Boot camp was about to convene Sunday as Ryan Garko assessed the past week’s Tigers draft and new recruits he and his cohorts will begin shaping this week on the back lots at TigerTown, in Lakeland, Florida.
“Brought four in Friday,” said Garko, who heads player-development for the Tigers. “As soon as they sign, they’re on a plane to Lakeland.
“We’re really excited about the process and all the new blood coming in. I think every pick is going to inject the system with talent, top to bottom.”
The Tigers took 21 players in last week’s historically talent-deep MLB Draft. Some already have signed, while others like first-round pick Max Clark, and second-choice Kevin McGonigle, are expected to be Lakeland-bound as early as this week.
This would rank as happy news for a Tigers farm that needs more than a few good men.
You can list, fairly quickly, the position players who look like future Comerica Park stock:
Colt Keith, Parker Meadows, and Justyn-Henry Malloy at Toledo. Justice Bigbie, this year’s Erie version of Kerry Carpenter, thriving at Double A. Jace Jung having an OK first season of professional baseball at West Michigan. And, thanks to his past two months, Luke Gold, pretty much the sole hitter at low-A Lakeland.
Pitchers have, on balance, been as spotty in 2023:
Jackson Jobe at Lakeland has healed from some lower-back ills and Saturday night hit 98 with his fastball alongside a slider that whirred at 3,100 rpms. This is a 20-year-old man who for various dazzling reasons was taken third overall in the 2021 draft. A year from now, it’s easy to imagine a countdown has begun on Jobe’s ticket to Detroit.
There have been a handful of starters elsewhere — Troy Melton, Brant Hurter, sometimes Keider Montero — who resemble guys who can help AJ Hinch’s team in Detroit, maybe by next season.
But that was the thought a year ago when Wilmer Flores and Ty Madden were boring through hitters at Erie with high-octane stuff that looked as if it was Motown-bound. Each has had a setback season, even if Flores of late has been better.
There are relievers, for sure, evolving, notably Tyler Mattison and Blake Holub at Erie.
But where have been the big hits, the wider talent a team drafting as invitingly as the Tigers have been choosing the past eight years should have been processing and tacking onto a roster in Detroit?
This is why last week was so different, and so potentially transformative.
Detroit’s scouts exploited, from all appearances, the lushest cast of national amateur talent the MLB Draft has offered in years, if ever.
Their picks not only were certifiable in skill levels — and in 2023 the science has made this a far more predictable endeavor — but were maximized by the new Tigers front office’s manipulation of bonus money.
The Tigers had the second-fattest bonus pool (awarded by MLB as a draft-budget, strictly policed) next to the Pirates and wielded it brilliantly. It enabled them to draft (and likely sign) later picks, including prep stars, who were in particular abundance this year and who should make this a multiple-talent haul for Detroit.
“The upside of some of these high-school position players moving through the system is that they’re on a different development cycle,” Garko said, using Keith, the current best prospect on Detroit’s farm, as an example.
“Colt would be a college junior this year. Instead, we’ve had three years to develop him.”
The Tigers will weigh innings loads for pitchers and how much they already have thrown in 2023.
But, otherwise, Garko said, “We want all of them to make a professional debut this summer.”
How long before what’s happening on the farm, even within the past week, shows up in Detroit — and can make a legitimate difference?
Keith will be in Detroit sometime next spring, possibly out of training camp. He has at least been buoyant at third base and second base and should become part of Hinch’s infield mix. His left-handed bat will be, as they say, useful.
Meadows probably hits Detroit a bit later, although all of these timetables are subject to health — theirs and their teammates. It yet isn’t known if Meadows is a regular or will become part of an outfield rotation, but his speed, defense, and left-handed power promises Hinch some weaponry, especially if, for example, Akil Baddoo is traded, as always is possible for a role-player of his brand.
Malloy is a huge question, all because of defense. He does not play third base with adequate skill to be an authentic option there, and neither is he a certified outfielder. But his bat will help and his bat will count, especially when there will be designated-hitter options in 2023.
Bigbie is the year’s most interesting offensive story. He is a right-handed hitter — emphasis on hitter — who caught fire in 2023, much as Carpenter did in 2022. But he’s a corner outfielder, and the Tigers are loaded with those. Expect him to be next year’s in-the-wings resident at Toledo.
That, for now, leaves pitching to assume a pecking order as Hinch and his boss, Scott Harris, size up 2024 probabilities.
Not only have Madden and Flores hurt Detroit’s depth with their so-so years, Dylan Smith, another starter who this summer was supposed to have been within spitting distance of Comerica Park, or at least Toledo, is hurt and isn’t in a team’s immediate plans.
It adds a dash of seriousness to other candidacies: Hurter at Erie, Melton at West Michigan, and Jobe, on the comeback at Lakeland.
As for the troops this month parachuting onto TigerTown’s tracts, they’ll be introduced to the farm hatchery and to a meticulous process honing talents that baseball demands be on a high and sophisticated scale before big-league uniforms are donned.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.