Big-league baseball’s cruelty says we should wait, probably a long time, before deciding whether a MLB Draft has been good or not to a particular team.
No need here to wait on the Tigers’ picks from Sunday through Tuesday.
They got multiple Comerica Park players from their 21 turns that began Sunday evening and stretched into Tuesday.
I saw it happen: the scouting rationales that went into those grabs, the data on those picks, the psychology as much as the physiology that became part of their judgment — and how the pocket calculator spun at high-speed in making their MLB-policed $15.7 million draft budget work, even deep into Tuesday’s final rounds.
This — this draft — is why baseball in Detroit is destined steadily to get better and avoid the decade-long plummet that has sabotaged a great, original baseball town. It’s a first act in what, at last, will be better talent procurement for the Tigers.
Do you think Scott Harris didn’t know this? That he came to Detroit last autumn to run the Tigers thinking payroll was his problem and not what the farm system has been delivering?
Nonsense.
His first big move, made his first official day on the job, was to change scouting directors. He replaced one person with two: Rob Metzler, who it should be noted helped run drafts for the handsomely built Tampa Bay Rays, and Mark Conner, a battle-gouged scout who most recently worked with the San Diego Padres.
The dividends were clear even Sunday night.
There is risk, always, in drafting baseball players. There are no guarantees, ever. Acknowledged fully.
But the skeptics aren’t winning this wait-and-see game. The Tigers will end up viewing this draft as a watershed moment in turning around a franchise that has been waiting since the 1970s to assemble a brand of talent (plural) Harris, Metzler, and Conner gathered inside of 72 hours.
Max effort
Begin with their first pick, Max Clark, the prep outfielder from Indiana.
Clark was no mystery. We wrote about him at-length in April and steadily placed him within the top five talents in a 2023 draft deeper than baseball has seen in years, if ever.
If there was a surprise Sunday — and there was, in that everyone in baseball thought Detroit was going with a college hitter — it came when Clark was taken ahead of University of Florida slugger Wyatt Langford.
In choosing Clark, what is, and will continue to be, different about the Harris administration is their obvious quest for high-upside talent that carries risk but greater reward — if you’ve done stellar research to match what now is central to Detroit’s draft philosophy.
Clark beat Langford on an overall scale of skills. Langford has more power. He has more of a dossier because of his years playing in the celestial Southeastern Conference.
But what he could not do, even at age 21, is offer Detroit the categorial depth and breadth of talent the Tigers got in Clark.
Within an 18-year-old from a school 25 miles south of Indianapolis, the Tigers have the essence of a two-way player — and two-way players are difference-makers in reaching the playoffs and playing deep into October.
Clark’s left-handed bat already carries lightning, if not power that might or might not be prime-time. Where he wins over Langford is with his speed, his defense in center field — and an arm that could have made him a MLB pick as a pitcher.
The broad range of skills is how teams get a full-inning dividend from an extraordinary talent.
There were other factors involved Sunday — and here is what sold me on how deeply Harris and his team are offering the Tigers insights not seen in their drafting since the omnipotent scouting director Bill Lajoie was running Detroit’s mid-‘70s hunts.
They brought in Clark for a workout. They put him through all the checklists. And they tossed in some difference-makers, unique to Harris and his team.
They already had seen, during his senior year at Franklin Community High, that Clark was able to make handset adjustments necessary to improve his power and exit velocities. A big piece of evidence there, because as Harris and all mentioned Sunday night, adjustments are fundamental to developing on the farm and enduring in the big leagues.
Included in that Tigers workout were social and psychological tests. They needed to see how he might interact with people on various levels. Would that high-wattage personality, that exuberance, mature into a competitive spirit and hold up during a long season, inside of a clubhouse that can change temperature in the span of a single night’s game?
Check.
Then they hit him with blindside questions, with surprises, all in a bid to see how he would react, because baseball is an emotional blast furnace with its failures and trials, and with its moments of bliss that also must be governed when you’re as blessed as Clark.
He impressed there, as well.
Bingo. Draft pick secured.
Financials only helped in making Clark the Tigers’ guy.
Money matters
It’s worth digging into some idle hour, how MLB works its draft “slots” — but in a nutshell, here goes:
Each team is allotted by MLB overall draft allowances, based on the previous year’s win-loss record, market-size, attendance, etc. The Tigers had the second-most money to work with in 2023 ($15.7 million, surpassed only by the Pirates).
MLB also authorizes how much you can spend, in descending value, for players grabbed in each round. The Tigers were obliged to offer their first-round pick — third-overall — no more than $8.9 million. The fourth overall pick, which was owned by the Rangers, was capped at $8.3 million.
The Tigers got Clark for fourth-slot money, saving some $650,000. What was Clark’s inducement? He might have fallen farther than the fourth slot. It was just fine for Clark and his reps to settle on a guaranteed $8.3 million and enjoy the cachet of being this year’s third overall pick.
Now, focus on that Tigers calculator, because never have I seen the Tigers’ draft math compute as it did this week.
Thanks to Clark’s discount, the Tigers had extra cash to sign prep players who happily opt for their college scholarships — if a MLB team doesn’t sufficiently sweeten the deal.
Kevin McGonigle, perhaps the “best pure hitter” — a cliché with foundation — of any prep player in America in 2023, was off to Auburn unless the Tigers were able to hand him something other than the $2.3 million MLB had budgeted for the 37th overall pick.
The Tigers clearly — since acknowledged by all parties, minus specific numbers — have gone over slot to eventually sign McGonigle, a second baseman with an immaculate left-handed swing.
The Tigers weren’t finished with their dollar-figures dance.
They next snagged, at No. 45 overall, Max Anderson, an infielder from the University of Nebraska who is a hitter more than he’ll probably be an eventual position-plus for manager AJ Hinch’s lineup.
Anderson would have gone a round or so later — and that was important for the Tigers’ draft finances and strategy. Metzler and Conner were sufficiently sold on his right-handed bat to get Anderson at a certain savings, which doubled as a dollar-figure appealing to Anderson and his counsel.
Now the Tigers were playing with house money: Three good bats already in the hopper for an organization screaming for offense.
And more wiggle room with which to sell kids deeper in this year’s later rounds.
Serious evidence in how strategic was this approach comes from these numbers:
Among the 21 players the Tigers took in this year’s draft, nine were prep stars.
In seven previous drafts, from 2016-22, the Tigers had taken a total of 10 prepsters.
This is a team going for high-return, high-WAR talents, which is what Lajoie was seizing nearly 50 years ago when he snagged high-schoolers named Trammell, Whitaker, Parrish, Petry, etc.
With that extra cash – you can over-shoot your MLB budget by 5% but only 5% before it costs you draft-pick penalties in future drafts — the Tigers were able to chase bigger game later, even Tuesday during rounds 11 through 20.
Note their 12th-round choice: Andrew Dunford, a 6-foot-7, 235-pound, right-handed, 18-year-old from Houston County (Georgia) High who is on his way to Mercer if the Tigers don’t sign him. But be prepared for an announcement, sometime between now and the deadline of July 25, that the Tigers have inked Dunford, all because they had carefully managed money during the preceding rounds and knew what it would take (via scout conversations) to land him.
Same with what might be the most interesting pick they made during Day Two or Day Three: a junior-college catcher from Toronto, one Brady Cerkownyk, a right-handed hitter, 6-1, 190, with a big arm — and 27 home runs the past season in 55 games.
Cerkownyk will cost the Tigers several hundred-thousand dollars more than typically is handed a 15th-rounder.
But their scouting, and their accounting, made this potentially one of the most fascinating grabs from the past few days.
None of these guys is yet wearing a Tigers uniform. Deals have to be solidified. Ink must dry. But most, if not close to all, soon will be processed at Lakeland, Florida, for what could be a far different group than the Tigers development team has seen in decades.
That’s because the Tigers just had, unequivocally, their best draft since a last world championship team, not coincidentally, was fashioned from those bountiful 1970s hauls.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.