The Detroit Tigers 2023 draft is currently on track to be among their best ever. That draft is going to be remembered for Max Clark in the first round, and an absolute steal in Kevin McGonigle in the competitive balance round. Second rounder Max Anderson has a shot to make his presence felt in the big leagues as well. Third rounder Paul Wilson was a high school star and one of the best prep left-handers in his class. The pick was well received, but Wilson struggled mightily in 2024 and then needed
UCL reconstruction in April 2025. The goal now is just to get him back on the mound and working sometime this summer.
The Tigers paid the Oregon product $755,000 over slot as a third rounder to pass on his college commitment to Oregon State, and Wilson had a lot of other teams interested in doing the same. The Tigers were happy to get to him first, and landed a pretty advanced young pitcher who had been coached up from an early age by his father Trevor, himself an eight veteran MLB pitcher.
Wilson’s 2024 Complex League debut was really rocky. He didn’t pitch that much, making eight starts, until he was shut down in late July with an undisclosed injury. Prior to that, he’d shown a pretty deep repertoire of pitches, but was also plagued by some stretches of wildness as he tried to implement some adjustments to his delivery.
In 2025, he started the season with Single-A Lakeland and while his stuff looked nastier, he was still fighting his delivery through a couple of short outings before the injury ended his season. Wilson has a quick arm and some deception from a pretty prototypical high three-quarters arm slot. He appeared to have added some good muscle and his balance and lead leg blocking both looked better than in his high school days. Unfortunately, his velocity was also down a good bit, and he still sometimes threw some very wild pitches, both proving to be harbingers of the elbow injury brewing.
UCL reconstruction at Wilson’s age obviously delays his progress, but nowadays the odds are quite high that the surgery and rehab will be a success. Tarik Skubal didn’t have access to the top surgeons in the game when he had the procedure as a college freshman, and he’s done alright. So with a bit of luck, Wilson will be back on the mound sometime late this summer for a little work, and then ready to go full speed again in 2027. The problem is that he’ll be 22 years old by the time he gets a full season of work in, putting him on the same track as a college draft pick, but with far less experience.
With two and half years since his draft day, minimal progress and now a major injury, it would be reasonable to drop Wilson off the board entirely, but the potential he showed in high school is still actionable and it’s worth giving him through 2027 before writing him off. Drafting prep pitchers is a high risk, high reward game, but either way one has to expect that in most cases things are not going to go smoothly. The advantage is that while top college pitchers are safer, they’re also snatched up in the first two or three rounds of the draft. Using your bonus pool to sign a bunch of talented prep pitchers later in the draft gives you a shot at some real home runs. That’s going to come with some big misses too. Wilson may prove to be one of them, but for now we’ll give him the same amount of time we’d give a college pitcher before making any final verdicts on his future.
As a highly regarded prep pitcher, Wilson was comfortably 92-94 mph with his fourseamer, occasionally reaching back for a little extra. In high school he also showed off an advanced curveball-changeup combination and both pitches showed out pretty well in his brief 2025 work though command remained sketchy. The fourseam shape needed some tweaking to get better carry, and there were signs of that, as well as good progress with his slider, in 2025. Combined with good control, a projectibile frame that promised more velocity, and good feel for pitching overall for his age, there was a ton to like on draft day.
What we need to see this year is Wilson back on the mound after the All-Star break with his velocity intact. In 2027, a real leap is going to be required or Wilson may just drift off into org starter territory, a far cry from the mid-rotation upside he had on draft day.
