By: Holly Horning & Kurt Snyder
Heading into March, you can feel baseball coming.
The Tigers are just 3 weeks away from their season opener in Cleveland against the Indians. It’s incredible to think that we are that close to another season already.
The reviews are in on our young and talented pitching prospects and most have fared pretty well so far this spring. But what will be the plan for the regular season?
Our writers have a challenging question to answer, one where they must determine what the Tigers’ strategy will be when it comes to their top prospects.
Holly and Kurt have not shared their answers to the following question for the purpose of offering a wider range of perspectives.
So let’s get to it and see what our writers have to say.
What do you anticipate the Tigers will do re promoting their top prospect talent to Detroit this year?
HOLLY
There are a number of factors that will probably play into the decision to bring up youth this year – and when.
First, obviously, is performance in the minors. Hopefully, the Tigers learned a valuable lesson in bringing up Jake Rogers too soon last year and will not feel so desperate to do it again.
But they signed a significantly large number of ageing veterans to minor league contracts for a reason and that would be due to roster injuries as well as some belief that it will be awhile before a lot of their prospects are ready for Detroit.
Thirdly, there is a huge gap between the development of pitching prospects and position players in the minors. While the top pitching prospects (and possibly Paredes) will most likely be in Toledo this year, the others are further down in the system and likely to require another couple of years of development.
And this situation complicates the rebuilding because the clock towards official MLB time and the years of control will start sooner for the pitchers and could shorten a potential window for contention as the first arrivals start to qualify for free agency and leave the team. Manipulation of player time is a huge issue for the upcoming CBA and almost every team is trying to stall promotions to the majors as long as they can.
I believe it will be late summer, around the trade deadline, that we might see a player or two come up to replace one of the veterans on new 1-year contracts who will be flipped. Otherwise, they will wait until rosters expand (or the roster gets decimated as it did last year with injuries) when they will bring up some pitching prospects to ease into Jordan Zimmermann’s expiring slot.
KURT
The premature promotion of Jake Rogers last year made you wonder what the team’s intentions were when it came to their young catcher. But, it appeared to have nothing to do with Rogers at all; only a baseless message saying that the Tigers’ young talent were going to start making their way to Detroit.
Well, enough of that this year. Players have to actually be ready to earn a promotion. However, I am all for rewarding a hot pitcher in Toledo with spot starts throughout the season. It’s a good way to gauge progress and to see how they respond against big league hitters during the regular season; a whole different ball game compared to facing them in Spring Training.
I believe we are getting enough of an indication that a few of our young starters in AAA are ready to be challenged on occasion. They just aren’t ready to make the big club yet.
In my world, it’s part of the development process to promote when they have earned an opportunity, but ease them along at the same time. We have not yet come across a prospect who is blowing our doors off in spring training, ready to take the team by storm; so this is the path – for pitchers especially.
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Very distressing for a team that lost 114 games last year (2nd worst in team history). You’d think that given that, plus being three years into the “rebuild” that somebody (anybody!) would be knocking on the door. Mark Fidrych followed in spectacular fashion (19-9, 2.19) following a 103 loss team in 1975 with Detroit in 1976. Unless Matt Manning is deemed ready by June, that isn’t happening again no matter how well he performs following callup.
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Rogers was not a premature call-up—he was 24 last year—but Lance Parrish came up at 21 in 1977! The youngsters in 1977 (who became the core of the 1984 Champs) averaged age 21 and 1.7 WAR; last year the “youngsters” averaged age 24.5 and 0.8 WAR! Significantly older and half the production. This is already a failed rebuild…
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Keep in mind, back in the days of Lance, Lou and Tram most players were drafted out of high school, spent 3 or 4 years in the minors before making it to the big leagues. Today, drafting out of high school is not so prevalent as most players are drafted after 3 or 4 years of college. There is your age difference and that level of ball is still not the same as pro ball.
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I believe it was the Gallo Brothers who said, “No wine before it’s time” and the same can be said of ballplayers. We’re all anxious for that first sip but if it isn’t right it can spoil the batch. Unfortunately I don’t have the faith in AA etc. that I have in the Gallo Brothers.
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It’s too bad that the “clock toward official time” has to be a factor, but the Tigers would be crazy to disregard it. I just wonder who and where the position players are that are preparing to join the pitchers. I certainly look forward to seeing Riley Greene & Issac Paredes. Beyond them and our #1 draft choice, who else? All those free agents C. Illitch is chomping at the bit to sign?
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I think in 2020 it will have more to do with PR and service time than it has to do with talent. Rogers wasn’t ready last year, but a bunch of people sure got excited when he came up. I had friends texting me saying “we’ve got our next Pudge” without having seen the kid play a MLB game in his life. If things go south I could see them trying something similar this year.
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Top prospect talent??? 😉
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I don’t think it would hurt any of the young guys, pitchers or position players, to come up for a spot start from time-to-time if they are tearing it up down on the farm. It would sure as heck be interesting for me to see how some of these young whipper-snappers do under the bright lights!
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Hi guys, great thought’s. Here’s another. We’re all planning our tigers management around the concept of their future window of contention. Yet we all notice that doesn’t seem to be Chris I’s path. Maybe we should start looking at how teams, small market not planning to contend, strategies and methods are. In this path….players free agency dates as related to group age in contention, the window, are meaningless since there’s no plan to contend beyond an accidental good year.
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