Inside the Twins’ decision to draft Kaelen Culpepper with their first-round pick

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – Kaelen Culpepper, the No. 21 pick in Sunday’s MLB amateur draft, was surprised when his agent called to let him know the Twins were about to take him.

He met with the Twins for an hour during the MLB draft combine in June, one of the many teams he visited, but he didn’t hear much from people in the organization afterward.

“Some of that is probably us trying to lay low a little bit, and not tip our hand,” said Twins scouting director Sean Johnson. “There is some gamesmanship to all this.”

The Twins had a first-round grade on Culpepper, a 6-foot shortstop, for more than a year, particularly after he had a breakout 2023 season at Kansas State and a strong showing on USA Baseball’s National Collegiate Team.

Twins scouts filed around a dozen reports on Culpepper this spring as he hit .328 with 11 homers, 15 doubles and 59 RBI in 61 games. He has a simple and direct swing, and the Twins liked how the righthanded hitter controlled the strike zone, compiling nearly as many walks (35) as strikeouts (41).

“We’ve really admired the way he plays the game, going back to last summer with the USA team,” Johnson said. “Lots of glowing reviews from that coaching staff — which includes Brooks Lee’s dad, who was the head coach of that club — that really vouched for his character and the way he went about his business.”

There are some questions about whether Culpepper, rated as the No. 34 player in the draft class by Baseball America, can stick at shortstop. The 21-year-old Memphis native spent the first two years of his college career at third base.

“It’s a lot like Brooks Lee,” Johnson said. “We didn’t take Brooks Lee because we thought he was a shortstop. We thought he could hit and that’s really the thing that drives our decisions, at least on night one. We want to take players that we believe can hit and play multiple positions.”

Culpepper, who said he models his game after longtime White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson, was one of eight Black players drafted in the first round. He played with his older brother, Tyler, on travel teams — Culpepper played up by two years — and they were typically the only Black kids on the team, his family said.

He was lightly recruited out of high school. His dad, Kenneth, noted he didn’t play in some of the elite summer showcase tournaments because of the costs, which he believes caused Kaelen to be overlooked before he starred at Kansas State.

“My goal is to inspire others who look just like me,” Culpepper said. “I think that’s what I’m doing, me and other guys. There aren’t really many of us anymore [in MLB]. The game is growing. It’s always continuing to grow, and I like that aspect about baseball.”

Culpepper started to believe he had a future in baseball around his freshman year in high school. His dad started pushing him harder in workouts. He worked on strengthening his arm, fielding more ground balls and hitting off a tee more often.

“The more I gave him, the more he wanted,” Kenneth Culpepper said. “I spent a lot of baseball hours with my son. ... As a result, it turned into this right here. He wanted more. He wanted to prove to people that ‘these guys are not better than me,’ you know what I mean?

“That’s just what he did, and he will continue to do that as a Minnesota Twin.”

Culpepper, emotional on draft night after thinking about all the work he put in toward becoming a first-round pick, said the Twins were going to “get a dog out of me.”

“They took a chance on me,” he said. “That’s all I needed was for one team to give me the opportunity.”