While this is a Toledo Mud Hens preview, it’s of course just a part of the Tigers story this season. We’ve written quite a bit about the prospect depth the Detroit Tigers have at their disposal throughout the offseason. The Tigers should have the pitching to compete, but entering the new season the offense still projects to be underwhelming. On the plus side, most of the club’s best hitters are young, so there’s reason for optimism.
If there’s a place to draw real hope of the Tigers overachieving and winning the AL Central this year, the real x-factor they having going for them is the strength in the upper levels of the farm system. There aren’t many teams as stacked with legitimate prospects and starting pitching depth at the Triple-A level, and that’s going to be good for the Toledo Mud Hens as well as the Detroit Tigers.
To my mind, the Tigers are still one or two really good players away from being a division winner. It’s the high end talent where they’re lacking. The supporting cast is pretty good. However, their ability to plug holes without losing a step could propel them further than most expect, and they may find more of that high end major league talent along the way as top prospects like Jace Jung and Jackson Jobe start to make their final approach this year.
The 2023 season of course featured a really good Erie SeaWolves club winning the Eastern League title. Most of those same faces will now attempt to win an International League title with the Toledo Mud Hens, and they’ll have some helped added with which to do it. That isn’t the Detroit Tigers organizational goal, of course, but it may prove a corollary of the Tigers pitching depth and a good supply of quality positional prospects.
Triple-A Opening Day
The Hens will start their 2024 schedule the day after the Tigers. They’ll open a three-game weekend set on Friday, March 29th, at home against the Nashville Sounds, the Milwaukee Brewers Triple-A affiliate. The other affiliates will have an extra week of camp with their new teams and then begin action on Friday, April 5.
As they have the past few seasons, teams at all levels will generally have Monday off as a travel day between six-game Tuesday-Sunday series, alternating between road and home. This schedule has really helped by limiting the travel time and providing consistency to minor league players learning to live on the road under far more austere conditions than in the show.
Under new management
The roster won’t be the only new element for the Mud Hens. Returning players will have a new manager, as Anthony Iapoce has moved up to Detroit to join AJ Hinch’s staff as the new first base coach.
Tim Federowicz will take over as the Mud Hens new manager after serving as the Detroit Tigers’ catching coach in 2023. Federowicz played parts of eight seasons in the major leagues as a backup catcher before retiring in 2021 to manager the Seattle Mariners Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers. Ryan Sienko, for the past two seasons the Tigers minor league director of coaching, takes over as the major league catching coach.
Doug Bochtler and Mike Hessman return as pitching and hitting coach, respectively. Tim Garland is the new bench coach after a few years working in Lakeland with the Complex League level players, while Ollie Kadey remains as the team’s pitching strategist. As minor league staffs continue to develop into simplified versions of the now expansive coaching staffs around the game at the major league level, there may be new positions added any time.
Mud Hens roster
The 2023 Mud Hens were powered by having Colt Keith, Justyn-Henry Malloy, and Parker Meadows on the roster. Malloy led the club with 23 home runs, while Meadows was second with 19 long balls. In the second half of the season, the addition of Keith and the cash trade for infielder Eddys Leonard gave the club an infusion of offense along with a surge from Tyler Nevin. However, most of the club’s best pitching prospects were located east on the I-90 in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Zach Logue, Jack O’Loughlin, Ashton Goudeau, Brenan Hanifee, and Bryan Sammons are the first five names on the list of most starts made in 2023. They got some contributions from all the Tigers’ pitchers rehabbing but had 26 different pitchers start a game for them in total. Such is the plight of an affiliate at the whims of its parent club’s needs.
This year, the rotation looks to be a real strength, and the addition of prospects like Jace Jung, along with full years from Justice Bigbie and Dillon Dingler, should give the Hens a pretty good offensive group even with the loss of Keith and Meadows. While only Jung projects as a future starting player, the group of Jung, Malloy, Bigbie, Dingler, Leonard is a pretty good Triple-A core and should also give the Tigers some help this season. We can even hope that Jung is their starting third baseman some time this summer.
All in all, there’s a lot to watch in Toledo this year. The Mud Hens and the downtown district around it are a fun time, and this is going to be a pretty important season for the Tigers farm system playing out at Fifth Third Field. There are a lot of good reasons to go see them this year.
Pitching staff
We’re still waiting to see how things play out with the Tigers’ Opening Day bullpen. If Alex Faedo doesn’t make the final cut, it seems likely that he’ll still work as a starting pitcher for the Hens in his final option year. However, that complicates things a bit as well. With Matt Manning already optioned to Toledo, and Sawyer Gipson-Long working his way back, there are also a lot of quality pitching prospects who are on track to join the Triple-A rotation.
Top prospect Jackson Jobe is ready for Triple-A, but at this point Jobe’s only real foe is himself. He just needs to stay healthy, work a little more on his command, and get more experience pitching in traffic. For that reason, it would be nice to see him at Triple-A where more hitters can potentially handle him at little more, but it probably doesn’t matter too much. The Tigers know that Jobe is only slight improvements from being almost impossible to keep down in the minors. There’s no need to encourage calls for an early debut by putting him on the doorstep, so we’ll assume he’s going to be in Double-A along with another high end pitching prospect in Troy Melton. The SeaWolves are going to have some pitching to start with as well.
Leaving Jobe and Melton aside for now, the Tigers have Keider Montero, who is on the 40-man, reached Triple-A last season, and showed some gains this spring, slated for the Hen rotation. Then you have Ty Madden, Wilmer Flores, and Brant Hurter, all fairly well regarded pitching prospects, who all have more than a full season at the Double-A level in the books. Flores is also on the 40-man roster, and all three of them were impressive this spring. Someone may have to stay behind in Erie to start, but that’s going to be tough medicine.
Of that group, only Montero pitched for the Hens in 2023 and is already listed on the roster. Wilmer Flores’ resurgent velocity this spring has led to some calls for conversion to relief, and that might ultimately be the play, but for now the Tigers should see how the improved mechanics and stuff play as a starting pitcher again. Maybe that’s worth trying at Erie despite his 40-man status, as it’s hard to see a case at all for sending Hurter or Madden back to Double-A again.
We’ll see what the Tigers do here. They’ve also got a few minor league project starters to mix in with Toledo’s rotation. Lael Lockhart is an interesting lefty who had a good run at Erie after being picked up from the Dodgers. He’ll probably work some longer relief and get some starts as well. And eventually, inevitably, pitcher injuries are going to start to sort more of this out as the season gets into full swing.
Still, for now they have a potential Triple-A rotation of a combination of Matt Manning, Alex Faedo, Sawyer Gipson-Long, Ty Madden, Keider Montero, Brant Hurter, and Wilmer Flores brewing. That’s with their two best pitching prospects in Erie and probably moving fast again this season. That’s a pretty nasty set of starting pitchers to deal with at that level, and obviously Manning has already had a decent amount of big league success. Madden and Montero have their flaws but can run good fastball in the upper 90’s and both have really good breaking balls. Flores is overpowering when he’s right and has control of his fastball and wipeout curveball, but is coming off a down year. However, he too has looked really good this spring. Hurter has just been a ground ball machine as the only lefty in the group and posted excellent strikeout to walk numbers for Erie last year. He was a big part in driving them to the Eastern League championship.
My guess is that Flores works at Erie to start the year to try and ingrain some of the delivery changes he’s made this spring. Hurter just dominated Double-A as the 2023 season progressed, and he may be moving toward more of a flex role as a spot starter and multi-inning reliever, so one would guess he’s got to be at Triple-A now even if he’s bumped from some starts when Gipson-Long is ready. Let’s just say there are some conversations to be had in sorting out these assignments. These are good “problems” to have.
In terms of the bullpen, spring standout Drew Anderson will start the year in the Hens bullpen and will presumably get his share of chances to close games. Some other possible bullpen members are harder to peg because they may be released or opt-out at some point. If he doesn’t make the Tigers’ bullpen for Opening Day, 2023 Mud Hens closer Miguel Diaz could return to the Hens or perhaps catch on elsewhere as he’s out of options. They have additions like Devin Sweet to pair with returning pitchers like Trey Wingenter and Andrew Vasquez.
Brendan White is working his way back from a spring elbow injury. He may yet be the best of the bunch, so hopefully he can get beyond it without any complications. He too could be closing games for the Hens. We’ll see if lefty Andrew Magno gets moved up from Erie. With Tyler Mattison out for UCL reconstruction they don’t really have a good relief prospect until Freddy Pacheco hopefully returns from his own UCL surgery late this season. Either way, there are plenty of other project arms the Tigers have around, from Garrett Hill to Brenan Hanifee, and no doubt Harris and Greenberg will continue to churn the waiver wire and hunt for pitchers they can develop all season.
Outfield
The Mud Hens should have a pretty good group in the outfield this season, at least from an offensive standpoint. Justice Bigbie and Justyn-Henry Malloy are anchors for that offense out of the corner outfield spots. Along with Jace Jung and contributions from guys like Eddys Leonard and Keston Hiura, Akil Baddoo, Ryan Kreidler and Wenceel Perez, they should have a pretty strong lineup Triple-A lineup most nights.
Akil Baddoo and Wenceel Perez seem likely to get plenty of reps in center field, while they’ve claimed TJ Hopkins and Ryan Vilade, who play mainly corner outfield. Bligh Madris might stick as outfield depth, as the Tigers have acquired, dealt and then reacquired him in under a year’s time. Ryan Kreidler should probably get plenty of shortstop reps this season, but he’s played a solid center field when asked and may still get a little time all over the outfield.
Infield
The cream of the crop here should be Jace Jung playing third base on a full-time basis. The fifth ranked prospect in the Tigers’ system in our preseason farm system reports, the former Texas Tech standout had an excellent full season debut in 2023. Jung cracked 14 home runs in 81 games for the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps and then really hit the gas with the Erie SeaWolves, launching 14 more jacks in just 47 games. For good measure he switched to third base from second base in the Arizona Fall League and made a pretty good show of it.
Jung didn’t play that much in Erie, but between his outstanding results there, his work in the Fall League, and hitting .318 in 27 Grapefruit League at-bats, the 23-year-old brother of the Texas Rangers’ Josh Jung looks plenty ready to tackle Triple-A. He just may need more time that fans hope to ready himself for the big jump to the major leagues. The Tigers could disagree and send him back to Erie for a little more seasoning, but one way or another it shouldn’t be too long before he joins the Mud Hens.
The next two infielders each had really strong camps with the Tigers this spring. Ryan Kreidler is probably Javier Báez’s equal at the shortstop position and really the only player on the roster capable of playing there everyday without issue beyond the struggling veteran. We would guess that after playing more outfield last season, Kreidler will be playing more shortstop again this year. That leaves Eddys Leonard playing second base and moving around the diamond. He and Jung may swap out at times to keep Jung somewhat fresh at second base as well. Buddy Kennedy was recently claimed from the Cardinals, and mainly plays second base and a bit of third as well.
At first base, the Tigers have Brewers former top prospect Keston Hiura, who should at least give them plenty of power, along with Jake Holton who is more of a well rounded upper org hitter who plays a solid first base but doesn’t have the power to reach the big leagues at that position. Chris Meyers had a pretty good half season with Erie in 2023 and could contribute along the way, as could someone like Danny Serretti later on in the year.
Catchers
If there’s one player we’d love to see break out in a big way at the plate, it would be catcher Dillon Dingler. The 2020 second round pick has come along very well as a defensive catcher, and the Tigers will have no qualms about calling him up if Jake Rogers or Carson Kelly goes down with injury. That’s the most important part of the job, and Dingler has really turned himself into a well regarded defensive catcher who should have a fairly long major league career as a backup type.
He just hasn’t been able to take a the kind of convincing step with the bat he needs to look like a number one catcher for a good team in the major leagues. College catchers, especially those recently converted to the dark arts, often take time to develop at the plate. There’s so much more to learn and the physical demands are greater than any other position. For Dingler though, he’s now on the 40-man roster as well, and after three full season in the minor leagues is running out of time to change perceptions of his bat.
This season Dingler is going to be expected to carry the load for the Mud Hens. He’s very familiar with the pitchers he’ll be working with, and he’s not a small part in that group’s ongoing development over the past two seasons. Madden, Flores, Montero, Hurter, and Gipson-Long have all worked with Dingler a lot and by all reports have benefited from his work behind the plate.
At the plate, Dingler has some power. He’s a decent enough fastball hitter and will do damage on mistakes. If he can just lay off a little more breaking stuff this year, there’s still a chance for a low average hitter with average power. With Dingler’s defense that would be good enough to be an average player overall. He never quite made the big leap forward in two years at the Double-A level, but drew a good amount of walks and hit for some power. That would be enough if he can translate it to major league pitching, but he’s still got a good ways to go.
Veteran catchers Anthony Bemboom and Donny Sands are currently the backup options on the Mud Hens roster. Bemboom has had plenty of cups of coffee in the major leagues for his defense but is now 34. His experience and defensive abilities should be good for the pitching staff and perhaps help in Dingler’s finishing school. Sands is just a little short of a solid catching prospect is most respects and is moving into org catcher territory as he turns 28 in May and hasn’t been able to crack a major league roster other than a four-game stint with the Phillies back in 2022. Eliezer Alfonzo or Julio E. Rodriguez could come up from Erie to pitch in as the year progresses.
Help from Erie
Trei Cruz is a good bet to move up at some point this season, and while he still plays shortstop, he seems to have found his true defensive home in center field. The batspeed still isn’t quite there, and his major league projections remain pretty meager, but the 25-year-old continues to walk and put up really good on-base numbers while performing as a valuable defender. Now 25, it’s go time for him if there’s another level to unlock offensively.
Beyond him there isn’t a lot of help coming in terms of position players. Most of the Tigers good positional prospects who aren’t already beyond Erie are still down in A-ball. An advanced college hitter like Tigers 2023 second rounder Max Anderson might alter the equation somewhat, or outfielder Roberto Campos learning to pull more fly balls, but overall this isn’t doesn’t look like a season where the Tigers have a bunch of young position players tearing up Double-A to reach the next level. Infielders like Gage Workman and Izaac Pacheco have stalled out, and Peyton Graham spun his wheels with injuries in 2023 and hasn’t advanced beyond Low-A yet. Most of what they’ve got handy should already be on the Mud Hens roster to open the season. Then again, the Tigers have started a recent of surprising us with players like Kerry Carpenter and Justice Bigbie coming out of relative obscurity in the draft.
The big guns at Erie are right-handers Jackson Jobe and Troy Melton. The former’s trajectory is probably going to be too fast when the Tigers do decide it’s time to move him up from Erie. He may not spend much time with the Mud Hens, but later in the season, Melton should be ready move up too. He’s not Jackson Jobe, but Melton’s advancing control of a high-90’s fourseamer and solid breaking ball and changeup were pretty impressive in 2023. He’s still pretty raw and could get a lot better in a hurry this season.