There are things we know about the Minnesota Twins; we know these things because we are told them so often.

Whether they’re true or not is another matter altogether.

One of these deceptive verities is the notion that the Twins rely on their ability to develop minor league talent.

There is some truth to that notion, but not as much as most believe.

Thursday marks the start of baseball’s two-day “first-year player draft” — a bit of nomenclature that replaced “amateur draft” a few years ago when agent Scott Boras established his clients as professionals and then argued that they weren’t subject to the draft because they were no longer amateurs — and the Twins are armed with three of the first 31 picks.

This is a mixed blessing. The Twins’ scouting department is regarded in baseball circles with an almost superstitious awe, but their record with high picks is not the reason. They have too many first-round money pits — B.J. Garbe, Ryan Mills, Matt Moses, Adam Johnson — cluttering their history.

The Twins have the respect of their rivals because:

a) when they challenge the conventional wisdom, they’re generally right — for example, valuing Joe Mauer above Mark Prior in 2001; and

b) they have a knack for pulling undervalued talent out of other organizations — David Ortiz, Jason Bartlett and Johan Santana, to name three of many, were snarfed up by the Twins out of the lower levels of other organizations.

That said, if you look at the long-term core of this team — the players being counted on to play major roles into the new stadium and beyond — they are almost entirely either players who have never played a major-league game for another organization (Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Cuddyer) or were acquired for players who fit that definition (Nathan, Young, Gomez).

A pick revisited

Ben Revere, the Twins’ first-rounder last summer, may well become a textbook example of the first point. He’s small, his throwing arm isn’t particularly powerful, he’s not a long-ball threat. Virtually every other organization figured he was best left for the second or even third rounds.

Off the way the Twins usually handle players fresh out of high school, Revere figured to stay in extended spring training until the Appalachian League started play this month, then report to Elizabethton. That’s the second-lowest rung on the ladder.

Instead, the Twins shipped him up to Beloit at the start of May, and he’s ripping up the Midwest League — hitting over .400, slugging over .600. He’s not merely too good for the Appy League, he’s too good for A ball.

Nobody’s jeering at that pick now.