LAKELAND, Fla. — Andre Lipcius was nervous, wondering what was going to happen:
Are the Tigers gonna do it?
Are they gonna put me on the 40-man roster?
Or was he going to end up with a different team?
His entire life could change. It was Nov. 15, 2022 — the day the Tigers had to make a decision about Lipcius, which boiled down to two options:
A.) Put him on the 40-man roster to protect him from being selected in the Rule 5 draft.
B.) Leave him off the 40-man and hope nobody would take him.
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But leaving him unprotected was risky because Lipcius had a fantastic season in 2022, climbing to Triple-A Toledo, where he hit .302 with three homers in 46 games with an .826 OPS.
Waiting for the Tigers to make a decision, Lipcius was at his house in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his fiancée.
“I was waiting all day,” Lipcius said. “I knew there was a shot but not everyone gets put on there.”
About 15-20 minutes before the deadline, the Tigers called him and told him the news: He was being added to the 40-man.
“It was just awesome that I got that call,” he said.
An analytical approach
The Tigers drafted Lipcius in 2019’s third round out of Tennessee, where he studied nuclear engineering. His favorite class? Thermodynamics.
Yes, he’s a smart kid.
“What does education mean to you?” I asked.
“The smarter you are, the more you can apply it to other things,” he said. “With engineering, it’s a lot of problem-solving, and I feel like that can translate over to baseball.”
“How does it translate?”
“It helps you evaluate situations better, which I feel is the thing I’m really good at,” he said. “So I think it’s a very good crossover when you’re a good problem-solver, and you can understand situations and know how to play the game better.”
It’s like his superpower. In an age of analytics, Lupcius has a computer whirring under his helmet, reading the pitcher, analyzing the approach and making pitch-to-pitch adjustments. It allows him to find consistency in an ever-changing game.
“I just think it’s consistency, to be honest,” he said. “More consistent at the plate. Doing the right things and playing the game the right way.”
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Hanging together in big-league camp
Lipcius has been in Lakeland, going through informal workouts.
But it will turn official on Monday.
“Just really excited to be here,” he said. “It’s really cool.”
It is his first big-league camp. But there are plenty of familiar faces.
Considering he started 2022 in Double-A Erie and then moving to Toledo, he played with many of the young players in this camp.
“Being back in AA and then just going throughout the year, meeting a lot of good guys and having a lot of fun doing it and getting the chance to play in AAA and doing pretty well there with another really good group of guys,” he said. “It was really fun.”
He is extremely close with catcher Dillon Dingler, his roommate in Erie.
“Just an awesome guy to be around,” Dingler said. “He doesn’t come off this way but Andre is a very, very smart individual. He’s a gamer. He’s played an awesome third base and hit really well and had a ton of success moving up. So, I was super-happy for him. I was happy he got put on the 40-man.”
They would hang out, have their morning coffee together and talk baseball.
“He’s a very personable guy,” Dingler said. “I love hanging around with him.”
Now, they are hanging together again.
In big-league camp.
Now a man of many gloves
Lipcius has climbed through the Tigers system because of one primary reason: He can hit.
In his three years in the Tigers’ organization, he has hit .263 with 26 homers, 244 strikeouts and 164 walks over 317 games.
“He’s really gotten through the minor leagues with his bat,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “Pretty good strike zone judgment, handles lefties fine. And he will move around a little bit (to different positions). We’ll see where his playing time in camp is. I think long-term we’d love him to play second, third, first, maybe a little bit of outfield.”
Lipcius is prepared for it. He arrived in Lakeland with gloves to play second, third and outfield.
“He was pretty fast to tell me that he’s he brought every glove imaginable, which is great,” Hinch said. “I think the young players are getting the message.”
To climb to Detroit, it helps to play more than one position.
“Ready to play whatever,” he said. “Honestly, infield or outfield, whatever it may be, I’m ready to play. I’m ready to go. Ready for whatever keeps me on the field.”
Doesn’t take a nuclear engineer to figure that out.
But it doesn’t hurt.
Analyzing every situation, in a blink, is his superpower.
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Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.
To read Seidel’s recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.