Lakeland, Fla. — One way to beat the heat on a searing, 95-degree Florida morning is to chase ground balls.
It gives you something to focus on other than the perspiration spilling like Niagara Falls from your Tigers t-shirt.
Kevin McGonigle was playing shortstop during Thursday morning infield drills on the Gehringer Field at TigerTown, taking practice grounders swatted by Ryan Sienko, the Tigers’ director of coaching and field coordinator, who is working this week with the kids at Lakeland.
Sienko spanked a two-hopper up the middle as McGonigle, who has a bullet of a first step, sprang to his left.
The ball ricocheted off the mound’s pitching rubber, skidded toward second base, then caromed off the bag as McGonigle reacted, in a split second.
McGonigle reached behind his back — and gloved it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sienko said to a staffer who had been catching relays at home plate.
“You win!” Sienko yelled to McGonigle, whose 18-year-old face bore a grin as wide as a dugout.
“That was unbelievable,” Sienko repeated.
McGonigle trotted off the field after Sienko called a halt to another day’s exercise in dehydration. The last play, he agreed, was not exactly something a guy practiced.
“Yeah, it hit the bump (mound), hit the bag — and hit my glove,” McGonigle said, as he and his sweat-soaked togs headed for a shaded batting cage to continue work on his more celebrated skill, hitting a baseball.
Thursday’s acrobatic final act was mixed with earlier, less sensational moments of shortstop artistry that had drawn from Sienko a straightforward compliment shouted across the Gehringer infield:
“Very nice, Kevin,” Sienko said after McGonigle had nimbly charged and snagged a slow bouncer.
And to think it really wasn’t the glove the Tigers were choosing last month when they made McGonigal the MLB Drafts 37th-overall pick.
It was an 18-year-old’s left-handed hitting skills.
“McGonigle might be one of the best pure hitters in the class, at least in terms of bat-to-ball skills,” said MLB Pipeline’s scouting report, which ranked McGonigle ahead of July as the 33rd-best prospect in America.
From Baseball America, which viewed McGonigle as one of the nation’s “elite pure hitters” and the draft’s No. 27 talent: “He consistently strings together quality at-bats with a mature offensive approach and rarely strikes out.”
None of the national appraisers differed much from an overview offered by Mark Conner, the Tigers’ director of amateur scouting, who was, well, rather pleased when McGonigle sat there, at No. 37 on the draft’s first evening, waiting for Detroit to carry through on earlier conversations with him and make him Detroit’s second selection, after outfielder Max Clark. “He is one of the best pure high-school hitters in the class,” Conner said later that night of July 9. “His bat-to-ball skills are up there with probably anybody in the class, based on the evaluations of our staff.”
Report cards hadn’t much changed as of Thursday.
Making the grade
McGonigle, who late last month bypassed his Auburn scholarship to sign a $2.85-million deal with the Tigers, has played in three Florida Complex League games after checking into the TigerTown processing plant.
He is 3-for-9, with a double, two walks and no strikeouts. He also has gotten aboard the hard way — getting hit by a pitch.
“Holy cow,” said Tigers FCL manager, Mike Alvarez, 65 years old and a one-time, minor-league pitcher who has spent decades in development with various organizations — the Braves principally — before he joined the Tigers ahead of the 2022 season.
Alvarez was shaking his head at skills seen and words that must be guarded, lest he overly lavish one player. Young minds are impressionable, the Tigers staff realizes, and pumping a bit too much helium into heads a few weeks into a first professional baseball summer is not in anyone’s best interests.
So, while mentioning select moments from McGonigle’s early work (“Mac stole third base twice in one game”), Alvarez has been more inclined to speak inclusively about the draft class at large:
Clark. McGonigle. Carson Rucker. Brett Callahan — newbies, and all but Callahan are prep kids — who are getting their baptism in the FCL, as opposed to across the TigerTown tract at Marchant Stadium, where low-Single A Lakeland already has plugged-in college draftees Max Anderson, Bennett Lee, Jim Jarvis and David Smith.
Players from last month’s draft had until July 25 to sign. All but two of the Tigers’ 21 picks signed and began checking into Lakeland as soon as the contract ink dried.
“Everybody (Tigers staffers) was talking about it during the early workouts, which I couldn’t see because we were playing (FCL) games,” Alvarez said, “but everybody was saying, ‘Wait till you see this guy,’ and, ‘Wait till you see this guy,’ and well, I couldn’t wait.
“Now I’ve seen them, and kudos to the scouting department. They did a tremendous job.”
Alvarez was sitting inside his office at the TigerTown headquarters. A whiteboard hung on a wall above his desk, detailing each day’s schedule and workout plans.
“You read about what was seen from these kids, and what was reported, and all you do is get excited,” said Alvarez, a Cuban-American from Hialeah, Fla., who has a kind of avuncular, tribal-chief manner the Tigers want precisely for prospects of this age and experience.
“Wow. It’s a really impressive draft class. In every way. You get excited for the organization. It’ll be fun to see how long they can all play together. Hopefully, it’s all the way. And it’s going to be gorgeous.”
McGonigle is 5-foot-10, 185 pounds, with muscle to match a substantive personality. Only a couple of months ago, he was wrapping up classes at Monsignor Bonner High, in Drexel Hill, Pa., outside of Philadelphia.
Now, he is a professional baseball player. A game is his vocation. He shares quarters in the Tigers dormitory, bunking in a room with Clark, on the same floor as Rucker and third-round pick Paul Wilson and others.
There’s a certain irony to this frat-house arrangement. Had these gents, all of them good students, opted for their respective college scholarships rather than Tigers contracts, they this month would be checking into college dorms.
“A lot of people look down on it, but it’s better than a lot of people think,” McGonigal said, acknowledging the dormitory comparison. “There’s a bathroom right across the hall, which is huge. The beds are comfortable, which is huge.
“We went out and got a TV, so we have literally everything we need. I’m not complaining — it’s free housing.”
With great food, they agree, courtesy of the Tigers’ nutritional team and some deft chefs. They have their share of fun. Last weekend, a handful of the rookies pooled money and in the dorm’s entertainment room watched a UFC fight.
On Thursday nights, they tend to head for Buffalo Wild Wings. Sunday evenings, it’s a half-hour trip to Tampa for a Top Golf getaway.
Heaven, for an 18-year-old.
“I wanted this as a job, and I finally got it,” said McGonigle, who concedes Auburn was a tempting opportunity that resulted in a tough phone call to the Auburn staff after he opted for the Tigers.
“I couldn’t be more proud to be doing it with a better draft class.”
The learning curve
McGonigle was talking Wednesday afternoon in the cool of the Tigers clubhouse, joined by Clark and by Wilson, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound left-handed pitcher from Oregon who last month also, narrowly, turned down his scholarship (Oregon State) and signed with the Tigers for $1.7 million.
Clark, of course, was the big winner last month: $7.7 million paid for his signature, which kept a multi-skilled, left-handed-hitting outfielder from Vanderbilt, not that Clark was seriously considering college — not when his draft status remained premier and was guaranteeing many millions of dollars.
They admit, all of them, that this has been some brand of time warp. Only a few weeks removed from high-school halls, from quartering at their parents’ homes, in distant hometowns, to being here, in this broiling-hot, old-Florida haven, playing baseball.
“I think learning how to be a pro is one of the hardest things about the game, and doing it at 18 years old is obviously harder,” McGonigle said. “It’s definitely a learning curve, but it’s been a fun one.
“It gets back to people even outside our draft class, older guys who’ve been here a few years. They’re always open to talk with you, about any questions. It means a lot. I’ve learned so much from those guys in the cages: What to do in the field, or baserunning.
“And the coaches are top-notch. I’ve learned so much.”
Alvarez is pleased. Once more being measured in his words about any particular player, including McGonigal, he said:
“Their own self-awareness is what stands out to me. It’s like they know who they are. Even with their youth.
“I know they’re 18. But I don’t look at them that way. Right now, each of these guys is a Detroit player, and I overlook the fact they just got out of high school.
“They are baseball players, no doubt.”
With a couple of 18-year-olds at the top of the heap — who can hit.
Alvarez paused and smiled. He wondered if what he was about to say was rooted in his Latin culture.
“I heard this a long, long time ago, before I got to high school,” he said. “You could always tell that a guy could hit — or not — by the way he walks to the plate.
“When these guys go up there, I’m over there at third base (coaching) and I’m thinking, ‘There are going to be runners on base every inning.’
“That’s what I’m looking at.
“It’s incredibly fun to watch this young group filter in — almost like they’ve been promoted from one level to the next.
“They’re pretty sharp. Pretty sharp.”