Sunday evening, the Tigers selected Bryce Rainer with the 11th overall pick of the 2024 MLB Draft. Rainer is a shortstop from Harvard-Westlake High School in California. There was little connection between Rainer and the Tigers during the draft process — he was a riser who was initially below the Tigers’ range when the draft cycle began and quickly hauled himself into likely top-10 status.
The Tigers drafted Rainer with dreams of seeing him grow into a top of the order threat. He added muscle over the winter and tapped into more of his offensive potential this Spring than scouts had seen before, leading many to project him to grow into eventual plus power. He also overhauled his swing and approach at the plate, as detailed by Evan Petzold in an article for the Detroit Free Press.
“The word has been there’s a little bit too much swing and miss,” Halpert said. “He took that to heart, and in the offseason before senior year, and throughout the fall and winter, he made that a top priority, that he’s going to flatten his path out, eliminate some swing and miss and continue to grow as a mindful hitter. This year was wild, just how much improvement he made in such a short period of time.”
The Tigers have struggled in recent years to help offensive prospects make adjustments and unlock the full potential of their swing, which makes it all the more encouraging that Rainer was able to take it upon himself to craft a meaningfully improved offensive profile. The question now becomes whether he can maintain that level of performance against professional pitchers who he can’t simply outwait with the confidence that he’ll be served up a meatball to crush.
Rainer’s value is largely tied up in his bat. He plays a premium position for now, but he lacks the quick twitch you’d expect from a typical shortstop. There is some disparate opinion, with Baseball America pretty optimistic that he can stick at shortstop, and others more concerned about him filling out that frame and moving to third base.
We’ve seen a few 4.2 run times to first quoted by various scouting services, which is average for a left-hander. Others have him more often as a bit below average. He has the defensive skills, good hands, and a 70 grade arm to make a smooth transition to second or third base and perform at a high level. He is still somewhat lanky and may be able to improve his speed and lateral actions with pro conditioning.
Unlike many shortstops who are forced off the position, Rainer is a former pitcher with mid-90s velocity off the mound. He can unquestionably make the throws necessary to play the hot corner. He’ll almost certainly take reps all over the infield once he enters the pro ranks, even if the Tigers intend for him to play up the middle long term — no prospect is too valuable to play multiple positions in Detroit’s developmental system.
In a rare display of cohesion in the draft community, Rainer was rated as the tenth best prospect in this draft class by MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs, and Baseball America. Expect him to fit in somewhere near the fourth or fifth spot in our next organizational prospect ranking.
The 11th overall pick is assigned a slot value of $5,712,100, which represents a little less than half of their total pool of $11,921,800 in available money for draft bonuses. In a class that has been widely considered somewhat weak near the middle of the first round, many expected that the Tigers would target a player in the first round who could be signed for less than the slot value of the pick. Rainer’s bonus demands haven’t been made public, but the expectation is that it will take something near full slot value to sign him. He’s committed to Texas and there isn’t much leverage available for the Tigers to push his number down significantly.
Any cost savings from the first round would afford the team some flexibility to buy out a pricier player who is dropping somewhat or a high schooler they especially like. That’s how they wound up with both Max Clark and Kevin McGonigle when the dust settled after the 2023 draft, and it’s bearing early fruit as Clark is widely regarded as one of the best prospects in the game and McGonigle has now forced his way onto top-100 lists.
It seemed like a sound strategy to from our perspective, especially if the Tigers had roughly similar grades on a number of players in the 10-20 range of this draft class. The cash may not be available to spread around, though, if Rainer is a higher caliber of player than Detroit was expecting to be available.
The Tigers also own the 49th and 72nd overall picks, which will be made tonight. Stay tuned here at Bless You Boys for a brief analysis of each pick.