With the 114th pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, the Tigers have selected right-handed pitcher Michael Massey.
Pitching for the renowned Wake Forest pitching corps, Massey was viewed as one of the most electric relief prospects in the nation after a massively successful 2023 season. As a sophomore, he had an astonishing 16.6 strikeouts per nine innings in 27 relief appearances.
The Deamon Deacons moved him into the rotation for his junior year and things didn’t go quite so well. He struck out fewer hitters, though admittedly still well over a batter per inning, but finished the year with diminished stuff and a 4.76 ERA in ten starts. He also struggled with nagging injuries through the season, which worsened the issue and he explained could be a mental burden at times.
Massey’s fastball is already quite the weapon. It’s not overpowering in the old-school sense that he can touch triple-digits, instead, sitting at 93-94 miles per hour and touching as high as 97 mph on occasion. Instead, what makes it so deadly is a deceptive delivery that makes it tough to read the ball coming out of his hand and a mind-boggling average of 20 inches of induced vertical break, per Baseball America.
For those not baseball nerdery-inclined, induced vertical break (or IVB) is often what makes a fastball “model-friendly,” and refers to the amount of difference between expected drop based on gravity and induced drop based on spin. High-quality four-seam fastballs often have IVB figures in the high teens, scraping 20 inches at times. Averaging that figure is just bonkers.
Backing up his fastball is a slider, which everyone agrees is good, and a curveball, which there is disagreement about. His late-breaking gyro-style slider is thrown in a lower velocity band than you might expect and lives in the low 80s. It’s capable of drawing whiffs and works well in tandem with the high fastball, which is also a swing-and-miss pitch. The idea is to let hitters get greedy, swinging under the fastball and over the breaking ball.
He used a changeup as a starter, which was his worst pitch. He has also toyed with the idea of adding a splitter but hasn’t followed through on that yet. Both it and the curveball were additions to his pitch mix meant to make him more effective in the rotation but lacked consistency and will probably be shelved for the time being once he enters pro ball. The Tigers may try to rehabilitate his stuff without moving him back to the bullpen immediately, but his future is almost certainly in relief, where he has the upside of a leverage reliever.
Detroit’s next pick is 147th overall.