Detroit Tigers prospects continue to star in the Arizona Fall League

Bless You Boys

While we’re big fans of both Josue Briceño and Thayron Liranzo, the Tigers prospects’ hot start in Arizona Fall League play needed to be undersold in the early going. When last we updated their work on October 19, the Fall League was little more than a week old. Briceño already had five home runs in his first 31 plate appearances. In the three weeks and change since that point, the Tigers’ dynamic duo of power-hitting prospects haven’t missed a beat, rapidly becoming two of the hotter prospects in the game in the process.

Now, with three games left in the regular Fall League season, which concludes with a pair of play-in games on Friday that will advance the winners to the Fall League championship game on Saturday, it’s safe to say these weren’t flukes. Briceño continues to lead the league as one of its youngest players. It’s remarkable that having just turned 20 years old at the end of September, and with only 224 plate appearances at Single-A Lakeland, Briceño is still just absolutely dominating much more experienced competition.

Through 22 games and 89 plate appearances, he holds a 1.309 OPS with nine home runs and just 19 strikeouts to 12 walks drawn. That’s tops among all qualified hitters in the league. With a .403 batting average, .478 OBP, and a monster .831 slugging percentage, there are no questions about his performance. He’s been incredible, and while the home runs tapered off from a torrent to a steady, modest flow for a two-week stretch, he’s been right back to launching tape measure shots again in November.

Briceño has also continued to improve as a first baseman, with Tigers’ coach Brayan Peña recently in Scottsdale to work on his defense at first, as well as working with Liranzo behind the plate. While the lack of positional value will put a soft cap on his overall prospect value, it’s getting pretty hard to argue that Briceño isn’t a top 100 prospect in the game at this point. I certainly think he’s crept onto the list, though it will be instructive to see him against much better competition at the Double-A level in 2025. Presumably he’ll start the season with the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps next spring, but I don’t imagine he’ll be there all that long.

That might change if the Tigers are just temporarily protecting his knee from catching, and try to get him back behind the plate next year, but I think that ship has sailed. He was always pretty fringy in terms of arm strength for the position, and now the bat is progressing too quickly to be held back waiting for his catching game to try and keep up.

On Monday, Briceño bashed his ninth home run of the Fall League season, this one off a lefty. All the prospect hounds and the scouts are in Scottsdale, and no one has generated more buzz. He’s using the whole field, he makes tons of hard contact, and his precocious plate discipline and huge raw power has made a collection of High-A and Double-A caliber pitches look woefully overmatched.

As for Liranzo, he’s making his mark as well. The defensive skills, which were pretty seriously undersold when the Tigers acquired the 21-year-old switch-hitting catcher from the Dodgers, are progressing reasonably well. He needs to continue developing his blocking and receiving, while his throwing already looks significantly improved from where he was when they traded for him. There are a lot less question marks now about his ability to remain behind the dish for a team and a manager that heavily values their catchers’ work behind the plate over their hitting.

Fortunately, Liranzo is also thriving in the batter’s box. He ranks seventh in the Fall League with a 1.044 OPS, hitting .326/.463/.581 in 54 plate appearances. While he only has one home run, he’s walking more than he’s striking out, and making plenty of hard contact of his own, just not as often in the air as compared to his teammate on the Scottsdale Scorpions. The two do appear to have forged a friendship during their time out west as well, with both young men talking about their support for each other and taking most of their meals together. We love us some team building.

Liranzo has already had plenty of High-A experience, so it’s not surprising that he’s doing well. The extra work in the Fall League was mainly to keep working on his defense, whereas Briceño missed most of the regular season with a knee injury and simply needed the at-bats and the work at first base.

Liranzo did make his mark in the AFL All-Star Game. His ninth inning game-winning blast in that game was an absolute rocket and generated plenty of buzz for Liranzo as well. The shot earned him All-Star Game MVP honors, and while the Fall League is a development league and limited in scope, that’s still a nice little feather in his cap. He too should start the season in High-A, but I’d expect him to advance to Double-A pretty quickly next season as well. Both Liranzo and Briceño should also be on hand in major league camp early in spring training, so hopefully a broader swath of Tigers’ fans will get a look at them then.

Ok, so that’s the good news. You’re in luck though, because there’s more where that came from.

Right-handed starter Rayner Castillo and lefty Jake Miller have also settled in and thrown some really good games recently, while reliever Eric Silva has also been on a nice run.

The 20-year-old Castillo is one of our favorites to move quickly in 2025. After missing most of April and May to injury, he returned in late May and was a consistent force in the Flying Tigers rotation the rest of the way. His easy, balanced delivery forecasts good future command, and the smooth 95-96 mph sinker is tough to square up. We’re seeing more high fastballs from him as well now, and he’s getting whiffs up to go with ground balls off the sinker. It’s still inconsistent but Castillo has a good slider in development already, though the changeup needs more work. Still, he turned 20 in June and hadn’t pitched above Single-A Lakeland yet until the Fall League.

Castillo had a couple of really rough starts early on, and is certainly facing more experienced hitters than he saw in Lakeland. His latest outing on Monday was much better, as he tossed four innings of one-run ball with a walk against three strikeouts against the Saguaros. As we’ve seen on several occasions, he struggled a little bit early, but settled in as the outing progressed, striking out Douglas Hodo III and Milan Tolentino swinging to complete his outing with seven straight retired.

Here’s a look at Castillo from his October 22 outing.

Jake Miller profiles more as a lefty middle reliever and possible setup man. He was 23 this season, so his results weren’t so unexpected, but still he racked up a 1.16 ERA in 62 23 innings for the Lakeland Flying Tigers before getting bounced around between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie to close out the season. He struggled a bit with that transition, but finished the season strong in the SeaWolves’ bullpen.

What we’ve noticed is that his changeup, always a good pitch for him, has really been sharp of late. Miller has a tricky release and some deception to go with a typically well located 92-93 mph sinker, but it’s his changeup that are really popping at this point. He has a pretty sharp slider-sweeper combo in the mix as well, though neither has been very consistent in the Fall League. The Tigers continue to deploy Miller as sort of a long man, and perhaps his days starting aren’t over, but he’ll probably need to find more velocity to keep major league hitters off the fastball if he’s going to face them more than once in a game.

Like Castillo, Miller really struggled early on and maintains a quite ugly 9.42 ERA in 14 13 innings of work in Arizona, but with that little workload, a pair of bad outings early are still crushing his overall numbers.

We liked his November 6 outing much better, as he racked up eight strikeouts in four innings of work. Miller isn’t going to be very high on our prospect list despite the potential unless the Tigers commit to him as a starter, but they may have a pretty good lefty in the bullpen in another year or two.

Neither Castillo nor Miller has put up a strong fall campaign overall, but the stuff is developing nicely and both have been in better command recently. Castillo’s work at High-A in 2025 will be particularly worth watching as the Tigers pitching labs could have him moving really quickly to Double-A

Right-handed reliever CJ Weins has only thrown 6 23 innings, so there isn’t too much to say about his performance. The Tigers traded minor league reliever Troy Wingenter to the Red Sox for Weins back in July. We’re happy with that deal. Weins struck out a ton of hitters, posting a 36.4 percent K-rate at the High-A level before jumping to Double-A at the end of the year. He did turn 24 in August, so he was a little old for A-ball in the first place, but the Red Sox sixth rounder back in 2023 looks like another good small scale pickup by Scott Harris. He holds a 2.70 ERA in that very limited work, and with two home runs allowed. Nothing too notable going on, but he’ll be worth keeping an eye on in 2025 as well.

Right-handed reliever Eric Silva has also had a few shaky outings hurting his overall numbers, but he’s racking up the strikeouts at a better clip now. Look for Silva, acquired from the San Francisco Giants for Mark Canha, to start the year again with the Whitecaps. There’s work for Tigers development staff to do here, but Silva has an excellent breaking ball and could develop into a fine reliever in time.

In less happy news, Peyton Graham, the Tigers 2022 second round pick, continues to struggle mightily. They haven’t played him that much as there’s ongoing development work proceeding outside of games. When he has been on the field it has been in the outfield more than at the shortstop position.

Since he was drafted, I’ve argued that Graham’s present athleticism and power from such a skinny frame augured for rapid improvement if he could build himself up and add more muscle and overall bat control, but it hasn’t happened.

He continues to draw walks and show plenty of discipline, producing a 129 wRC+ for Lakeland in the spring of 2024, but he struggled at West Michigan and just isn’t driving nearly enough balls for his age and experience level. Graham also hasn’t been able to get his high octane defensive game under control at the shortstop position and continues to make too many wild throws. He’ll be 24 in January, and he’s bound for Erie sometime in 2025, but Peyton Graham really needs a transformative offseason to get back into prospect consideration.

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