10 Promising Developments for the Tigers
Michael W
Every year we assess how the team did – wins and losses and postseason results. We compare them with how they met our expectations and whether or not we are satisfied with the results. But, unless the team genuinely contends for a championship, I’m more interested in how they progressed towards building a championship contender. So, I try to assess the promising and concerning developments that happened with regard to that objective. This year I’m splitting my observations into two lists, the promising and the concerning. For fun I’ve tried to rank them in order from least important to most. Here is the first list:
10 Promising Developments for the Tigers
#10 Breakthrough Year for Max Anderson
Anderson, the Tigers 2nd round pick in 2023, was immediately challenged by the Tigers. After batting .414 with 1.231 OPS in his senior year at the University of Nebraska, the Tigers started him at Class A, then moved him to Advanced A after only 32 games. Anderson posted OPS of .790 at Lakeland, .713 at West Michigan, and .455 in 5 games at Erie. For ages 21 and 22, those were disappointing numbers and leaving him on a bleak career trajectory.
In 2025, however, Anderson got off to blistering start at AA, hitting .343 with a .974 OPS in the first half (about 250 PA). After the all-star break the Tigers promoted everybody except Anderson, and you could see his morale plummet, as he only hit .179 in July. Finally, he got his promotion to AAA, and rebounded somewhat posting .749 OPS, for the first time playing against mostly older competition (average age 26.3 vs. Anderson at 23).
Anderson is not an elite prospect, and he doesn’t walk enough. But you could see him having an extended major league career on the basis of his hit tool and decent power, even if it’s mostly as a utility player. Anderson has been playing both second and third base in the minors.
#9 International Signings turning the Corner?
Forever and ever, the Tigers have been one of the worst teams at acquiring international amateur talent. If you look at the overall lack of competitiveness of the Tigers since the early 1990s, this is the main culprit. While the major leagues have brought in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of talented players from Latin America (and a handful from Asia) the Tigers total contribution in 30 years can be summarized as Eugenio Suarez, Gregory Soto, and Willy Adames.
A few years ago, the Tigers changed tactics, opening up their wallets to sign big-budget amateur free-agents. Until now, that has mainly served to expose their lack of quality scouting, as the players they signed mostly didn’t pan out. But this year we maybe finally got one.
Cris Rodiguez, signed with a $3.2 million bonus, debuted for the DSL Tigers this year. Playing at age 17, Rodriguez posted .904 OPS. He batted .308, with an impressive .256 isolated power. Seventeen year-olds rarely have that kind of power. Those who do almost never play athletic positions like centerfield.
Players do sometimes put up gaudy numbers in the DSL, where the quality of competition is more like the NCAA than Class A. Many of them don’t pan out. But since 2006, the Tigers have only had 7 players post a .900 OPS at age 17 (or younger), and no Tigers’ 17 year-old has ever had a higher home-run rate. So, Rodriguez’ performance does stand out.
And speaking of those seven players above .900, one of them was Rodriguez’s teammate. Angel De Los Santos absolutely crushed the ball in the DSL this year, with a slash-line of .370/.465/.543. You have to be happy with a .370 batting average, 11.1% walk rate and .173 isolated power from a 17-year old. Only two Tigers’ farmhands have ever had a higher OPS at age 17. Oh, and he’s a shortstop. Too bad it was only 99 PA, or I might have to get excited.
For those keeping score, the other two 17-year-old players with higher OPS than De Los Santos were Reylin Perez, who didn’t make it out of rookie ball, and Anibal Salas, who is still in rookie ball. We should temper our expectations.
#8 A Few New Names Emerge
Speaking of expensive international free-agents, one of the earlier ones might be pulling it together. Javier Osorio signed for a $2.2 million bonus back in 2022, and like most of our big signings he flunked his age 17 debut, posting a .508 OPS that year. But the Tigers stuck with him and he improved to .874 OPS in 2023 and .937 OPS last year. This year the Tigers decided to bring him to the mainland.
Making his stateside debut, Osorio posted a healthy .874 OPS in the Florida Complex League. At age 20 he is one of the older players there, so we have to take it in context. But, three consecutive seasons over .870 OPS is a notable track record. After starting as a shortstop, the Tigers now have him splitting time between 2B and 3B.
Other new names to watch are 2024 first round pick Bryce Rainer, age 19, who had an .831 OPS at Lakeland before getting hurt. 2025 13th-round pick Jack Goodman posted a shiny .985 OPS at Lakeland in his pro debut of 52 PA. And 19-year old Jude Warwick posted a .793 OPS in the rookie league before struggling in his promotion to Class A. Good news: all three players are shortstops, so far.
#7 Batting Development by Josue Briseño
Briseño has been one of the most up-and-down prospects I recall in recent years. In his age 17 debut, he was unremarkable. At age 18, he looked fantastic against tougher opposition. At age 19, he was only OK, and you had to consider age, level, and position to get interested. Then he went to the 2024 Arizona Fall League, and despite being one of the youngest players there, he won the MVP, posting a videogame OPS of 1.376. His slash line was a memorable .433/.509/.867. Coming into this season, I don’t know of a player whose floor and ceiling were so far apart.
Briseño continued the trend in 2025. He demolished Advanced A pitching in his first try, posting a 1.024 OPS. Since 2006, only one Tigers’ farmhand has posted a 1.000 OPS at Advanced A: Nick Castellanos. But, after earning a mid-season promotion, he struggled with AA pitching, batting .232 with a .716 OPS. A .716 OPS, at age 20 in double-A, is nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s also not “Top 10 prospect” territory as Briseño has sometimes been labeled. Josue did post an OPS over .800 in August and September, which shows that he was figuring things out, although his batting average was still below .250.
What we can say is that Briseño made the two-level jump from Class A to AA and showed he belonged. I still feel there is a sizable gap between his ceiling and floor, but part of that relates to his glove, which we’ll talk more about another day.
#6 Development by Troy Melton
The Tigers 4th round pick in 2022, Melton had his first real professional season in 2023, and was very good, posting a 2.74 ERA, partly at Class A but mostly at Advanced A. But he was already 22, which isn’t a compelling age for those levels, and he followed it up with a decidedly uninspired 2024 at AA. At Erie, his 5.45 ERA was explained by 1.37 WHIP and 19 home runs in 100 innings. At that point, Melton didn’t look like he had much future beyond middle-relief.
What a difference a year makes. Returning to the scene of his Erie crimes, Melton posted similar WHIP and strikeout rates, but cut his home run rate down by 90%, leading to an improved ERA of 3.22. Promoted to Toledo, he improved his numbers significantly, with 2.72 ERA and 1.16 WHIP (albeit only in 36 innings), against AAA batters. Recall that AAA has been a hitter’s paradise in recent years – the International League ERA was 4.94 in 2025. Getting the call-up to Detroit, he threw 45 innings with a 2.76 ERA and 1.01 WHIP. And he memorably pitched well in the postseason, looking poised beyond his experience.
There is room for caution here. Melton’s other major-league peripherals, 1.4 HR/9 and 7.1 K/9, didn’t really support the good ERA. His propensity to give up the gopher ball, going all the way back to college, is concerning. But it was impressive development nonetheless, and much better than anyone would have predicted coming into the season. Melton has a fair chance to join the Tigers rotation next year, and failing that, his floor of “major-league middle reliver” is about what his ceiling looked like last year.
#5 Development by Max Clark
I cringe a bit when the Tigers draft someone whose carrying skill is speed in the outfield. There are lots of fast-running 18-year olds in the world and very few of them can play major league baseball. Clark fit the bill, with some scouting agencies rating him as “70” for speed, meaning “plus-plus” compared to major leaguers, and rating him more modestly in other categories.
But Clark has been showing a solid progression as a hitter. Each year the Tigers have given him a mid-season promotion, and each time he’s needed time to adjust. But if you only look at the first half of each year, you get:
Age 18, Rookie League, .954 OPS
Age 19, Class A, .807 OPS
Age 20, Advanced A, .857 OPS
This shows a guy who can hit, and who can figure out how to hit against older players.
If we look at the second halves:
Age 18, Class A, .532 OPS
Age 19, Advanced A, .765 OPS
Age 20, Double A, .798 OPS
This shows his initial struggles with each level, but it also shows that he’s making each adjustment faster and struggling less. He’s getting better as the competition improves, which is a good sign.
Clark’s base-stealing numbers haven’t been impressive, and they declined in 2025. I suspect it’s because the Tigers want him to focus on hitting and not be distracted. But he also doesn’t hit a lot of doubles or triples, so it could be that his speed is not supported by great baserunning skills. There may be some upside to tap into there.
#4 Batting Improvement by Colt Keith
Keith signed a big contract before the 2024 season, which sent expectations through the roof. Rookies usually struggle, but still it was easy to be disappointed with Keith’s .698 OPS in 2024 – even for his age 22 season. Keith is likely to be with the Tigers for a long time in any event, but if he blossoms, the Tigers have 3 option years at the end of his contract that would turn out to be pretty fantastic assets. If he blossoms.
A conceit of player projection is that players around Keith’s age improve steadily until around age 27. In fact, it’s never that smooth. You might hope to see a 50 OPS improvement each year, but nobody gives you that exactly. In 2025, at age 23, Keith did just that, bumping his OPS to .746. The improvement came in two places. His walk rate improved from 6.5% to 10.3%, pushing his OBP to the respectable level of .333. His isolated power improved from .120 to .157, pushing his SLG up to .413.
If this is the new baseline upon which future improvements will compound, the Tigers will be happy with their investment. One disappointment was that Keith trailed off in the second half, with his .690 second-half OPS looking suspiciously like 2024. He had a similar trend in 2024, though, so it may be more the wearing down of young player rather than the league figuring out how to pitch to him. We’ll see.
#3 The Emergence of Dillon Dingler as a Quality Major League Catcher.
In 2024, Dingler was one of the best hitters in AAA, posting a .938 OPS. But Dingler flunked his major league debut that year managing only a .505 OPS in 87 PA. Since he turned 26 before the season ended, and his 2023 season had been more modest, there was reason to think that the AAA numbers were a bit flukey, and Dingler’s upside was limited.
One of the Tigers’ most promising 2025 outcomes was Dingler’s performance. Dingler more than met the prerequisite of adequate catcher defense. He rated +12 fielding runs above average, fourth best in the majors. But more exciting was his success with the bat, posting a .752 OPS. His 108 OPS+ means he was a better-than-average major league hitter, in a game where every other position has a higher expectation for hitting. Even more exciting, Dingler’s second-half OPS was .796 compared to .719 in the first half, implying that he was learning faster than the league was figuring him out. It’s only 204 PA, but his OPS+ for the second half was 121.
An intriguing development was Dingler’s platoon split. He walloped lefties to a tune of .961 OPS, compared to only .680 vs. right-handers. There’s room to optimize here, by finding a lefty-hitting catcher to share time with Dingler. Josue Briceño bats left-handed.
Dingler turned 27 last month. Two conflicting trends point in different directions. Hitters often peak around age 27, and players who reach major league quality as late as Dillon often have short peaks. On the other hand, catchers often mature later than other players and tend to peak a little later. Given the 2024 AAA numbers, I think there is every reason to expect fine seasons from Dingler in 2026 and 2027. After that, it’s hard to judge.
#2 Progress by Kevin McGonigle
When you asses prospects, you look for their success given their age and their level. You don’t usually get all three, success, age and level, but that’s when you should get excited. In 2024, Kevin McGonigle got most of the three, putting up an .853 OPS at age 19, split between Class A and Advanced A. But, in Advanced A he actually only hit for a .726 OPS, so it was more like two-and-a-half. That was enough to get him on everyone’s leaderboard as a top prospect.
In 2025, still only 20, McGonigle accelerated his development. Given the second chance, he demolished Advanced A pitching with a staggering 1.110 OPS vs. a league average of .693 (recall my earlier comment about Castellanos). Promoted to AA, he continued his great hitting, posting a .919 OPS and continuing to develop his power. His ratio of HR/(2B+3B) in Advanced A was .368, and it increased to 1.000 in AA, and his isolated power at AA reached .296. (For calibration, Miguel Cabrera’s career high in isolated power was .294.) Besides the iso power, McGonigle has the whole package, batting .305 with a walk rate around 15%.
The only tinge of concern with McGonigle right now is his durability, and the resulting impact on our sample sizes. Kevin has had moderate injuries in each of his full seasons, meaning that in 3 minor league seasons he has only totaled 818 PA. That’s a little low to be anointing him yet, and concerning if the injury coincidence becomes a trend.
#1 Scott Harris Didn’t Mortgage the Farm
Between McGonigle, Clark, Briseño and Bryce Rainer, the Tigers have as good a crop of prospects as they’ve had since the days of Trammell, Whitaker et. al. Better yet, current players like Colt Keith, Dillon Dingler and Riley Greene will still be around when these younger players are coming into their own.
You can see a window of really competitive teams coming. This is not like 5 years ago, when Tarick Skubal, Spencer Torkelson and Greene were coming up to join a team otherwise bereft of talent. Now we’ll have a sizeable core that will make the Tiger competitive for years.
There was significant pressure on Scott Harris to make a deal at the trade deadline, to bring in “a reliever who can miss bats” or a strong starting pitcher. Instead, Harris nibbled around the edges, and kept the core of his prospect group intact – even holding on to second-rank prospects like Anderson, Thayron Liranzo and Justyn-Henry Malloy. This was extremely wise. The Tigers’ offensive woes in the postseason make it clear - in retrospect - that not even Mariano Rivera would have been enough to push the Tigers to a championship. This wasn’t a Doyle Alexander moment, but it certainly could have been a John Smoltz moment. Harris passed the test, and the Tigers’ future remains bright as a result.
Peter Welch
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2025 9:53 PM
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Subject: 10 Promising Developments for the Tigers
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