The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
UConn teammates reunite in minors
When Patrick Winkel made his High-A career debut with the Cedar Rapids Kernels on May 25, he was hardly a lone Connecticut Yankee in the midst of an Iowa cornfield.
At the top of the Kernels’ lineup that day was Anthony Prato, a 2019 teammate of Winkel’s at UConn who was roommates with Winkel’s older brother, Chris, for three years at Storrs.
And right below Winkel on the lineup card, hitting eighth, was Kyler Fedko, with whom Winkel roomed during his own three years in Storrs.
“The Cedar Rapids Huskies,” quipped Jim Penders, who coached all three on the UConn baseball team.
Indeed, while it’s certainly not rare for former college teammates to cross paths as teammates throughout the minorleague ranks, for three former teammates from one Northeast school — and not a “super power” like Tennessee, Vanderbilt or Stanford — to be together on the same minor-league squad is certainly ...
“Kind of a little deja vu,” according to Winkel.
“Pretty crazy stuff,” added Fedko.
“An amazing set of circumstances,” Penders summed up.
The 33-percent Husky lineup at Cedar Rapids lasted less than two weeks. On June 4, Prato, a shortstop, was promoted to Double-A Wichita. But it was fun while it lasted.
“I’m sure they enjoyed being teammates yet again together, even though it’s halfway across the country,” Penders noted. “I’m sure they’ve had a lot of laughs. They were all great competitors for us. It was fun to follow them, when their names are all in the same box score again. It’s pretty cool.”
Added Winkel: “It was good to get the guys back together on the same team again. I think that’s just a testament to what Coach Penders is doing at UConn right now, and the guys that he’s producing.”
Winkel, the former Amity High star catcher who played two seasons at UConn (sandwiched around a missed season following Tommy John surgery), was selected by the Minnesota Twins in the ninth round of the 2021 MLB Draft. He reported to Class-A Fort Myers last summer and hit .243 with a homer and 11 RBI in 21 games, splitting time behind the plate and at DH, while also playing some first base.
At the start of spring training in January, Winkel’s back started to bother him. He took a precautionary MRI that revealed a stress reaction in his lower back that needed to be taken care of before it turned into a stress fracture.
And so, Winkel’s first official spring training was spent “pretty much watching my buddies play spring training, while I was doing rehab stuff.”
Still, his only real limitation was swinging a bat and running hard. So while he couldn’t play in games, he was able to catch bullpens and live situations and work on other defensive drills. That extended into the start of the season, until he was finally sent out to Cedar Rapids at the end of May.
Winkel has gotten off to a nice start with the Kernels, hitting .270 with at least one hit in nine of his first 10 games. He’s clubbed a pair of homers, most recently on Wednesday against Daytona.
“Offensively, I’m doing pretty well,” he noted. “I just want to see a little more pitching. I think the more I see, the more comfortable I’ll get. That’s just something that comes with more repetitions, more at-bats, basically. I think the more I play, the better I’ll get.”
All of Winkel’s defensive work has been behind the plate so far.
Fedko, a corner outfielder and Pennsylvania native, began this season in Fort Myers, hitting .318 before being promoted to Cedar Rapids in mid-May. He’s hitting .223 with four homers and 12 RBI in 27 games for the Kernels.
“It’s been a great experience so far,” said Fedko, a 12th-round pick by the Twins last summer. “It’s been a real fun first pro year of baseball, for sure.”
Fedko, whose brother Christian was a captain on this year’s UConn team, and Winkel followed UConn’s record-setting 2022 season, watching the Huskies’ game against Stanford on Sunday together while on a bus trip back from South Bend, Ind. The two live with separate host families, but Fedko is paired with another Cedar Rapids teammate whose name might be familiar in Connecticut baseball circles: Aaron Sabato. The power-hitting first baseman is a 2018 graduate of the Brunswick School in Greenwich who was the Twins’ first-round draft pick in 2020 out of North Carolina.
Prato, a Brooklyn, N.Y. product and seventh-round draft pick by the Twins in 2019, has hit a solid .256 at Wichita since his promotion. The trio may no longer be “Cedar Rapids Huskies,” but Winkel, Fedko and Prato could find themselves on the same roster again as they keep climbing the Twins’ organizational ladder.
“Hopefully,” Penders noted, “they’ll be teammates in the Twin Cities in the years to come.”
The Minnesota Huskies? Has a nice ring to it.
MOVIN’ ON UP
After a stellar start to the season in Double-A, Mike Burrows, the former Waterford High ace, has been promoted to Triple-A Indianapolis.
Burrows, an 11th-round pick by Pittsburgh in 2018, went 4-2 with a 2.94 ERA in 12 starts in his first season at Double-A with the Altoona Curve. He struck out 69 batters in 52 innings, posted a 1.10 WHIP and allowed opponents to hit just .199 against him. He was promoted to the Indians on Thursday.