Lakeland, Fla. — A pitch would shoot from the machine 60½ feet away and Max Anderson’s right-handed bat would unload.
High and far, pitches soared and fell, like a firework’s arc, beyond the left-field fence and toward a grove of trees that lay between Lake Parker and the Heilmann Field on TigerTown’s tract at Lakeland.
This swing — fluid and quick — belonged to a 21-year-old infielder from the University of Nebraska who was the Tigers’ second-round pick (45th overall) in this month’s MLB Draft.
“He’s special, and I’ve had a chance to be around really good players, coaching them and coaching against them,” said Will Bolt, the Cornhuskers head coach, during a Thursday phone conversation. “What he can do with a bat in his hands — it’s different.
“The bat-to-ball skills are as good as it gets.”
Ryan Garko liked what he saw Tuesday. Garko heads Tigers’ player development and had taken in Anderson’s hitting session, as well as that of first-round pick Max Clark.
“They impact the baseball,” Garko said afterward, with a figurative wink, letting understatement say it all about two hitters’ skills.
Anderson, though, differs entirely from Clark.
Anderson in May finished his junior season at Nebraska. Clark a few weeks ago got his high school diploma.
Anderson bats right-handed. Clark is a lefty.
Anderson is a hitter, first, and infielder a distant second. Clark has a gifted bat and ranks as an uber-skilled defender and speedster who can also throw bullets.
Clark signed for $7.7 million. Anderson, chosen 42 picks later, agreed to $1.43 million even when his MLB approved “slot” — MLB’s prescribed allowance for a particular player at a particular draft spot — was $1.91 million.
And there is the intricacy to a pick that became one of the Tigers’ most pivotal in 2023’s haul.
Anderson signing “below slot,” as they say, was no insult, no downgrade on his talent. Rather, parties agreed to a lower retail price for a hitter the Tigers deeply wanted.
The enticement for Anderson and his agent, Josh Harwell of Warner Sports Management, was knowing Anderson might otherwise have gone later in the draft at a correspondingly lower price.
By locking in at No. 45 overall, money was secured early and in the same range as that which would have come Anderson’s way deeper in the draft.
The Tigers meanwhile, got a $500,000 break with which they could sweeten offers to other prep players (Kevin McGonigle, for example, their pick at No. 37, who they were still chasing Thursday).
‘A professional hitter’
All good, in both parties’ view, and especially for the Tigers when this draft’s focus was on bringing offense to a bat-shallow farm system.
“The round and everything didn’t matter to me,” Anderson said Tuesday, after his TigerTown workout had ceased. “What mattered was getting to a team that values me as a player and that will help me out and give me a shot.
“Second, third, fourth round — it was always going to be in that vicinity. I was always told the baseball draft is crazy.
“I was just going to go with the flow and see what happens.”
Anderson’s past spring with the Cornhuskers was staggeringly good: .414 batting average in 57 games, with 21 home runs, a .461 on-base percentage, .771 slugging, and 1.232 OPS.
The Tigers had been paying attention, closely. So had other teams, notably the Orioles, Mariners, Brewers, and Braves.
Detroit’s scouts chatted with Anderson before the 2023 season. Talks continued this spring to a point where both sides were comfortable with money in the 45-overall range.
“We wanted to make sure Max was in position to make an impact early, and I think Detroit was able to look at a prospect like Max and at his ability to really move and slide into that lineup in Detroit,” said Harwell, whose group also represents Tigers catcher Eric Haase.
“Max is a professional hitter. You can look at the data and everything tells you he is a professional hitter. He’s also one of the most pure baseball people I’ve met in my life — a guy who wakes up wanting to play the game.
“We had a lot of interest in him from 40 to 70 (draft position). And we wanted to make sure where he went was the right place for Max.”
What the Tigers believe they got in Anderson is a right-handed bat that can crush pitches and complement, along with Spencer Torkelson, all those left-handed sticks owned by Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, Colt Keith, Parker Meadows, and Jace Jung as a roster core steadily coalesces in Detroit and on the Tigers farm.
Anderson has talent that could put him at Comerica Park inside of two years.
“I think his hand-eye coordination and body control are what really sets him apart,” said Bolt, who recruited Anderson after he played at Millard West High in Omaha, Nebraska. “It’s his ability to get to all the different parts of the strike zone, and handle all different types of pitches.
“He’s just got an exceptional knack for doing that.”
Anderson is 6-foot, 215 pounds. He wears glasses while he bats — a choice he made some time ago and simply finds helpful and comfortable — but spares the specs when he sits and talks, as he was doing Tuesday on the observation deck above TigerTown’s quadrant of backfields, all as a Florida thunderstorm poured rain just minutes after he and Clark and others had finished BP.
Officially, he is an infielder — a third baseman or second baseman. Second base was his home this season at Nebraska. And it’s second base, mixed perhaps with work at designated hitter, that figures to be his station in pro baseball.
“I feel like I can help the team and play defense, as well,” Anderson said. “I’m not just a guy to throw out there and have someone say, ‘Hopefully, he’s going to field the ball.’
“I feel I can help them out, anywhere I’m at.”
Play to your strengths
Bolt agrees, acknowledging that Detroit wanted Anderson for a specific skill: He rips pitches.
“You’ll see guys who maybe look a little more athletic, but who don’t control their bodies as well as he can,” Bolt said. “He just has such a good understanding of what he wants to do as a hitter.
“This season, he really sold out to his strength, which is to right-center and the big part of the field. Once he realized, ‘I can still drive the ball that way,’ he really just took off. His sophomore year (.295/.344/.509/.853, with 10 home runs), I think he was trying to elevate the ball to his pull-side a little more. It played away from his strengths as a hitter.
“You look this year at his spray chart on home runs, and it looks like he’s a left-hand hitter. It’s crazy.”
Mark Conner, who now heads the Tigers’ amateur scouting, was one of those inspectors who saw in Anderson a brand of bat Detroit has been scrambling to bring to its farm — and, as soon as possible, to manager AJ Hinch’s lineup.
“All we kept hearing is, ‘He can hit,’ and if your look at his performance this year, he can back it up,” Conner said of Anderson.
“He has a very intense swing that can do damage. He can stay through the zone a long time.”
Anderson had 20 walks and struck out 29 times in 269 plate appearances this season, good if not great percentages.
“I wouldn’t consider him a patient hitter,” Bolt said. “He does have a good understanding of the strike zone, but probably chases a little more than he would care to see. He also can barrel-up bad pitches more than most.
“I would hesitate to try and change his approach all that much. I think that’s what makes him such a good hitter. And I think that’s what he did this year, figuring out what pitches he could do damage with.”
Anderson knows as much as the next guy about where he might fit in, yet this summer. He realizes there are options: Maybe a few warm-up games with the Florida Complex League kids.
It’s also possible he will move, yet this month, into Low-A Lakeland’s lineup.
All he can do a few days into professional baseball is soak up this new realm and its trappings. He had never been to Lakeland, he said. He only knew of this Tigers complex Detroit fans view as a kind of baseball Holy Land.
“I like everything here, all the fields, right at your fingertips,” Anderson said as morning rain pounded hard on the deck’s roof. “You can go work out, go hit, all within two minutes.”
His adjustment differs from that of an 18-year-old like Clark, who a week earlier had checked out of his bedroom at his parents’ place in Franklin, Indiana.
It’s also similar to what Anderson dealt with three years ago at Lincoln, Nebraska.
“Yeah, this is like being a freshman at college again,” said Anderson, who, like Clark, is bunking at the TigerTown dorm, with Wake Forest catcher Bennett Lee (sixth round).
This is easier acclimation, Anderson said, and not only because TigerTown has “great food.”
It’s because a man who has loved baseball with ardor he cannot quite describe is experiencing such bliss. But he’s also watching out for guys like Clark who haven’t had time to add more crust.
“When we were freshmen, we went through it — living alone,” Anderson said. “Whatever we can do to help guys like that, high school guys, we’re going to do it — making sure you’ve got a schedule planned, not missing any meals, or going without breakfast.
“All those things you kind of learn your freshman year we can kind of show them.”
Except, of course, how to hit.
Everyone’s on their own there, Anderson knows, even as he realizes the kid from Indiana has a pretty good grip already on that skill.
As does a gentleman from Nebraska. Pro ball is rough, hitting is even rougher, but the Tigers weren’t fooling around with the draft’s 45th turn. Anderson is their bet to lend Hinch a hand, and soon.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.