Luke Keaschall continues to rise to every challenge
How a top major-league prospect relentlessly tackles adversity and turns it into achievement
By Dylan Kane
Coming from a town better known for agriculture than professional athletes, Watsonville native and Aptos High School graduate Luke Keaschall has already left a resounding mark on the game of baseball so far in his early career.
The Minnesota Twins minor-league prospect is coming off a statement season in 2024. He recorded 115 hits in 102 games to the tune of a .303/.420/.483 slashline while showing defensive versatility across the diamond, earning himself the Twins organization’s Minor League Player of the Year award and a spot at No. 60 on MLB Pipeline’s top-100 prospect ranking.
At face value, numbers and honors like those tell the average baseball fan everything they need to know about a player who projects to be a high-caliber major leaguer. But for Keaschall, even impressive stats aren’t sufficient enough to define him for one reason:
He’s soared over every expectation his whole life.
“I get why I didn’t get a lot of offers out of high school,” the 22-year-old Keaschall said in reference to only receiving one Division I scholarship offer out of high school. “The last time a scout got a chance to recruit me I was like 5-7, 145 pounds.”
This is because Keaschall, now 6-feet, 190 pounds, was a 2020 high school graduate, meaning that his senior year of baseball was lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite being overlooked, Keaschall left a strong impression on those who coached him. An accomplished baseball player and wrestler at Aptos High School, both his coaches noted the same thing about his work ethic and drive to get better.
“He would always be the first one out there, setting up the field, getting ready,” Aptos High baseball coach Jason Biancardi said. “And after practice he would always stay back and ask what he could do to get better.”
“We would say, ‘Alright, water break!’ but instead he would get extra reps,” former Aptos High wrestling coach Rudy Guzman said. “Every loss fueled him to get better in the wrestling room.”
This mentality of allowing setbacks to be reasons to excel at new heights is the theme of Keaschall’s career, beginning with his lack of recruitment in high school.
His one Division I scholarship offer was to the University of San Francisco, where he immediately won WCC Freshman of the Year honors and followed up with an even better sophomore season. A moment of adversity ended up being a blessing in disguise.
However, what seemed like the perfect fit for an aspiring MLB draft prospect quickly unraveled. Just as his senior season in high school had been taken from him in an instant, Keaschall suddenly found himself without a stable college home when USF’s head coach was dismissed amid abuse allegations, forcing him into the uncertainty of the transfer portal ahead of a pivotal junior year.
“I remember when he told me he was transferring, in the back of my head I was thinking, ‘Dang, it’s been going so well for him. I hope he doesn’t have a bad year and looks back and regrets transferring,’” Biancardi said.
“I didn’t want to transfer,” Keaschall said. “I had a lot of places I could have gone to but at the end of the day I picked the coaches I trusted and an organization that was awesome.”
That organization? The Arizona State Sun Devils. Keaschall arrived in Tempe and approached what could have been a season of unpredictability with excitement and determination. He outdid his two previous stellar collegiate seasons in a much more competitive Pac-12 Conference.
Keaschall started all 55 games for the Sun Devils, hitting .353 with a 1.168 OPS, and led the team with 18 home runs and 25 multi-hit games.
“I followed every game online and just remember seeing him dominate,” Biancardi said. “It doesn’t matter where he goes, this kid is just going to crush the ball.”
His amazing college career culminated in achieving his dream of getting drafted into the MLB, as the Twins selected him in the second round with the 49th overall pick in the 2023 draft.
Just three years earlier, Keaschall was lucky to have a single small-conference college give him a chance to play past high school.
But he wasn’t done there.
Keaschall has been flying through the minor leagues since being drafted. Midwest League Player of the Month? Texas League Player of the Week? MLB Futures Game selection? All accolades Keaschall has earned while maintaining his gaudy statline from college ball.
His ability to climb the ranks and flourish as the competition gets steeper isn’t unfamiliar to those who know him.
"I remember looking at his bracket for his senior year and it was just stacked with some of the best wrestlers in the state, and he took fifth," Guzman said "So with baseball, now he's in a league with major leaguers who have experience over him, and I can just see him grinding and grinding to be up there with them like he did in wrestling.”
But just as his ascent seemed unstoppable, yet another challenge arose. Late in the 2024 season, Keaschall was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his throwing arm, requiring Tommy John elbow surgery. The procedure, common among pitchers but increasingly affecting position players, sidelined him for the rest of the season and added further doubt to the only tool talent evaluators have shown skepticism over: his arm.
While the injury presents a setback, Keaschall’s history suggests he’s more than capable of turning adversity into opportunity—just as he has time and time again.
“Recovery’s been smooth, I’m a little bit over six months post-op,” Keaschall said. “Already up to throwing 90 feet, feeling good and ahead of schedule. It shouldn’t be too big of a deal.”
The Twins organization must also notice that Keaschall gets even better after an obstacle is placed in front of him. Instead of taking it slow like an organization would typically do when their 22-year-old top prospect is coming off of a significant injury, the Twins opted to throw him right into the fire by offering Keaschall a spot in major league camp for this season’s spring training.
He is the youngest player in the big league clubhouse.
“I just want to be a fly on the wall and learn as much as possible,” Keaschall said of his expectations for spring training. “Just being around great talents and great minds and pick and choose little things each day to get better at.”
The Twins expect Keaschall to have a meaningful contribution to winning baseball as early as this upcoming season. It is believed that he can have a long-term role as a utilityman, but primarily at second base, a position held in Minnesota by legends like Rod Carew, and by fan favorites like Brian Dozier and Chuck Knoblauch.
This level of expectation can easily be burdensome for a player as young as Keaschall, but as it’s been seen from him in his career so far, he’s likely only going to get better because of it.
“Every level he goes up he gets better and better,” Biancardi said. “I’ve known Luke was special since he was 14.”