The Detroit Tigers came away from the 2024 MLB Draft lottery with the 11th overall pick. The Tigers have selected in that range just once since tearing the team down to its studs, when they drafted Jace Jung with the 12th pick in 2022. After crawling out of the league’s basement in 2023, Detroit wasn’t poised to make a real run at a top pick and had just 1.6 percent odds of drafting first overall. Detroit had the tenth-worst record in MLB, meaning the eleventh pick is just one spot lower than what they would have been awarded under the old system.
With just one draft under their belts, there’s not enough data to get a precise read on Detroit’s current leadership group. However, considering the entire body of work of Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg, VP of scouting Rob Metzler’s work for the Tampa Bay Rays, and director of amateur scouting, Mark Conner’s work in that role for the San Diego Padres, a few possible trends emerge that are worth monitoring.
Selecting Max Clark instead of Wyatt Langford with the third pick last year was an omen, and the Tigers boldly pursued prep talent at every stage of the draft. Then they acquired 2023 draftee Blake Dickerson in a cash trade with the Padres this offseason, after the Padres had originally inked the prep southpaw to a hefty bonus in the 12th round. Conner may be a driving force in this strategy. He was hired from San Diego, a team who has famously placed a premium on youth. Metzler’s background with the Rays isn’t dissimilar either.
There was some loud complaining about how far Clark is from MLB play after he was picked, and has intensified as Langford has rapidly blossomed into one of the best near major league ready hitters in the minor leagues. However, in a poll we ran in early February, the vast majority of Tigers fans voted that the team should draft the best player available with their first pick regardless of whether he comes from high school or college. People are philosophically on board, but you still have to pick the right player. Hopefully Clark proves them right, but it’s going to take a while to know.
The trick to going heavily prep in a draft is finding ways to set aside enough money to pay high schoolers enough in the middle rounds to pass on their college commitments without sacrificing talent at the top of the draft. For the Tigers, that only gets harder as their top pick dropped from third overall in 2023 to eleventh this summer. Accordingly, the amount of money they have to play around with has gone down as well. We’ll see if that affects their strategy, or whether they double down and just take as many tooled up prep players as they can sign once they get past the early rounds and the top college talent.
The projected top group of players in this class is primarily from the college ranks, which may present another challenge in finding wiggle room. Outside of the early round college talent at the top of the draft, most teams would prefer to take shots on high schoolers with a wider range of outcomes whose growth they can supervise from the start. However, it’s harder to evaluate and project players at that age, and consistently signing the guys you want requires a lot more ground work and planning.
When he took over the team last winter, Scott Harris spoke about dominating the strike zone as his guiding principle. That’s held true in a loose sense, but he’s been willing to bend that rule for excellent athletes and seems to be more particular about good swing decisions than bat to ball ability. Second round pick Max Anderson dominated at Nebraska, but scouting reports express concern about his contact ability springing from his kinetic chain and bat path, yet the team invested the 45th overall pick in him. Ultimately (and this may sound silly but it is significant) “good at baseball” seems to be what this team is looking for rather than overemphasizing any one particular attribute. The only player archetype we have yet to see Harris pursue with meaningful draft picks or depth signings is the slap hitting, slick fielding type.
On the pitching side, the team seems to prioritize moldable pitch metrics and has shown a willingness to roll the dice on velocity coming around with pro conditioning. The young arms they’ve invested in have almost all featured good induced vertical break (IVB) in their fastball movement profile. Gabe Ribas and his crew have gotten pretty good at refining the pitch mix for players who have a feel for spin. They have had notable success with cutters and were handing out split-changeups like Oprah last season. However, while the scouting report for many draft hopefuls cites the need for a consistent changeup, that doesn’t mean they can simply get a taste of the Tigers’ fairy dust and automatically upgrade. The splitter is a context-dependent pitch, as was deftly pointed out by Nick Pollack in this Twitter thread.
With that primer in mind, here’s a sampler platter of prospects who may be of interest to the Tigers’ scouts as the 2024 draft season starts in earnest. It’s too early to make any kind of predictions about how the draft will turn out; there’s just so much yet to learn as the season presses into midsummer. This is just a selection of guys who might be available as things stand right now.
For draftnicks like myself, it’s not too early to identify players worth tracking though the amateur season. In addition to an overview of tools and physical trails, I also wanted to include a consequential discussion on their statistics where possible and ended up with a pretty beastly article. Sorry, editors. I’m primarily using the scouting reports written by FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline, and Prospects Live. Other sources will be explicitly cited as they come up.
SS Seaver King, Wake Forest
Current draft stock: High first round
King was lightly recruited coming out of his Georgia high school and didn’t hit his stride until taking the field at DII Winfield. He was utterly untouchable as a sophomore, hitting .411 and put together the third longest hitting streak in DII history, extending from the 2022 playoffs until the end of 2023. He’s a former two way player who showed some potential on the mound. Strictly a position player these days, he had an easy delivery and 92mph fastball, which speaks to athleticism and arm strength that serves him well at shortstop. He transferred up a level for his draft year and is now playing for Wake Forest this spring.
King has exceptional contact ability and he doesn’t get cheated in any part of the zone. When his swing triggers, his bat loads high, which visually resembles a power hitter. His hands are lightning quick though, and he can get to any ball as a result. It’s an approach that works against high level amateur pitching. He raked in the Cape Cod League and played his way onto Team USA, which is a rarity for a DII player. He’s not just a one-track pony, either, with a max exit velocity reaching 114 mph last season and 111 mph in fall scrimmages with Wake. Those aren’t quite elite numbers, but they’re very playable at any level and he hit 11 home runs in 2023.
Like many contact hitters, King can fall into the trap of expanding the zone unnecessarily. He rarely strikes out, but FanGraphs cited Synergy tracking that had him swinging at a full third of pitches outside of the zone. Furthermore, King himself pointed to the quality of offspeed pitches as the biggest difference between what he faced at Winfield versus D1 ball. Facing quality breaking balls every night for the first time in his life may expose his aggression as an issue. He won’t have any problem putting bat to ball, but it could serve to sap his power output if he can’t develop a more selective approach and find more pitches to drive.
On defense, King is able to play anywhere up the middle. He’s primarily a shortstop, but has also seen time at the keystone and in center field. There’s no reason to believe he’ll move off a premium position in professional baseball. At six feet tall and just under 200 pounds, King is an excellent athlete who clocks plus speed and has sufficient range for any position. His arm doesn’t play as well in the field as it once did on the mound, and there’s some concern that it will push him off shortstop. His pro team will give him a shot to stick at short because he’s twitchy and instinctual, but a move to center field would still give him the opportunity to provide good value with the glove.
Many rankings have Seaver slightly out of reach for Detroit, but he has more to lose based on his 2024 season than most in the top ten. The question of whether King can harness his aggression will determine how much of his power gets into games. If D1 pitching makes him look mortal, it could spook teams at the top of the draft who are afraid of him becoming a bottom of the lineup utilityman.
OF Konnor Griffin, Jackson Prep (HS), MS
Current draft stock: High first round
Griffin is jaw-dropping in his physicality. That’s the headline, the copy, and the extra. Draft writers are already running out of ways to say it. The dude just outmuscles, outruns, and out-throws anyone he shares the field with at the high school level. Additionally, as a reclassified graduate from the class of 2025, he will be just two months past his 18th birthday when draft day arrives. That will appeal to teams with a model-driven draft approach, though there has been a small resurgence in classical scouting over the past year or two.
Offense is what gets everyone excited, and we’ll get to Griffin’s big bat in a moment. However, I’d hate for his potential at the plate to overshadow the fact that he would be a draftable player based just on what he does in the field. Patrolling center at the moment, he will be a viable option up the middle in pro ball. He has the range to get to just about any ball and he’s consistently praised for twitchiness and ability to adjust his routes in stride. A potential move to right field would be no problem either; he’s also a pitcher and reached 94 mph from the mound. With functional athleticism and a rocket arm, there’s nothing to stop him from being an exceptional defensive right fielder. Pipeline goes so far as to put a Gold Glove within reach.
I made you a promise to talk about hitting, but I’ll bend the meaning of in a moment” a bit to slip in another paragraph because I also want to highlight what a dangerous runner Griffin has become. High school stats for premium prospects are always bananas, but check this out — during his last two seasons of varsity play, Griffin stole 32 bases in 65 games. Over the first 15 games of 2024, he’s already stolen 42 bags. In the wake of Rob Manfred’s pace of play initiatives, a player who can turn on the jets like that has a viable career skill. That speed obviously benefits Griffin in the outfield as well. FanGraphs openly questions his ability to make reads off the bat, but still calls Griffin a future plus defender because he has the traits to overcome poorly judged jumps.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that Griffin steps into the box with 400+ foot home run power as a 17 year old. He’s not overmuscled or even especially thickly built. Griffin swings a quick bat and his lengthy yet strong build put the punch behind it. He projects with “only” plus power because, although he could probably become an elite power hitter if he wanted to, but adding too much muscle could come at the expense of everything else he does so well. As things are, he will grow into as much raw power as nearly any center fielder in the league. Power/speed guys are the stuff that make baseball executives drool and Griffin offers more of both than many players can of either.
All of that sounds like the makings of a first overall pick, and yet he makes it to the neighborhood of the Tigers’ pick in many early mock drafts. Questions about whether Griffin will be an effective hitter are keeping him out of top three territory. Impressive as he may be in workouts or highlight reels, his extra long levers are a bright red flag, especially because he’s shown a small weakness to velocity on the showcase circuit. He’s like a souped up version of Parker Meadows, who took five years to reach the major leagues because of similar issues.
Even if he never finds a swing that works for him, Griffin could still find himself in the majors as a low-contact bench piece who finds value by punishing mistakes and terrorizing the bases. There’s also a world in which he never hits his weight and pitchers blow him away without too much trouble. There are always elite prospects who fall on their face, and particularly in a prep hitter the risk inherent here is terrific.
Truthfully, I don’t envy the people who have to make the call on Griffin. In the average draft cycle, he wouldn’t be the top ranked prep prospect, and as it is, some prefer the thunderous LF/1B PJ Morlando. Yet, only two qualified hitters during the 2023 season were in the 80th percentile in sprint speed, average exit velocity, and OAA, an outcome that is very much in play for Griffin. Those two hitters were Julio Rodriguez and Fernando Tatis Jr. It’s deeply unfair to compare a draft prospect to either of those superstars, but you can’t tell me you didn’t read those names and see dollar signs. It’s a tricky evaluation, but some team is going to fall deeply in love with him.
OF Mike Sirota, Northeastern
Current draft stock: High to mid first round
At this early stage in the draft cycle, Sirota is the player I’d give the best odds of being picked by the Tigers in the first round. The outfielder turned down the Dodgers in 2021 after being selected in the 16th round to go to Northeastern and has earned himself millions of dollars in the process. He’s a patient and athletic hitter with a future in center field, or as a plus defender in the corners. That’s a recipe for speedy ascent to through the MiLB ranks and likes up neatly with the traits Scott Harris and his cadre value.
There’s nothing left for Sirota to prove with the Huskies. Baseball America called his hand speed double-plus. A gaudy .346/.472/.678 performance made him the most fearsome hitter on his team and he was inches away from a 20-20 season. I know it’s unfair to compare performance across levels, but his 18 homers and 19 stolen bases on a college schedule extrapolate out to a 53/56 season over a full MLB slate of 162 games. That’s the level of dominance against his peers we’re talking about here.
Sirota has struck out approximately 18 percent of the time, but his walk rate jumped from 10.37 percent as a freshman to 16.6 percent last season. Unlike some college hitters, who get by outwaiting their opponents’ wildness, Sirota has genuine feel for when to pull the trigger. He was one of the most efficient hitters against fastballs in college last year and he hit will in the Cape Cod League when he played a full season in 2022. Tellingly, his chase rate against sliders and curveballs was 15 percent and a vanishingly low 8 percent, respectively.
Two main factors drive down Sirota’s value to the point that he may be available to Detroit. Firstly, some people question whether he’s been appropriately challenged at Northeastern playing in the CAA. Secondly, and in my eyes, the more concerning issue at hand is that it’s tough to see where growth will come from as a pro. The skills he has in hand will likely make him a big leaguer. However, he doesn’t have the frame for huge power. If he can’t hit nukes, pitchers won’t fear him enough to let him feast on junk pitches. A 1.5-2.0 WAR career path is nothing to sneeze at, but its not exactly what teams in the top 10 are shooting for.
RHP Thatcher Hurd, LSU
Current draft stock: Mid to late first round
There was arguably no more well known high schooler in the 2021 draft class who went to college than Hurd. As prep pitcher, he became well known as a slow burn prospect with high end upside. He danced around the first round conversation all summer thanks to a big frame, easy delivery, high spin stuff, and reputation for intelligence. Ultimately, no team was willing to meet his bonus demands in light of a low-powered fastball that only reached 92 mph and inconsistent changeup.
As a freshman, Hurd was listed by at UCLA as a 6’4″, 200 pounds. The Bruins’ medical and training staff is among the best anywhere, and it’s not surprising that he added 30 pounds of muscle in short order. His velo popped, and today his fastball sits at 93mph instead of topping out there. He’s even been clocked as high as 98 mph at times. Prototypical size isn’t a requirement for starter projection anymore, but Hurd certainly has made good use of his own frame and physical development.
Hurd is armed with two breaking balls that achieve spin rates firmly in elite territory. The difference between his slider and curve was sometimes blurry in high school, but his added strength has afforded him two distinct velocity bands for the pitches with a roughly ten mph difference. The curve is a significantly less effective pitch but he gets a lot of movement and uses it to keep lefties honest and off his fastball. There’s a chance the pitch will be junked after he’s draft, at least until he establishes an effective changeup. After all, colleges are incentivized to win, not develop their players for pro ball success. Hurd showed up to school with a curve that could work as a change of pace offering, so they rolled with it.
It can be tough to get our hands on pitch spin and shape data. However, in a thorough scouting report from our sister site Lookout Landing in 2021, Hurd was reported to have fastball spin that reached 2800 rpm and slider spin reaching 3300 rpm. Those are figures that wouldn’t look out of place among measurements taken on spin monster Jackson Jobe. Perhaps more notably, it was also reported by Baseball America that he averaged 20.4 inches IVB in 2023. That’s at least one notch above average, if not two, and will undoubtedly catch the Tigers’ eye.
As catcher for most of his baseball life, Hurd has been a primary pitcher for just four years. He’s just out of his infancy on that side of the ball. In that respect, his lack of a compelling third pitch is not as much of a problem as it could be. He hasn’t really needed one yet and could yet implement a changeup or a splitter in pro ball. I’m gripped by the idea of what Detroit’s development staff could do with him, especially after watching Troy Melton take a similar career path and blossom under their watch.
Being so recently converted to the mound, it isn’t a surprise that Hurd sometimes struggles to throw strikes. Scouts believe that his command projects well because he is a good athlete and operates so smoothly on the field. However, poor command and ugly walk rates have contributed to a lack of D1 success even though he has so many positive attributes. After transferring to LSU, he had a full time role in 2023 and wound up with a 5.68 ERA in 23 games, including 11 starts. He rung up hitters in droves, but also gave out a completely unacceptable 40 free passes in just 63.1 innings.
His college performance has fallen short of the standard set by players who will be considered for the 11th overall pick. On the other hand, the underlying skill that made him a famous high schooler is intact. A strong season at LSU could feasibly push him into that range. Teams who have faith in his high end potential and their own development staff won’t be easily scared off by a mediocre ERA. For him to get to Detroit with the 49th pick would be a small slip from his currently perceived value, though still within the realm of possibilities.
LHP Gage Jump, LSU
Current draft stock: Second round
It’s been a tough road for Jump, who was a famous player on the showcase circuit but fell to the 18th round in 2021 and wound up in college instead of signing in that late stage of the draft. As a freshman at UCLA, he pitched primarily out of the bullpen before blowing out his elbow after only seven appearances. Rehab following Tommy John surgery kept him off the field for the entire 2023 season, meaning there’s been very little new data since Jump’s teenage days.
The intrigue with Jump springs from his fastball, which plays way up from its low-to-mid 90s velocity. The pitch is friendly to Stuff+ models because of its high spin and tremendous IVB, reportedly measured at over 20 inches during a fall 2023 scrimmage. Every scouting report you’ll see on Jump points out how much trouble hitter have picking up the fastball because it has an uncommon spin and movement profile. He uses that ability to steal strikes in the zone.
The lefty is a self-described four pitch guy, with the standard mix of slider, curveball, and changeup to back the fastball. He’s toyed with the shape of that slider, showing cutterish looks at times. However, evaluators consistently prefer his curveball and it gets plus grades. It’s a bit on the slow side and has big, late downward movement. It looks a lot like the fastball coming out of the hand and he pulls hitters off balance with it. The other two pitches need refinement, and serve mostly to keep hitters honest, especially the changeup.
Now at LSU and fully healthy again, Jump will have to build on his good reputation from years ago to maintain value as a top 50 pick. For now, there appears to be a great deal of relief risk here, but a strong campaign in the bayou would go a long way to assuaging those concerns. It would be nice to see him throw a pitch with consistent fading action to deploy when his fastball isn’t getting the job done. Under Ryan Garko, Detroit has gotten very good at teaching the split change, which would do wonders for drawing more soft contact and ugly swings in Jump’s pitch mix. You’d like him to stick in the rotation, but of he can’t, the foundation is here for a lefty setup man, especially if he gains a few ticks in relief.
Simply because of time lost to injury, the path to big league action is probably longer for Jump than it would be for similarly aged and talented players. I’d love to see what Detroit’s development staff could do with a pitcher who has natural feel for spin and an effective fastball to anchor his pitch mix.
SS Kyle DeBarge, Louisiana
Current draft stock: Unclear
As a small high school player without a position, DeBarge has taken an unlikely road to the player he is today. He’s dripping with All-Conference awards and has the chance to be the first Ragin’ Cajun to be drafted in the first round under the modern draft format. During his freshman season, DeBarge was the lone 60 game player on his team and he established himself as the no doubt starting shortstop in 2023. It’s a hit-over-power offensive profile, but that’s not to disparage what he’s done as a collegiate hitter; he slashed .371/.448/.546 last season with a miniscule strikeout rate.
Footspeed and arm strength are both ticks in favor of a long term future at shortstop, but DeBarge is new to the position. He was, strangely, a primary catcher in high school and lacks the kind of reps at the position his peers may have. In the event that he has to move, it will be toward second base, where he has the physical traits to be stellar defensively. Despite being a plus thrower, he doesn’t pack the kind of offensive punch you’d like to see out of a third baseman. His 5-foot-9-inch frame has comfortably less than average power and he’s an offensive pest who might feel at home on the 2015 Royals.
“I still think I can tighten up my approach and not let it lapse at-bat to at-bat and don’t let it lapse three at-bats at a time,” DeBarge said to The Advocate. “I don’t need to swing at pitches I’m not looking for, just weed those things out and just lock into a better approach.”
It’s encouraging to see him identify this as an area of needed growth for the upcoming season. Many players who have the quick hands and barrel control get suckered by waste pitches, reducing the functionality of their hit tool and sapping their game power. Evidently, DeBarge understands that too much of a good thing will hurt him in the long run. Reducing the number of balls he puts in play may detrimental to his batting average against Sun Belt Conference defenders, but crucially, learning the difference between a ball he can put in play and a ball he should put in play is an important career skill.
This was going to be a fairly simple writeup about a middle infielder with good feel for the bat before FanGraphs released their draft rankings and threw a monkey wrench into things. Both MLB Pipeline and Prospects Live have DeBarge in the second-to-third round range, but FanGraphs got bold and made him their eighth ranked player. What explains a discrepancy like that? I see a few possibilities. First, every organization that puts out public lists uses industry sources to influence choices. It’s possible Pipeline and PL listened to similarly bearish industry voices.
Also, it’s possible that FanGraphs’ Eric Logenhagen — who is never afraid to stick to his guns when the industry at large disagrees with him — may just like DeBarge that much more than everyone else. As always, moderation is called for. The truth very likely lies somewhere between these two perspectives, which would make DeBarge a second round prospect.
SS Addison Klepsch, Del Norte (HS), CA
Current draft stock: Middle rounds
Klepsch planted his flag as the top performer at the 2024 PBR Super 60 event. At the Super 60, high schoolers are able to showcase their skills to college and MLB scouts in a controlled indoor environment while being monitored by cutting edge tech. At the end of the day, Klepsch was near or at the top of the leaderboard in a variety of categories, including infield throw velocity and Blast Motion swing metrics such as average on-plane swing% and average rotational acceleration, or RA.
RA speaks to how quickly a player reaches max bat speed, and thereby can be used as a shorthand for how effectively they can tap into whatever raw power they may have. A higher RA also allows the hitter to let the ball get deeper into the zone and still put an effective swing on the pitch, which reduces the effectiveness of tightly tunneled arsenals from opposing pitchers. I definitely recommend clicking the cited link above for a fully nuanced explanation from a Blast employee.
Driveline baseball defines high RA as anything north of 15 G’s. During the event, Klepsch was averaging 27.9 G’s and crested 30 G’s at peak, leaving the rest of the pack in his dust. Those results were no surprise to the Cali-based shortstop himself, who trains with a Blast Motion unit at home. He discussed his training regimen with me in extensive detail shortly after the event.
“I use a sensor to detect what areas I need to improve on,” he said in part. “The rotation has always been the biggest part of my swing. That’s something I’ve worked on because I know it’s so important. There’s a ton of things we’ve worked on; a lot of drills to gain that rotation. I do different things every day with the heavy balls, heavy bats, light bats.”
As a player in the smaller side who isn’t known for power, Klepsch has dedicated much of his efforts to getting everything he can out of the physicality he has at the plate. I was surprised when he cited the very large Bryce Harper as an influence in the way he has modeled his swing. Klepsch explained that he admires Harper for his powerful lower half and quick hands.
“If you look at slow motion video of Bryce Harper, [when] his hips fire, he makes sure to keep his hands back. He keeps them back and once that ball comes he whips [the bat] right through. He’s really good at it,” he said.
Then, with a laugh, Klepsch added, “It’s really beautiful.”
As a shortstop who should stick at the position, he can provide value on both sides of the ball. Klepsch is an above average runner and trains in the field with a former Mariners scout. He throws hard enough to play on the left side of the dirt and registered the second-best object tracking score for an infielder at the Super 60 event. The Tigers are believers in cross training their developmental prospects at multiple positions. Klepsch would likely get the Trei Cruz treatment, logging considerable innings at second base, third base and possibly even center field in addition to his natural shortstop.
He has drawn direct interest from no less than five MLB teams already, including an AL Central team. However, he is committed to play ball at Auburn and called the coaching staff there a great fit for his style. As things stand now, it seems the most likely course for him to wind up in the SEC next year. However, Detroit poured a lot of money into high schoolers outside of the top two rounds in the 2023 draft. If they remain unafraid to buy out non-elite prep guys from their college commitments, they could do a lot worse than a infielder who should stick at a premium position and is willing to embrace progressive training methods.