u/no_one_canoe

Figure an off-day is a good time for a little round-up:

Position Players

• Our 10th-round pick from last year, Edian Espinal, catcher out of Central Florida, is cleaning up in A-ball. Walking as much as he strikes out, popping a few homers, stealing a few bases. Some batted-ball luck in his favor, but somebody to keep an eye on. He turns 22 in September, so he's just a touch younger than average for his level.

• Jesus Pinto (19-year-old Venezuelan IFA) is also doing pretty well in A-ball, drawing a lot of walks, not striking out too much, showing off a little power and speed. Also getting a bit lucky, but he's only 19, so he's performing well against guys mostly two or three years older than he is.

• Last year's first-round pick, Jordan Yost, is likewise looking solid for Lakeland. No power yet, but the walk-to-strikeout ratio looks really good, and he's getting on base at a nice clip. Also just 19.

• Bryce Rainer, who got pushed to high A in a hurry to make room for Yost, is holding his own there, although his strikeout rate is a huge red flag. You want him to cut that literally in half to feel good about his odds of success in MLB.

• Brett Callahan is probably a depth guy (13th-round pick back in 2023, doesn't show up in most top prospects list, turned 24 this past winter, so he's a touch older than he "should" be to still be a prospect in AA) but he has quietly performed well at every level. He's in Erie now, still looking very well rounded. Hitting homers, stealing bases, drawing lots of walks, not striking out a ton, not due for any obvious regression. Contact rate has fallen a lot since 2024, however.

• John Peck (7th round in 2023) has similarly steadily climbed the minors, but gets a little more prospect buzz than Callahan. Real power, good speed, solid defense. Doesn't have great contact skills and doesn't walk much, but he doesn't turn 24 for a couple more months and he's performing well in AA already.

• Top prospect Thayron Liranzo is striking out too much in AA, but he's walking a lot too, and he's homering once every 16 plate appearances, so you can't complain too much (although his contact rate is worryingly bad). That's like a 40+ homer rate for a full season. Also, unlike most of these guys, his expected stats are way better than the results he's getting, so we might see him get even better. (And he's two years younger than the average at his level.)

Pitchers

• Pitching is tough to evaluate to begin with, and at this point only a handful of guys in the org even have 30 innings pitched (for comparison's sake, there are 29 Tigers minor league position players with 150+ plate appearances, but only 11 pitchers who have faced 150+ batters), but last year's 2nd-round pick, Malachi Witherspoon, looks pretty good in A-ball. Terrible ERA, but all the peripherals are strong. Bad luck with almost 30% of his fly balls going for homers (average even for a bad pitcher is like 15%).

• Last year's 15th-round pick, Charlie Christensen, is doing even better. He has a 1.64 ERA to go with god-tier peripherals. He's struck out 36% of the batters he's faced this year.

• Ben Jacobs (3rd-round pick last year) has been outstanding across A and high A, looking like maybe the second-best Tigers minor league pitcher so far this year. ERA jumped when he leveled up, but that mostly looks like bad luck (his strand rate fell from almost 90% to under 60%). Crazy strikeout numbers, over 40% of batters faced for West Michigan.

• The best? Not a prospect, really, but still intriguing: It's Woo-Suk Go, who was basically untouchable in AA and, although his walk rate has come up a lot in AAA, is still getting a crazy number of strikeouts (like Jacobs, he's at 40% for the season, the best rate of his career by far—even in the KBO he never came close) and really limiting hard contact. Could be help for our disaster-prone bullpen.

MLB-Ready Guys?

Do we have anybody else in Toledo who can help? Well, maybe. I wouldn't mind seeing Corey Julks or Ben Malgeri get a shot at filling out the outfield; they can hardly be worse than Perez, McKinstry, and Jones have been. The problem with calling them (or Clark or Anderson, see below) up is that they're not on the 40-man roster. We already have a bit of a roster crunch coming, because Sweeney and Meadows will need spots when they return from the IL (as will a half-dozen pitchers). Short is presumably expendable (although credit where it's due, he's played a lot better than our other bench guys and has helped stop the bleeding), but I don't see the Tigers cutting Perez or Jones (pre-arb guys) or McKinstry (despite the disaster this year, he was so good last year and so versatile and valuable for years before that, I figure they're going to give him a lot of rope). Maybe working a trade for one of the minor-league guys on the roster?

Those guys are Eduardo Valencia (catcher, pretty good but blocked by Rogers for the time being—and yeah, Rogers has been ass with the bat, but he's a good catcher, the pitching staff loves him, he's a glue guy, etc.); Liranzo (not ready for the bigs); Jace Jung, Hao-Yu Lee, and Gage Workman, all of whom have been up and down already this year; and Trei Cruz, who is having a terrible year in AAA. Figure we want to hang onto Lee (who only just turned 23), there's no sense selling low on Cruz, and we don't want to fuck with our catching depth, which leaves just Jung and Workman as trade candidates (and personally I'd like to see Jung get another longer chance in Detroit).

What about Max Clark and Max Anderson?

There's the roster-space problem, but beyond that, are they ready? Anderson is having a solid season, but not exactly setting the league on fire. He has a very, very similar profile to Lee, and although he's a bit older and theoretically more advanced, projections see them putting up near-identical numbers (and obviously the Tigers like Lee enough that they went to him first even though Anderson had a longer track record in AAA). I don't think we should expect Anderson to hit the ground running in Detroit any more than Lee did.

Clark, though…he slumped through May and his overall batting line looks pretty pedestrian at this point (he's been an average AAA hitter, albeit with good baserunning and defense), but if you look under the hood, there's some eye-popping stuff there. His plate discipline numbers are INSANE. Among AAA guys in his age range, only Luis Lara is even in the same universe. Even measured against the whole pool of AAA players, guys five and six years older than he is, he's among the very best in chase rate, whiff rate, zone contact rate, etc. He's not getting to his power consistently, but if he can put the ball in play, run well, and play solid defense, especially considering what a disaster our outfield has been, I say find some roster room and call him up.