Trading for the 2024 season has officially closed. As expected, the Detroit Tigers dealt away resurgent starting pitcher Jack Flaherty to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Catcher Carson Kelly and relief arm Andrew Chafin were shipped off as well, both joining the Texas Rangers in separate deals. Finally, Mark Canha was flipped to the San Francisco Giants in the final deal at the deadline for the organization.
In all, the Tigers came away from this year’s trade deadline with eight new prospects to buttress the team’s pipeline. The best of them will enter the upper echelon of Tigers prospects, but you’re not likely to find them all on a top prospects list.
Let’s take a look at what each of these new prospects brings to the table, as well as what their value is compared to established Tigers minor leaguers.
C/1B Thayron Liranzo
The headliner among all the prospects acquired over the last couple of days has to be Liranzo. He’s a thumping switch hitter who plays a premium position, which led him to be placed on the FanGraphs top 100 prospects list this summer. Other publications have been slow to adopt him into their top prospects lists, likely because his offensive output in High-A has been slower than his tools would suggest.
A slash line of .220/.344/.356 doesn’t exactly strike the fear of god into opposing pitchers. It’s heartening, though, to see him maintain an exceptional 15 percent walk rate during his age-20 season. He’s still on the young side for his current level.
Evaluators prefer Liranzo’s swing from the left side. He’s more natural there and gets to every bit of his power, with multiple sources citing exit velocities well north of 110 miles per hour. His right-handed swing is reportedly stiffer. From either side of the plate, he’s a distinctly power-over-hit type batter. He makes good swing decisions and pulls the ball plenty, but a stiff swing leads to trouble adjusting to breaking balls. It’s worth noting that he tends to hit a few too many grounders as well.
As a catcher, Liranzo is nothing special but he has a good chance to stay behind the plate. His 6-foot-3 frame is not too big for the position and his blocking actions and receiving have been steadily improving over the last 18 months. Baseball America grades his arm as plus, though inconsistent accuracy continues to plague him a bit. Offensively potent catchers are one of the most valuable resources in the game, and if Liranzo puts the pieces together, he could be one of the best. For that reason, he’ll be among the top five players next time we re-rank the Tigers farm system.
Liranzo has been assigned to the West Michigan Whitecaps.
SS Trey Sweeney
Detroit will be Sweeney’s third team in the past calendar year; he was selected by the Yankees in the first round of the 2021 draft and shipped off to the Dodgers last December. The past three seasons have been unkind to Sweeney’s prospect stock as evaluators have cooled on the potency of his offensive game.
He was never a top-tier defender at the shortstop position, so he’ll need to hit to be an effective big leaguer. Thus, he fell to be the 28th-ranked prospect in the Dodgers system this year, according to Baseball America.
This season is his first at Triple-A, as well as his first with a subpar stat line at the dish. His .254/.334/.427 performance would be perfectly fine in most levels of organized ball, but adjusted to the offensively booming environment of Triple-A, it’s 13 percent below average. Sweeney is also striking out more and walking less than he ever has before. Strangely, this dip in performance has happened under the watch of perhaps the savviest hitting coaches in the game.
If you’re looking for reasons to believe in Sweeney, here are a few. The power that made him an exciting shortstop prospect in the first place is still intact. His 13 home runs tie him for 18th place out of 92 hitters with at least 200 plate appearances in the Pacific Coast League this year. He’s cut down on popups and is converting fly balls into dingers at a higher rate than ever.
Barring disaster, Sweeney will soon usurp Ryan Kreidler as the Tigers’ next man up on the infield depth chart. On those merits, he’ll probably wind up somewhere near the middle of our next top prospects list.
Sweeney has been assigned to the Toledo Mud Hens.
RHP Eric Silva
The Giants gave Silva a fat bonus as a high school draftee in 2021 and he decided to forego his commitment to UCLA as a result. For a time, that looked like a great decision for all parties involved, but his stuff backed up as the 2023 season wore on and he was eventually moved to the bullpen, and he continues to occupy a multi-inning relief role this year.
He’s throwing in Double-A, which is an aggressive assignment for a 21-year-old and hitters there are struggling to connect with his pitches. When they do, though, he tends to get punished and has a 4.35 ERA and 33.7 percent groundball rate in 41 1⁄3 innings pitched.
The main draw with Silva is his pair of breaking balls: a slider and a curveball which he spins up to 3000 rpms. He can induce whiffs from batters on both sides of the plate with the curveball. Baseball America expressed concern about Silva’s simplistic pitch sequencing, but as a relief arm, he can lean on that curve more heavily than he did as a starter.
Silva has always struggled with strike-throwing which has remained mostly true as a reliever. Showing a fastball that averages mid-90s velocity, he doesn’t have the high heat to terrorize hitters with a low-command profile. Until that perks up, I’m not likely to include him in my top prospects in the organization, but others may disagree because his curveball is so juicy.
Silva has been assigned to the Erie SeaWolves.
RHP Joseph Montalvo
When the Rangers pulled Montalvo in the final round of the 2021 draft, it was a small investment in a high school arm who intrigued them. So far, it appears they were correct to believe in his upside.
He’s now 22 years old and eating High-A hitters alive. He has a 2.44 ERA across 13 starts this year, fueled by a strikeout rate well north of one per inning while giving up walks on just 7.8 percent of plate appearances. He’s a bit older than his competition, but he was exceptionally raw entering pro ball and the Rangers had opted to take it easy with his progression.
Although he can dial it all the way up to 97 mph at times, Montalvo’s fastball is typically a low-heat offering. The pitch is most dangerous for its high spin rate, which affords it a lively entry into the upper part of the zone. He also throws a slider and changeup, which both Baseball America and FanGraphs prefer as the better part of his arsenal. The slider is a sweeper-ish pitch that he throws in a lower velocity band than the changeup, and he uses them with pretty standard platoon splits.
Montalvo utilizes a low-effort delivery and doesn’t present with any severe head whack or arm recoil issues — all of which are green flags for the development of his command. It will be important for him to make good on that projection for his talent profile to work if he can’t tap into a consistently higher velocity for his fastball.
Placing him among the team’s top prospects will be tricky. Detroit does a better job teaching fastball command than the Rangers and I like the idea of Gabe Ribas’ staff working a cutter into his arsenal. It’s bad practice to count those chickens before they’ve hatched, though.
Montalvo has been assigned to the West Michigan Whitecaps.
RHP Chase Lee
Lee is a sidearm pitcher who rushed to Triple-A just a year after the Rangers drafted him in 2021, and he’s spent the last two and a half seasons at that highest level of the minors. His backstory sounds like something from fiction — he was a walk-on shortstop at Alabama who converted to pitching by teaching himself using YouTube. He was delayed this season by a hip injury that landed him on the 60-day IL to start the year, but he’s returned to the mound and thrown 10 2⁄3 innings so far.
Lee makes his living with a slider he uses nearly half the time. It’s a high-spin offering that functions as his out pitch. Across the entirety of his time in Triple-A, hitters have whiffed on 34.3 percent of their swings at the pitch.
He throws a four-seamer and sinker as well, strictly divided based on opponent handedness, and both live in the bottom of the zone at 89 mph. FanGraphs reports that he doesn’t spot the pitch well enough to alleviate concerns about its velocity, which limits his ceiling severely as a major-league pitcher.
It’s unlikely that Lee will ever claim a spot in our top prospects list, but there’s a non-zero chance you’ll see him in Detroit before the season is over. Lee is in his Rule 5 evaluation year, meaning he’ll need to be added to the 40-man roster or be exposed to other teams to select in this winter’s Rule 5 draft.
As an experienced pitcher with a unique profile who has consistently stuck out boatloads of batters, it makes sense to give him a look in the majors before making a final decision on whether to protect him. If the decision is negative, it wouldn’t cause the Tigers much heartburn to try and sneak him through waivers.
Lee has been assigned to the Toledo Mud Hens.
RHP Tyler Owens
Among the pure relief prospects the Tigers brought in this week, Owens is probably the best. He was a draft pick of the Braves who was flipped to the Rangers over the winter and spent the 2024 season with Texas’ Double-A affiliate in Round Rock.
There, he’s been statistically effective but unspectacular. Owens has done a great job at run prevention, with a 2.80 ERA in 35 1⁄3 bullpen innings and limiting walks. However, he’s also striking out less than a batter per inning and inducing fewer ground balls than at any other point in his career.
As with any minor league reliever, Owens’ traits on the mound matter far more than his statistical results. His fastball shines as a high-90s offering with an exciting movement profile that plays up out of his relatively low release height. He can get a good amount of whiffs on it, and that pitch forms the basis for his profile.
He also throws a hard slider that melts into a cutter look at times. This is the look of a pitcher who the Tigers can tune up well, and it won’t be surprising to see him in Detroit in the not-too-distant future.
At first glance, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Owens get a mention at the backend of our next top prospects list. We’re not afraid to rank high-floor relievers with exciting traits. If Owens can get more consistency with his breaking ball — something the Tigers are good at teaching — he could be a capable middle reliever and possible setup man.
Owens has been assigned to the Erie SeaWolves.
This was during Tyler Owens first save back on June 6. Fastball shows some late life, spots it here on the corner then goes high for the final out. pic.twitter.com/9uzF58Pose
— Rogelio Castillo (@rogcastbaseball) July 29, 2024
C Liam Hicks
Hicks’ story is that of an underdog who was lightly recruited out of high school and parlayed his JUCO opportunity into a solid minor-league career. He demonstrates exemplary patience and discernment at the plate and has nearly matching career strikeouts and walk numbers. FanGraphs went so far as to call his hit tool ‘special.’
The trouble is that, at just 5-foot-9, Hicks is unable to get to even average raw power. He’s hit a career-best four home runs in 80 Double-A games this year, and at 25 years old, doesn’t have the physical projection for more. As a merely average defenseman, he’s a one-trick pony.
Unless he magically becomes stronger or improves behind the plate, Hicks has the look of ultra-high-quality organizational depth. He’s a great fit for the values this team wants to emphasize up and down the organizational ladder and isn’t likely to make stupid mistakes if he’s given a chance at the big-league level. His ceiling for now is as an up-and-down third catcher, and as such, is probably going to be on the outside looking in when we assemble our top prospects list.
Hicks has been assigned to the Erie SeaWolves.
RHP Ricky Vanasco
After trading Carson Kelly on Sunday, the Tigers scooped Vanasco off waivers from the Dodgers in exchange for cash considerations. A former Rangers prospect who was reinvented as a relief pitcher in Los Angeles, he made his major league debut during the first half of this season and was brutalized by major league hitters in just two innings. He now occupies a spot on the Tigers’ 40-man roster.
Vanasco throws just two pitches. His fastball averages 95 miles per hour and his hard curveball is most notable for its exceptionally low spin rate. Neither pitch draws plus grades, but the curve is better and can elicit weak contact. Vanasco is a prospect in the sense that he hasn’t lost rookie eligibility, but we’re viewing him more as an optionable depth to be used in the case of injury and put on waivers if a higher-priority player is ready for their major league debut.
Vanasco has been assigned to the Toledo Mud Hens.