While it feels like the baseball gods have laid low every Detroit Tigers pitcher under the age of 22, that’s not strictly true. One of the best stories at the A-ball levels last summer was the emergence of right-hander Kelvis Salcedo. While there is certainly relief risk present in his frame and delivery, Salcedo arguably boasts the nastiest set of pitches in the whole farm system already, so we’ll kick off our 45 FV tier with a pitcher who will have a lot of eyes on him in 2026 as he looks to build
on a breakout campaign.
The Tigers signed 20-year-old Kelvis Salcedo back in January 2023, as he was turning 17. He hails from Santa Barbara del Zulia, Venezuela in the northwestern corner of the country. Salcedo wasn’t a big bonus prospect in a class where catcher Enrique Jimenez and outfielder Anibal Salas were the big names at the time, but he’s already outpaced them in terms of future major league projections.
The young right-hander stands 6’0” but while his official weight is 180 pounds, he’s clearly bulked up since that weigh-in and has filled out in his chest and legs significantly. He looks like he’s probably touching 215 pounds or more. That additional muscle now powers a fastball that can clip 99 mph at max effort. It’s a fairly high effort delivery, but as he continues to develop things may come more easily for him. There really isn’t any physical projection left, and the program for him is more about building more functional strength rather than filling out any further.
Salcedo will sometimes utilize a rock step with the bases empty, but either way it’s a simple motion and he’s basically pitching out of the stretch most of the time already. Like most with a higher arm slot, he has to pull his head hard to the first base side to create space for his arm path to get to that high three-quarters position, and as a result he will spin off to the first base side at times. Still, while he’ll occasionally sail a fastball or have his cutter and slider back up on him somewhat, he’s already an effective strike thrower who pounded the zone very well for his age and didn’t walk too many batters. He hides the ball well and that delivery makes it hard to pick up his release point until a hitter has seen him a few times.
A delivery with a good deal of visible upper body effort to throw hard is something scouts tend to key on as a poor sign for a future starting pitching role, and Salcedo isn’t the long-limbed, lanky 6’3”-6’5” with big extension that teams favor these days in a starting role. As a result, Salcedo gets high relief risk marks. Of course, you can tell that to Max Scherzer and many other high effort starters around the league. It’s just up to the player to put the work in to get in the best shape possible by the time they reach the major leagues. Salcedo may well be able to keep repeating his delivery with better efficiency as he builds up reps into his early 20’s. So, right now it’s just a note of caution as to his future role, and we’ll see how well he holds up to full seasons of pro ball the next two years.
The right-hander worked with fourseam fastball, cutter, and splitter last season, though he will mix in a slider and sinker as well, per Statcast. He can really spin the baseball to go with the raw velocity, and has a pretty intriguing fourseam fastball shape. In Lakeland last summer, Salcedo’s average fastball was already 95.4 mph and he topped out at 98.5 mph. The deception in his delivery helps balance out his below average extension, but it’s still not a huge, whiff generating fourseamer. The movement is more deceptive than explosive. It looks like a fourseamer in terms of spin alignment on the ball, but instead it has some late cut and drop that routinely had hitters breaking bats and beating it into the ground last summer. Hitters don’t swing and miss at it much, but they really struggled to barrel it up.
Salcedo backs the heater with a nasty 88-89 mph cutter that averaged 2711 rpms of spin last year. It plays off the fastball well with sharp late break to his gloveside and average depth. He drew a whopping 50 percent whiff rate on the cutter last year. His slider moves like the cutter but with a little more depth in the mid-80’s, and Salcedo tended to turn to it once he already had a hitter down and was trying to get them to chase down. It too produced a huge whiff rate, but it’s inconclusive whether these are even two distinct pitches as they blur together often. He might do better adding a spike curveball from that arm slot for a change of pace and something with more downward action.
His best pitch is a pretty spectacular changeup that looks like a splitter although the grip hasn’t been confirmed. It’s a mid-80’s offspeed pitch and Salcedo really kills the spin on it to go with the velocity separation, getting serious late drop and armside run on it. This is already a consistent plus pitch and drew a 60 percent whiff rate in Lakeland. When he’s really commanding it well it’s better than plus and you won’t see a nastier changeup anywhere in the minor leagues.
Salcedo had a really good Dominican Summer League season in 2024, and arrived stateside last year to pitch in the Complex League. He dominated there, and then moved over to the Single-A side to pitch for the Lakeland Flying Tigers in August and early September. He was already boasting an ERA under 2.00 in Complex League action, with really good strikeout to walk ratios, but things clicked into another gear in full season ball as he finished the year with a flourish. Salcedo only spent about a third of his season there, but he put up a 1.54 ERA with a downright crazy 39 percent strikeout rate against a walk rate of just 7.3 percent. He threw strikes, he didn’t give up hard contact, and the cutter and changeup generated tons of whiffs. If he was a young college draft pick this would be outstanding, but when you also consider that Salcedo only turned 20 in January of 2026, that’s particularly eye-popping.
Salcedo made 10 starts and had 18 appearances in 2025, throwing a combined 68 2/3 innings between Complex League ball and the Florida State League. He finished with a 1.83 ERA and a 2.88 FIP and a combined 33.5 percent K-rate. So, we have a very young pitcher here doing all the things we were hoping to see from recent top picks like Owen Hall, Paul Wilson, Zach Swanson, Ethan Schiefelbein, among others.
Like any young starter, Salcedo has to refine his game and prove he can hold up to a starter’s workload over the next few seasons. His frame and delivery raise some red flags for relief risk, but even as a reliever he’s got a good chance at a long career in high leverage work. On the other hand, the stuff is already overpowering from an A-ball standpoint and he had no real issues throwing a lot of strikes. As long as he’s handling the workload, the Tigers will rightfully continue to develop him as a starter. There’s a chance that Salcedo turns out to be a really good one. If they decide to convert him to relief at some point, Salcedo already has closer caliber stuff when he airs out the fastball. He could prove a really great weapon for the Tigers’ bullpen.
