Wearing a Mud Hens uniform, an hour drive south of Comerica Park, is a left-handed batter who in 2021 has bashed 20 home runs for Triple-A Toledo.
He has a .256 batting average. He has a .336 on-base percentage, and a fat .508 slugging percentage, which is how you roll up a robust .871 OPS.
And even as the Tigers hunt for offense, preferably left-handed power, it is clear Christin Stewart has no immediate future in Detroit.
He will be 28 in December. This autumn he will become a minor-league free agent. It is virtually certain he is headed elsewhere.
Why he didn’t cut it with the Tigers, despite stints in 2018, 2019 (104 games, 10 home runs) and 2020, is easily explained. He hasn’t hit with the crunch that’s essential when Stewart has no real defensive home.
There are the compound issues that have thwarted an outfielder the Tigers drafted in the supplemental round of the 2014 draft (34th overall) from the University of Tennessee.
It leaves him all but out of the picture in Detroit. His next baseball address is for Stewart and his agent to determine.
But one move makes great sense — financially and developmentally.
Japan, or Korea.
Stewart will hit lots of homers in Asia and, knowing that, teams from the Pacific Rim will pay him handsomely to play there.
It’s a whopping cultural adjustment. But that’s another reason why Stewart might want to ponder a stint there: He is a polished, eclectic gent who figures to handle it as comfortably as an American player can.
He also could find that it benefits him, and his market value, as a couple of one-time Japanese players named Cecil Fielder and Eric Thames, to name two, discovered.
Fielder hit 31 home runs in four seasons with the Blue Jays before, at age 25, taking a 1989 sabbatical with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. Bill Lajoie, then the Tigers general manager, hadn’t forgotten about Fielder and signed him to play for Detroit in 1990.
Fielder that season hit 51 home runs, the first big-leaguer in 13 years to clout 50 or more homers. He followed in 1991 with 44 bombs, then hit 35 and 30 in his next two seasons with the Tigers.
Thames had a lesser-profile story, but one that should interest Stewart.
Thames (no relation to ex-Tigers muscleman Marcus Thames) was 27 when he signed to play in 2014 with the NC Dinos of the South Korean professional baseball league. There he tore it up for two years before signing a three-year, $16 million deal with the Brewers for whom he proceeded to hit, during the next three seasons, 31, 16, and 25 homers (Thames played only 96 games in his 16-homer year of 2018).
Not all of these go-to-Asia-young-man exhortations are triumphs, of course. Ask scads of ex-big-leaguers about their experiences.
They are all over the spectrum, with the good stories at a premium and generally tied to gaudy years that might have earned a player a return trip to MLB life in America.
But it’s difficult to look at Stewart, professionally and personally, and not feel as if Japan or Korea might be his next best shot.
Consider what his Mud Hens manager, Tom Prince, said last week about Stewart.
“What a pro,” Prince said during a phone conversation. “He’s been a professional every day and night here. He wasn’t starting earlier in the year, so I told him we’d get him at-bats when we could.
“We had that young outfield to begin with, and he was patient,” said Prince, who was overseeing a cast that at various times included Derek Hill, Victor Reyes, Jake Robson, Daz Cameron, and JaCoby Jones.
“But he got his work in, and when he got his chance, he was ready for it and didn’t let it slip by,” Prince said, referring to June and July when Stewart was playing regularly and had OPS numbers, respectively, of .904 and 1.135.
“And when he does things like that, he’s a manager’s dream — especially with that power.”
That’s the plus report, of course. On the flip side, Stewart is batting .234 in August, albeit with six homers and an .892 OPS. He is batting .213 on the season against left-handers, with an .888 OPS. He has struck out 88 times in 309 plate appearances.
And, again, he can’t play the outfield with enough aplomb to make him more than a potential option in the big leagues as a fill-in defender, or, more likely, a designated hitter.
That’s the harsher critique, anyway.
“He’s adequate in the outfield, when you can put him in the right situation,” Prince said. “Now, if you put him in left field at Comerica Park, you’re not (as a manager) doing your job.
“But I’ve got two short porches here,” Prince said, speaking about Fifth Third Field in Toledo. “And if I’ve got JaCoby Jones or Derek Hill or Victor Reyes or Daz (Cameron) in center, they cover a lot of ground.”
It’s possible those old big-league days aren’t yet over yet for Stewart. He can, of course, re-up with the Tigers. Or, he could sign with another big-league club this offseason as he sees what minor-league free agency offers.
Or, he might want to ponder a season or two overseas. He might care to see if he can figure out a few things elsewhere and qualify for an eventual shot as a MLB team’s eventual answer at designated hitter.
If you’re into Hollywood scripts, that could, we suppose, potentially involve a team from Detroit. That team, the Tigers, is scheduled to lose its DH, one Miguel Cabrera, following the 2023 season. The fact the Tigers will have other options shouldn’t discourage a 27-year-old man who has a fair amount of professional baseball life ahead.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.