As low-profile Tigers farm prospects go, Corey Joyce has a place somewhere in a not-so-prominent pecking order.
It’s a status with which Triple-A Toledo manager Anthony Iapoce has issues, especially when Joyce, 24, is batting .278 in 25 games for the Mud Hens, with a .402 on-base average and .883 OPS.
“I really don’t think he gets lost in the shuffle,” Iapoce said Sunday morning, speaking from Victory Field, where the Mud Hens were about to play Indianapolis. “I’m saying this is a middle-infielder for the Toledo Mud Hens, and if anyone thinks he’s getting overlooked, this guy is a baseball player.
“He plays the middle of the diamond, he’s always in the right place, he has definite leadership qualities, and he gives you good at-bats every night out there.”
Shortstop, second base, even third base — Joyce is a right-handed batter and 12th-round pick in 2019 (North Carolina Central University) who has enough substance to suggest his semi-subdued farm profile could change.
“Range, arm — all the big-league stuff,” Iapoce said. “At some point, he’s going to find himself helping the Tigers, or some team, win games. He has what it takes. He can move around, he can play third base, and if we needed him there, we could use him in the outfield.”
Joyce’s four seasons on the Tigers farm have been, collectively, low on commotion: .232 cumulative batting average, .350 on-base, .374 slugging, .724 OPS. He has 20 career home runs, two this season, including one Saturday night at Indy.
This follows a heavy May that saw him in 20 games for the Mud Hens bat .313/.436/.516/.952.
Included in all his data are some weird 2023 splits.
Joyce is batting .154 against left-handed pitching, .244 against righties, which is the way it goes this year at Toledo where Justyn-Henry Malloy, Parker Meadows, and others also tend to be turning upside-down the notion that opposite-side pitching is some sort of advantage. (Malloy, a right-handed stick, is batting .308 against right-handers, .180 against lefties; Meadows, who bats left-handed, has an .864 OPS against left-handers, .694 against righties).
Joyce seems to forgo all the conventions and conversations and simply plays good baseball.
“I think one of his strengths is being able to get on base,” said Iapoce, who has seen Joyce walk 13.8% of his at-bats, with a 25.5% strikeout rate that’s higher than the Tigers, and Joyce, would prefer. “He can go from 0-and-2 to 3-and-2 — he’s competitive with two strikes and can go deep into the at-bat. And he uses the whole field.
“I think that can be a big help to him. So often, during struggles, guys go to pull-mode. But he’ll shoot one to right field and take a knock.”
Which is only fair. Joyce, after all, perhaps has taken enough knocks from those who haven’t been paying sufficient attention to a Triple A infielder with some not-so-sudden credentials.
Magno becoming the man?
Check out last year’s numbers at high-A West Michigan: 47 games, 2.37 ERA, with 62 strikeouts in 49.1 innings.
Dig into this season’s stats, which include a 1.63 ERA in a combined 16 games (eight apiece at Triple A Toledo and Double-A Erie), with 32 strikeouts in 27.2 innings.
Good stuff, especially when it’s the work of a left-handed reliever, one Andrew Magno, a 15th-round Tigers pick in 2019 from Ohio State.
“He’s been pretty dominant,” Erie manager Gabe Alvarez said. “He’s been able to overpower some guys. He always had a good breaking ball, but adding some velocity to the fastball makes his other stuff play up.”
That fastball now runs 93-96, Alvarez said, “which is plenty good.”
Velocity, it seems, has been no issue. Magno on occasion hit 98 at Toledo.
No, Magno’s move to Erie included orders to work on his control, which has been a bit of a demon. His walks-per-nine innings ratio during four farm seasons with the Tigers has been a tawdry 6.2. It was 6.8 during his early stint this spring at Toledo. But since returning to Double A things have been better: only three walks in 15.2 innings, with 17 punch-outs.
Secondary pitches are a definite mix: three of them, Alvarez said, before correcting himself.
“I shouldn’t say three pitches — he’s actually got four, a change, as well as a curveball and a slider,” the skipper said, adding that the curve more likely will be Magno’s choice as a primary breaking pitch.
Wanted: Prime-time starter
The Tigers have been treating the Injured List to a steady stream of patrons, especially on the pitching side, just when it looked as if they were going to reverse their 2022 nightmare.
Depth is a sudden concern, especially when two Erie starters, Ty Madden and Wilmer Flores, haven’t been having the seasons anticipated.
That makes Keider Montero a possible story as he settles in with the SeaWolves after graduating from high-A West Michigan.
Montero’s last start, Thursday at Richmond, was a doozy: six innings, two hits, two walks, nine strikeouts.
“He was able to get into good counts and put guys away,” Alvarez said of a 22-year-old, right-handed starter. “The velocity has always kind of been there for him – always mid-90s, with some 97s here and there.
“But I thought the biggest difference (Thursday) was his command. He has stuff. And the stuff plays: He has a swing-and-miss slider that gives him two plus-pitches.
“When he has command, he’s a front-line pitcher.”
Jung decides enough is enough
He struck out four times in four at-bats Tuesday at Dayton. His batting average was a sickly .221.
And then Jace Jung got mad.
He went on a five-game, 13-for-17 blitz that included a 3-for-5 outburst Sunday in West Michigan’s 12-5 loss at Dayton.
Jung, who plays second base for the Whitecaps and who was last July’s first-round Tigers pick in the MLB Draft, is now batting .274 after a siege that included two home runs and three doubles.
He is expected to move to Double-A Erie when Colt Keith, the SeaWolves scalding hitter and new second baseman, gets an anticipated midseason bump to Triple-A Toledo.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and a retired Detroit News sports reporter.