The Detroit Tigers are finally in the midst of a long-needed rebuild. Is the talent beginning to filter toward the major league level already?
We are in our third offseason at Call to the Pen of putting together top 10 prospect lists for every organization in baseball. Today’s list is the Detroit Tigers.
The Process
Our team prospect lists are compiled by Benjamin Chase, who has spent time doing plenty of watching via MiLB.tv of every organization in baseball along with talking to a very wide array of scouts who have seen players in person to hone his own opinion on players. That allows for a wide coverage on players from the Dominican Summer League all the way to the major leagues.
These lists are the opinion of Ben, and his process is heavily weighted on his own view, but also on trusted views of others. Typically, each system’s list of 10 is peeled down from a consideration list of 50-75 players. There will be some weight given to a player who is closer to the major leagues, but often these opinions will be different than some of the “major” lists out there. Feel free to comment at the end of the list with any questions you may have!
With that out of the way, let’s dig into today’s list:
Detroit Tigers system review
Tigers list for 2017
Tigers list for 2018
Tigers 2018 minor league top performers
After an extended run that utilized the farm system exactly the way the farm system should be used by a team in the hunt on a yearly basis, the Detroit Tigers have reached the end of their competitive window. They didn’t reach it gracefully, leaving some still-nasty big league deals that are essentially untradeable, but virtually any veteran that had value has now been shipped out.
That leaves pressure now on the Detroit Tigers farm system to produce talent, and while the team was never plentiful with prospects during their run, one thing consistent about the team was that there were always excellent players flowing through the farm system that could either work their way to the big league club or be key pieces in a trade.
The pitching side of things has certainly progressed much more quickly than the hitting side, but the Tigers do have some intriguing players working their way up the system.
Let’s start with the countdown, starting with a player that fell outside of the top 10, but was picked up in 2018 via the draft or international signing and is worthy of extra attention going into 2019…