We generally cut our prospect rankings off when a player turns 26 but as right-hander Ty Madden has just a small amount of major league experience and missed his age 25 season with a strained rotation cuff that took longer than hoped to rehabilitate, we’ll make an exception. Long an interesting starting pitcher prospect with a deep, solid repertoire of pitches and average command, Madden has been unable to build on his 2024 debut due to the injury. If he’s finally beyond the shoulder trouble this
year, the Tigers suddenly have another quality pitching prospect they weren’t necessarily counting on.
Madden was selected by the Tigers in the Competitive Balance A round of the 2021 draft with the 32nd overall pick. A hard-throwing starter with a deep pitch mix for the Texas Longhorns who put together a great college career, Madden’s stock faded a little going into draft day as concerns about his fastball shape started to crop up. The Tigers bet that his mid-to-high 90’s velocity, strike throwing, and good pair of breaking balls were enough to make him a future mid-rotation starter. He was occasionally a bit home run prone but still he really breezed through the minor leagues averaging 120 innings in 2022-2023 until he hit a wall at the Triple-A level in 2024.
With the Toledo Mud Hens, the fastball got exposed as advanced hitters and former major leaguers teed off on it for a 1.94 HR/9 mark. Madden was forced to nibble more, his walks spiked, and the whole profile got messy for a while. He turned things around by attacking with a deeper pitch mix in the summer months, and he was able to make his major league debut and contribute to the pitching chaos effort with solid work in six appearances as the “bulk guy” though he struggled in his one playoff appearance. Expected to give the Tigers some starting depth behind Jackson Jobe, Madden instead had some shoulder trouble in the spring which turned out to be a rotator cuff injury, and he never got back on the mound.
Now apparently healthy this spring and trying to rebuild his old velocity, the primary issue remains his fourseam fastball. In all other respects, Madden looks the part of a power right-hander with good breaking stuff and plenty of velocity. He’s always been able to reach back for 96-98 mph when he wants it, and learned to mix in his sinker to give hitters something else to think about when they’re sitting fastball. The problem is that his fourseamer had a classic bad fastball shape, and he and the Tigers have been working to improve it several years now.
The fourseamer has always gotten a pretty pedestrian amount of ride, and doesn’t run all that much either. It’s right in that middle ground where it’s often hit hard. He and the Tigers have tinkered with this quite a bit trying to optimize the shape. Some efforts to move his slot a little higher seemed to coincide with the shoulder issue, but he’s been so durable otherwise since his college days that wear and tear is plenty good enough as an explanation. Either way, the fourseamer has continued to be hit harder and miss less bats than it’s velo and look out of his hand says it should.
Madden has made one appearance in major league camp this spring, throwing two scoreless innings against the Phillies back on February 25. He’s since been optioned to minor league camp, but what we saw in that one outing was promising. His other pitches still looked very solid, particularly the cutter-slider combination. Even better, his fourseam velocity was back up to 94.4 mph, which is pretty close to his average throughout his minor league career. Even better than that, he was popping 19 inches of induced vertical break. That’s an above average mark. He’s typically averaged more like 16 or 17 inches, so that may be the sign that the move to produce more ride is paying dividends now. If that sticks, he should miss more bats and get a lot more weak contact in the air, and that would quickly turn him into a top 100 caliber starting pitching prospect.
He threw all six pitches at least once in that outing, and left the strong impression that he could be a help to the Tigers’ pitching staff this season. He needs time to stretch out and get his command fully back in form, but if he’s improved the fourseam shape finally, Madden may again look like a mid-rotation starting pitching prospect this spring. If that was more of a flash in the pan outing and the improved ride doesn’t really stick, there’s still a good chance for him to help as a spot starter or middle reliever by leaning into the cutter and slider more, and simply throwing that deeper pitch mix instead of relying on the fastball.
This is obviously a big season for Ty Madden. He turned 26 two weeks ago, and while he has all three options remaining, his 40-man roster spot means it’s time to become useful at the major league level. There are a variety of ways in which he might do that, but the improvement in fourseam shape is intriguing enough to keep him starting in Toledo with time to get his legs back under him fully. If all goes well, the Tigers might suddenly have a pretty good starting prospect again. If not, Madden’s deep pitch mix still gives him ways to contribute in middle relief or even a setup role as the 2026 season unfolds.
