The Detroit Tigers might have the deepst group of position player prospects the organization has ever amassed at one time in the farm system. Certainly the farm years of the ‘84 Tigers teams may remain the best cluster of Tigers’ homegrown players to ever develop into the core of a team, but from Kevin McGonigle, who is about to graduate from prospect status, to Max Clark, Bryce Rainer, and Josue Briceño, to Jordan Yost, Michael Oliveto, Cris Rodriguez, and more, there is a whole host of athletic,
up the middle defenders who also pack above average to plus power populating the Tigers’ affiliates these days. Most won’t succeed, but beyond the top names, there are enough talented players to give the Tigers a good chance at some breakouts as well.
At the same time, their attempts to stockpile young pitching have gone pretty poorly over the past few seasons, mainly due to injuries to most of their most expensive prep signings. Early on, there have been some good signs from the 2025 draft class but some delayed debuts as well, while the litany of pitcher injuries continues to leave the system short of talented arms actually pitching games and working into the upper minors.
The minor league season is 10 days old at most levels, so remember these are even smaller sample sizes than at the major league level. Threre isn’t even much point yet in assessing their numbers. This is just a brief look at the starts a selection of their more interesting prospects have gotten off to this season. We’re looking for tangible changes in process stats like strikeouts and walks, as well as observable and tangible changes like velocity increases for pitchers, speed and defensive improvements, to batspeed and exit velocity jumps for hitters. Sustainable improvements in results take a lot longer to prove out.
Max Clark
The gregarious 21-year-old center fielder has been the most impressive Tigers prospect early on this season, and there’s really no contest. With Kevin McGonigle about to graduate from prospect eligibility, Clark will shortly become the Tigers top prospect, and he’ll be shooting up to the top of national lists on his current trajectory.
Clark spent a ton of his offseason training preparing himself to see a lot more breaking stuff, and was taking lots of extra reps from machines throwing curveballs and sliders. That work, along with continued strength gains for the hard-working gym rat, has already born fruit at the Triple-A level. Clark has been a force at the plate for the Mud Hens, and is playing really well in center field, racking up a whopping five assists to go with a few nice diving plays as well.
The great difficulty of the jumps from High-A to Double-A, and even more when moving up to face plenty of major league veterans at the Triple-A level, is the increasing quality of breaking and offspeed stuff thrown by pitchers much more capable of executing complicated sequences tailored to each opposing hitter. The lower minors tend to winnow out hitters with minimal zone recognition and/or trouble hitting better velocity. It’s not unusual at each successive level to see strikeout rates pop for hitters early on, with the better prospects adapting over the course of a season and getting back to their prior rates of contact and damage. But at the Triple-A level, it’s more about the ability to stay on time for good fastballs, while managing to adapt to more sophisticated plans of attack and execution from opposing pitchers.
So far, Clark has had little trouble with any of it. 13 games into his season, Clark has struck out just five times, while drawing 10 walks, one intentional. He has eight doubles, one triple, and six stolen bases. Job one was to hang in there against better pitching and steadily start adapting in the first half of the season with an eye toward a major league debut later this summer. He’s already more than holding his own in all these respects, and he’s faced some pretty good pitching, including numerous teams most advanced pitching prospects, already.
At the same time, he’s hit several balls harder than anything we’ve ever seen tracked in his exit velocities. He’s topped 111 mph off the bat, and has several balls over 110 mph. The Tigers will want him to see a good variety of pitching and show that he can adapt as teams continue to pitch him more carefully in the leadoff spot for the Hens most nights, so a call-up isn’t imminent, but he’s certainly ahead of my expectations that he’d be ready by midsummer.
The two things left to look for is the pull side power to start showing up and for Clark to get a good dose of left-handed pitching and handle it well. At each successive level, Clark has hit well, but taken time to really start turning and crushing some balls to the pull field. Once we start seeing more of that, Clark will be right on the doorstep of his major league debut. It’s not that the Tigers need him to hit 20-25 home runs, as he has all the tools to impact games in many ways, but you take the home run power as a sign that he’s really starting to dominate pitching down there and jump mistakes.
When we see that, along with Clark facing enough good lefties to show he’s balancing his splits reasonably well, he’ll be ready for a call-up. He’s currently trending well ahead of pace, but you can probably expect some bumps in the road before he really starts tearing it up. I’m still thinking sometime around the All-Star break is a pretty good over/under target, but it’s fair to suggest that if he keeps hitting like he has so far and the power shows up a little more, he can push things on a much quicker timeline. He’s already ahead of schedule even for a blue chip prospect, and he’s several months younger than Kevin McGonigle.
Mud Hens veterans
Beyond Clark, the Tigers top two position player prospects at Toledo are infielders Hao-Yu Lee and Max Anderson. Unfortunately, late spring injuries sidelined them both quickly this spring. Lee is now back from his oblique injury, but the recently turned 23-year-old still only has a couple of games under his belt at this point. Anderson’s injury doesn’t sound serious or long-term, but of course, the Tigers don’t comment on injuries in the minor leagues much unless they involve surgery. So, we’ll just to wait and see when he can get back on the field.
Lee is a little better defensively at second, while Anderson is more consistent. Neither is going to give you above average defense, but they can both hit. Probably they profile best as part-time players who do most of their damage against left-handed pitching. Anderson still needs to be more selective and swing at better pitches. Of the two, he has better contact ability. Lee is a little more disciplined, but can still be foiled by steady doses of good breaking balls. Neither has really been able to implement the changes in swing and approach they need to in order to fully access their power potential. We’ll see if either can break out this season, but even as they are they provide some decent depth at the Triple-A level for the Tigers’ infield.
Two other intriguing names are Trei Cruz and Gage Workman. Cruz can play center field, shortstop, and pretty much anything else. Workman can handle shortstop, but profiles best at third base where his strong arm plays well. Cruz walks, switch hits decently though better left-handed, and has the speed to steal bases, but in terms of power production he’s not going to put too many balls in the seats.
Workman has speed as well, but he also packs plus power. Unfortunately, Workman has always struck out too much against top competition, as his work with the Cubs and White Sox showed last summer before he ultimately returned to the Tigers. Still, he’s only 26 years old, does a lot of things well, and is off to a good start. Ya never know.
John Peck and Brett Callahan
Infielder John Peck and outfielder Brett Callahan are currently the featured attractions for the Double-A Erie SeaWolves. With top catching prospects Thayron Liranzo and Josue Briceño injured, the prospect star power with the SeaWolves is currently quite diminished, but Peck and Callahan have done their part to overcome that.
Callahan is still getting whiffed on completely by national prospect sites, but I’ve been describing him as a potential Kerry Carpenter 2.0 for two seasons now. In truth, the only similarity is that they’re left-handed hitting outfieders from modest college backgrounds who are primed to pull the baseball in the air and found a lot more pop in pro ball. At this point he’s an easy 40+ FV. Callahan too is a bit of a free-swinger who is looking to do damage, but he draws his walks and knows the zone pretty well too. His swing is geared for natural loft to the pull field, and his plus power allows him to do plenty of damage. There are certainly some similarities to pre-breakout Carpenter.
Callahan is still something of a longshot. We’ll have to see if he can trim down the swing and miss against good breaking and offspeed stuff, but his chances are augmented by a much better defensive profile than Carpenter. Callahan combines plus speed with a strong arm that is maybe a 70 FV tool. He has the speed to play center field, but his jumps say the better fit is in right field. Still, the combination of defensive ability with plus power and solid plate discipline makes him an intriguing player to watch. In just seven games, he already has a pair of homers for the SeaWolves, along with a respectable 21.9 percent K-rate against a 9.4 percent walk rate.
Peck, like Callahan, is another inexpensive college draft pick as the Tigers continue to hunt for athletic college players without the big time pedigrees, saving bonus pool money in the process. A shortstop at Pepperdine, Peck has improved quite a bit defensively, and I underrated his work at shortstop last summer. In spring camp, he showed the skills of a more experienced defender capable of handling everyday work at the shortstop position. At the same time, he clearly put on some good muscle over the offseason, and that was reflected in his upgraded batspeed this spring.
There’s a lot to like here, but there are still concerns about how he’ll do against better breaking and offspeed stuff in the upper minors. He held his own in a partial look at Erie last summer, but he whiffed a lot and didn’t do a whole lot of damage either. He’s a bit of a free swinger, but he knows the strike zone, and the improved batspeed should help him to handle the tougher mix of velocity and better secondary stuff he’ll see with the SeaWolves this spring. There is also a clear path to a role as a talented, versatile defender who mashes left-handed pitching even if he doesn’t quite break out fully as a hitter. Unlike Callahan, Peck hasn’t done much early on, but we already saw what he could do against better pitching in spring camp, and the Tigers kept him until the end of the exhibition season rather thann reassigning him to minor league camp along the way. He clearly turned some heads, and his progress will be interesting to track this year.
Lakeland Flying Tigers
Things are fine in West Michigan. They have some interesting talent of their own, there just hasn’t been anything especially positive or negative to note just yet. Other than right-hander Lucas Elissalt’s improving fastball velocity, there hasn’t been anything too obvious to bring up so early into the season. Not so in Lakeland.
We’ll start with the Tigers third ranked prospect, 20-year-old shortstop Bryce Rainer. The Tigers 2024 first rounder was off to a great start last spring when he tore up his shoulder diving back to first base and had to have season ending surgery. Rainer had already shown off an advanced eye for the strike zone for a prep pick, 70 grade raw power, and an 80 grade throwing arm to go with plus speed on the bases. The only glaring flaw was some weakness against breaking and offspeed stuff as he saw better secondary pitching than he faced in high school. Even now he only has 174 plate appearances in pro ball, so he really just needs to get reps in and start to adapt to getting less fastballs to crush.
That’s still the thing to watch for this spring, but for now, Rainer is just getting his feet wet after not playing for 10 months. He’s been extremely patient in the early going, seeing a ton of pitches, and getting himself into some bad counts despite his high walk rate. Most importantly, his arm looks good. I haven’t seen him need to fully air one out yet, but he’s back to slinging darts across the diamond with ease, so it looks like all systems are go.
Meanwhile, he dropped jaws the other day with the hardest hit baseball we’ve seen from a Tigers’ hitter at any level in the Statcast era. He turned around a 96.7 mph sinker at a whopping 116.2 mph, cranking a home run an estimated 477 feet to straightaway center field. Rainer clearly got stronger during his rehab work, but he’s still lanky enough to think there could be more strength gains ahead. Once he gets enough reps and settles in, you can expect him to move to West Michigan by mid-season at the latest.
Another really intriguing home run was crushed by Zach MacDonald. You’ll notice this developing theme of fast, up the middle defenders with plus or better power and advanced plate dsicipline throughout the Tigers’ system. We’ve never seen anything like this from the Tigers’ farm. Like Peck and Callahan, the Tigers plucked MacDonald from a smaller school, Miami University, and only paid him a minimum bonus in 2024.
MacDonald struck out a lot in his first look at Single-A ball last summer. He’s still striking out quite a bit in the early going, and that makes him a real longshot as a college hitter facing just the lowest level of full season ball. On the other hand, he has plus speed, plays a reasonably sound center field already, steals bases, and, as he also showed off last week, is stacked with more raw power than anyone but the Tigers’ seemingly forecast on draft day.
This 114.2 mph blast is harder hit than all but the three hardest hit balls Riley Greene has produced over the past two full seasons. That is outstanding raw power by anyone’s measure, but in a center fielder it stands out even more. MacDonald is already 22, and he has a long way to go in the pure hitting department to become a major prospect. Even so, the secondary tools are pretty jaw dropping and offer a lot of paths to some kind of major league role. If he happens to figure it out he could move quickly, but for now he needs to cut way down on the strikeouts and hit his way to West Michigan before anyone should get too excited.
There are numerous other position players worth watching in Lakeland, even as we wait for the debuts of 2025 first rounder Jordan Yost, who is already lauded for his contact ability, discipline, defense, speed, and arm strength. You’ll recall many national scouts on draft day worrying over Yost’s power, but after putting on 13 pounds of good muscle by his estimation, the prep shortstop’s first televised at-bat came this spring, facing an upper level minor leaguer, with the bases loaded. And then this happened. Once again, the Tigers seem to be doing a brilliant job drafting athletic contact hitters who play shortstop or center field, and quickly helping them develop their batspeed.
Michael Oliveto and top IFA prospect, outfielder Cris Rodriguez, also seem bound for a little Complex League work, but Oliveto in particular should handle the pitching there and get to Lakeland this summer. We’re also waiting for SS/2B Franyerber Montilla to return to Lakeland. The slick fielding, left-handed hitter is another one we’ll be looking for strength gains from after his rehabiliation from a torn ACL last summer. He’s tracking for a return sometime in May as he wraps up his rehab work.
Finally, the huge amount of pitcher injuries among recent draft picks remains a major source of frustration as the Tigers try to get them healthy and their development underway. Owen Hall is reportedly fairly close to pitching after a shoulder injury ruined his first pro season. However, LHP Paul Wilson, LHP Ethan Schiefelbein, RHP Zach Swanson, RHP River Hamilton, RHP Michael Massey, and more, are still on the shelf. On the plus side, we have seen two nice efforts each from 2025 second rounder RHP Malachi Witherspoon, and 2025 third rounder LHP Ben Jacobs.
Witherspoon’s heavy sinker is sitting 96.1 mph and he’s topped 98 mph in both his outings for the Flying Tigers. His sweeping, hard cutter and curveball are sharp but inconsistent, but crucially he hasn’t walked a batter through a pair of four inning outings to start the year. He’s throwing strikes, and his stuff is pretty untouchable at that level. Even so, there have still been quite a few waste pitches in the mix and that has to change. Of course, his tight, funky delivery and college walk rates still speak to the high relief risk, but Witherspoon has major league caliber stuff already.
Jacobs is a little more of a command lefty type, with a solid slider that flashes plus, and a good changeup. The velocity and movement on his fourseamer was erratic in his junior year, helping him slip to the Tigers. So far this spring though, he’s averaged 94 mph with an average of 18.1 inches of induced vertical break. That much movement, with his quick arm and pretty flat plane to the top of the zone, makes that an above average fourseamer. Even better, Jacobs has pretty good command of everything already, and has looked like a man pitching to inexperienced boys in his two outings.
Witherspooon certainly has the bigger stuff right now, but Jacobs is a lot more likely to have the command to turn into a mid-rotation starter in time. If Jacobs can gain a little more velocity and tune his mix with sinkers and cutters to take some pressure off the fastball, he could become a really good starting pitcher, but there’s a leap required, whereas Witherspoon’s sinker and breaking balls are already pretty ferocious. I can’t imagine either is long for Lakeland though, and once the weather warms up in the north you can expect them both in West Michigan.
Hopefully it won’t be too long until we get Yost, Oliveto, and Cris Rodriguez to Lakeland, though the latter will probably spend the most time in the Complex League and at 18, isn’t really expected to handle the Florida State League just yet. Fellow top 2026 IFA signings, OF Randy Santana and C Manuel Bolivar will be fun to track in the Dominican Summer League starting in June.
