Lakeland, Fla. — One measure of better life in the Tigers farm chain is on display at TigerTown headquarters just behind the right-field fence at Marchant Stadium’s Publix Field.
It comes in the bright light of Flying Tigers manager Andrew Graham. He is a native of Australia, a one-time Tigers catching prospect, and a skipper who does not fool around. Nor does he offer false hosannahs. All the more reason why that shine on his face is telling.
What he understands about his 2022 team is that he finally has talent at the plate and on the pitcher’s mound.
Cristian Santana, Manuel Sequera, and Izaac Pacheco are teen shortstops who have a chance — most likely Santana — to bring a big-league club in Detroit a future starter at that most precious of all positions.
In the outfield, there is the $2.8 million, 18-year-old, with a body that looks as if it was cut from the maker of Miguel Cabrera. Roberto Campos is an inch shorter that Cabrera, much leaner, but imposing, with a bat that’s beginning to sprout. Jose De La Cruz, another sculpted right-hand batter, is chopping down on strikeouts that COVID’s lost season of 2020 probably helped fuel, by the score, a year ago.
Pitchers with arms that bear substantially more voltage than most staffs Graham has managed in his 12 years running Tigers farms teams are also in supply.
Jackson Jobe, last year’s third overall pick in the MLB Draft; Brant Hurter, a seventh-round pick from Georgia Tech a year ago, and a 6-foot-6 lefty who probably will be headed soon for Single-A West Michigan; Garrett Burhenn, ninth-rounder last July from Ohio State, who also could be migrating north as summer nears; Aaron Haase, RJ Petit, Cristhian Tortosa — much of the cast has college seasoning, or like Tortosa (23), are older.
More: Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe’s job at Lakeland: A steady path to Detroit
But age doesn’t greatly matter — not in development of arms and bats. Nor does a team’s record, which in Lakeland’s case is still a few ticks below .500, overly bother minor-league skippers who understand it’s the talent you help process for eventual delivery to higher-level teams that matters most.
“I’m here to help you,” Graham was saying late last month in his office outside the clubhouse at TigerTown — the same clubhouse that houses the big-league Tigers during spring camp.
Graham was quoting his fundamental mantra and mission as Lakeland’s manager.
He will especially enjoy grooming that shortstop troika he’s now juggling.
Santana, 18, is considered by Latin American talent snoops to perhaps be the best of Detroit’s recent imports. He bats right-handed, stands 6-foot, weighs 165, and two years ago got the biggest bonus the Tigers ever have paid for an international tee: $2.95 million.
He has been missing from Graham’s lineup the past three weeks with an oblique strain. But before he departed, after Lakeland’s game on May 7, he already had slammed three homers in his first 21 games.
“He was hitting the ball — hard,” Graham said, explaining how, in Santana’s last game before going on the injured list, he had blistered a liner that left the bat at 102 mph — and was pulled in by way of an outfielder’s diving catch.
“And a great kid. I had Willy Adames (former Tigers prospect hotshot, now playing for the Brewers) and there’s a great comparison between the two players in how they go about their business.”
Pacheco is another of the shortstop contestants — but only technically. He’s primarily a third baseman and, at 6-foot-4, 225 pounds, with a left-handed stick, it’s possible first base, someday, will a final destination.
Pacheco not for a moment has had the Tigers second-guessing their third pick in last July’s draft, which came as Pacheco was departing Friendswood (Texas) High. Already, he has six homers in the vast Florida State League ballparks.
“And he should have had another,” Graham said, speaking of a ball that was way-out at the Port St. Lucie park before a heavy wind turned it into a ground-rule double.
He also carries an .812 OPS, with 26 walks in 43 games. His hitting skills, Graham said, with a nod, is “why he’s a 19-year-old kid in the three-hole (batting third in Lakeland’s order).”
Sequera is another case altogether. His upside is substantial. His right-hand bat can do damage, even at age 19. All of this was known even before last summer when he was the Florida Complex League’s Most Valuable Player after slamming 11 homers in 46 games, and rolling up an .823 OPS, playing for the Tigers East team.
Sequera is 6-1, 170, is from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and has a grand future — if he can chop down on strikeouts and, yes, swing at hitters’ pitches rather than reach for pitches that are behind those 35 whiffs and seven walks in Lakeland’s first 39 games.
He has five home runs and 11 doubles in those initial 39 games.
And then there is Lakeland’s outfield, with those two big lads and their right-handed bats tempting their Tigers bosses into thoughts about future pitch-destruction.
Thoughts, anyway.
Campos is 6-2, 200, with issues along the lines of Sequera’s. He has struck out 40 times in 42 games and has 13 walks. He has a .238 batting average, and three homers, but only 10 extra-base hits. His on-base percentage is worrisome, even now: .295.
Still, Graham says, “When he hits the ball, he crushes the ball. But we’ve got to get him to have that pitch come to him.”
In other words, to wait, to let the pitch “get deep,” as they say — and to be more selective.
“But he’s got tools,” Graham said.
De La Cruz has six homers in 31 games. The arithmetic, the home-run ratio, if it were to follow a 20-year-old up the Tigers’ farm ladder, hints at major power. Which is what the Tigers pretty much were counting on when they signed De La Cruz four years ago to what then, and even now, was grand-prize money: $1.8 million.
But he has 247 strikeouts in 170 minor-league games. And unless that frequency somehow eases, De La Cruz will be yet another international teen whose dream matched the Tigers’ vision, only to be thwarted by baseball’s cruelties.
Until then, the Tigers aren’t giving up. Neither is Graham. He enjoys this 2022 version of Flying Tigers baseball. All because a craftsman manager has some legitimate material to shape.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.