/3 innings for Grandview this season, per reporting out of Colorado.
None of that comes as a total shock if you'd been tracking him beforehand. Wachsmann had already built buzz nationally as a Wake Forest recruit before the draft, the kind of two-way pull — college power program on one side, a $2.25 million check on the other — that usually only resolves in the pros' favor when the bonus gets this far past slot.
For the Twins, this is the bet that defines a scouting department's summer: pass on a safer college arm to grab a projectable prep power arm, then actually pay to keep him from walking onto a campus instead. A 100 mph fastball at 18 with a real breaking ball is the kind of foundation player-development staffs love to get their hands on early, even if the payoff is years away.
Now the work starts. Wachsmann heads into the Twins' farm system as one of the higher-profile prep arms in the class, and the follow-up questions are the usual ones for a teenage power pitcher: how the velocity holds up over a full pro workload, how fast the changeup and slider catch up to the fastball and curveball, and whether Minnesota's player development track record with young arms translates here too.