One of the most anticipated minor league debuts this season will be Zach Swanson embarking on his first pro season. The right-hander is another in the Detroit Tigers stash of prep pitchers they’ve drafted over the last three years who immediately went down with a major injury. The theory, that they could add a lot more high end pitching talent by taking multiple prep pitchers for overslot bonuses beyond the early rounds, rather than paying full price for just a few college arms each draft, makes
sense, but it’s a long-term play and nothing has gone right so far.
Is this the new market inefficiency? Get the big injury out of the way early and go from there? No, no it is not, but the point of taking risky prep pitchers is the chance of hitting a home run because of their upside, and Swanson, like all of them, has a lot of upside. The Tigers are going to need this to pay off over the next few years with a couple of them developing into starters and relievers. For Swanson, that process should begin this spring.
Swanson was taken in the ninth round of the 2024 draft, but the Tigers paid him roughly late third round money, $722,500 to forego his commitment to Oregon State. The Washington state, Toutle HS, grad is yet another pitcher taken out of the Pacific northwest over the past few years, as the Tigers scout that area heavily.
The 6’3” right-hander was pretty well known on the national senior circuit, but had an inconsistent final year of high school ball. At his best, he showcased big-time stuff with the potential to develop into a top shelf power pitcher. His delivery was still fairly raw, but Swanson was a reasonably good basketball player as well, and the Tigers like that athleticism as a predictor of the ability to make mechanical adjustments and develop good balance and a repeatable delivery.
Swanson was up to 95-96 mph as a senior, though more typically sitting 92-94 mph. He has high spin rates on his fourseam fastball, and can spin the slider up to 2800 rpms, which is borderline elite. It’s a two plane, frisbee style slider in the low to mid 80’s, sometimes looking more sweeperish, and at other times snapped off for more bat missing depth. Swanson wasn’t always getting consistent break on it in high school and needs to develop plenty of feel to snap it in there consistently. He has a decent curveball and changeup combination, but on draft day they were both fairly crude.
The Tigers will presumably be working with Swanson on raising his arm angle and learning to block himself better with his lead leg. In high school he had a fairly simple delivery without a ton of push off the rubber. As a result he tended to fly open with some excessive head whack, while his arm angle drops into a low three-quarters position through release. That delivery required a lot of upper body effort to throw hard, and comes with a tendency to sail pitches to his armside. That’s not ideal for efficient velocity and command, so adjustments will be required.
In high school, he looked a little bit like long-time farmhand Alex Faedo, who, despite being a top college starter and a first round pick, needed a lot of work to use his lower half more effectively and improve his fastball shape with a higher arm slot. Fortunately, Swanson projects to be a better athlete on the mound, with more velocity projection and a similar quality slider to Faedo. There’s certainly plenty of relief risk in the fact that Swanson has two strong offerings and needs to develop a third pitch, but he’s got a long road ahead just to develop his command. They can worry about his future role later.
Swanson worked in camp after the 2024 draft, so the Tigers did have an opportunity to start coaching him up before his UCL tear in the buildup to the 2025 season. He went on the full season minor league injured list in mid-March last year, but the surgery seems to have occurred before spring camp opened, so hopefully by May or June we’ll see him out in the Complex League, or even in Lakeland if he’s made some nice strides during the rehab process.
We haven’t seen Swanson on a mound since the spring of 2024. At the time he was a hard throwing right-hander with a nasty slider at his best, who generally threw strikes, and who has a lot of physical projection ahead. With nearly two years elapsed, and likely a full two years between his final high school start and his pro debut sometime later this spring, a lot may have changed. At a minimum, we’d like to see Swanson built up physically during the rehab process. There’s a lot of work that can be accomplished without throwing, and we’ll be looking for strength gains and better use of his legs to power his delivery when he returns to action. Without some advancement in that regard, and with a lot of time lost to injury, Swanson’s projections will turn to more of a control over command relief project than the power starting pitcher the Tigers were looking for when they drafted him.
Of course, pitching is a bulk business. The Tigers have paid well overslot bonuses to roughly a dozen prep pitchers in three drafts under Scott Harris. They’ve stockpiled a lot of talented young arms and so far have struggled to keep them healthy and developing. Meanwhile, they’ve done a lot better to date hunting undervalued college and JUCO pitchers. Troy Melton, Jaden Hamm, Jake Miller, and Andrew Sears have all moved quickly into the upper minors, with Melton already having some success, while Hamm’s rough 2025 sinking his stock somewhat for now. It will be interesting to see if the Tigers are encouraged to alter their draft strategy somewhat, while still expecting that some of this youth group will put the injuries behind them and start making progress.
Right now we’re still working with little more on Swanson than we knew on draft day. Any more setbacks will push his grades and projection down, and we really need to see at least some of the expected physical development this year. For now, there’s nothing to do but wait for Swanson’s pro debut and see what has changed and what hasn’t in the interim. Hopefully we see a stronger, more refined young pitcher on the mound, ready to start the work of developing his command and a third pitch to round out his arsenal. The potential in his fastball and slider are really intriguing. Now he needs to start making up for lost time.
