Bryce Rainer and Max Clark lead the Tigers top prospect hitters

It’s time for our first check in with the club’s top hitting prospects.

As early as it is in the Major League Baseball calendar, it’s a week earlier in the lower levels of the minor leagues. So it goes without saying from the start that we’re talking about early impressions of prospects in the Detroit Tigers ’ farm system. We’ll do pitchers in a separate article. For now lets just take a look and who is performing well among the club’s better position prospects with the minor league season now roughly a fifth of the way complete.

We’re not going to dig too far down the prospect list for the moment, as there aren’t any major breakouts going on in the second half of our 2025 top 41 Tigers prospects just yet. Many of the other top names are in the major leagues now. Jace Jung, our 7th ranked prospect this spring is up with the major league club and still struggling to make much good contact. Dillon Dingler is in the midst of a breakout at the plate early in the year and grading out among the best defensive catchers in the game. Both are basically graduated from prospect status at this point. The same is true with Trey Sweeney. We’ll stick to the guys who are still in the minor leagues here.

Several of those prospects don’t need much said in the early going and are just trying to get things going. Third baseman Carson Rucker is struggling to find his footing in Lakeland after missing most of the 2024 season with a shoulder injury. 19-year-old catcher Enrique Jimenez, our 21st ranked prospect in the preseason, is just getting underway in the Florida Complex League this week. Outfielder Jackson Strong has looked reasonably good in very limited duty, but after getting plunked in the head and missing a little time, there isn’t much to go on in his case just yet either.

So let’s just check in on the bigger names at the moment.

Bryce Rainer

The Detroit Tigers’ first rounder in 2024 didn’t play publicly until the Spring Breakout game in mid-March. In the nearly nine months between, it was easy to start to fear that perhaps the young shortstop fresh out of high school was struggling to adapt to pro ball. Turns out the Tigers were just being patient in releasing the beast.

So far, Rainer has done nothing but hammer the baseball while showing off the speed, hands, and arm strength that made him such an exciting potential five tool player on draft day. Through 15 games with the Lakeland Flying Tigers, he holds a 160 wRC+ with three homers, four doubles, and two steals, good for a .305/.411/.525 slash line. Rainer is walking at a 15.9 percent clip and showing pretty good discipline, but in the last week teams have figured out that he’ll expand the zone a little down and away and he’s struck out a little more than we saw early on.

This is pretty natural. The slender, six-foot-three left-handed hitter has fairly long levers and likes to extend his arms. That works perfectly with the kind of left center field approach you like to see. He’s happy to get fastballs on the outer edge and drive the ball with tons of authority to left-center and left field. When he starts laying off those pitches down and away off the plate a little more and moves up to face a more experienced brand of pitcher at the High-A level, you’ll probably eventually see some teams try to jam him for the same reasons. He has shown the ability to pull the ball hard in the air, but that isn’t his focus right now and by and large pitchers have really tried to stay away from him, with minimal success.

There are some issues that could use refinement, of course. Rainer has a bit of wrap and pretty busy hands as he loads up. That needs to be smoothed out a bit before he starts seeing tougher pitch mixes with consistently better velocity and has to be a little shorter and more direct to the ball. Still, this is pretty common stuff in even a very talented young hitter and while Rainer and the Tigers will have some work to do to clean things up, the raw talent, feel for the barrel, along with the excellent batspeed already on display says this won’t be a major obstacle as he advances through the farm system. For now he’s not really seeing many pitchers who can exploit it anyway.

The really eye-popping element has been the amount of very hard contact Rainer has made. You can already put a 60 FV grade on his power, and it looks like there’s more in the tank as he fills out a little more. Already he’s averaging 94 mph off the bat. He has 39 balls put in play so far, and already six of them were at 108 mph or better, with two topping 111 mph. 17 of those balls in play total were hit at 100 mph or better. That is extremely impressive and consistent juice for a lanky shortstop who won’t be 20 years old until July.

It’s very early but we’re already debating whether Rainer is the top prospect in the system now with Jackson Jobe graduating. Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark both have good cases, and you could make a case for any of the three, but Rainer probably has the highest ceiling. It’s just a little early to get too carried away until he’s seen some tougher pitching. HH looks plenty ready for a move to High-A West Michigan, but you can expect the Tigers to monitor his workload and try to ease his transition to life in pro ball, so they may wait until mid-year to make the move.

Max Clark

Young Mr. Clark continues to rake and rake some more as he leads off most nights for the West Michigan Whitecaps. The center fielder rarely strikes out and holds a 20.7 percent walk rate compared to a 13.2 percent strikeout rate. The hit tool is coming along very well.

The only things to nitpick in Clark’s hot start is the lack of stolen bases. He has just two, while fellow outfielder Seth Stephenson, who is admittedly a little faster, has 10 already. Considering Clark’s ridiculous .446 on-base percentage, we’d like to see him work on his jumps and take more chances to stretch out on the basepaths, but there’s plenty of time.

Clark still shows a decided tendency to shorten up and just spray line drives to the opposite field. That’s going to serve him well as he faces better pitching and he seems bound to move up to Double-A Erie by mid-season at the latest. It does continue to raise questions about his future power production, however. He just isn’t likely to have the raw power to hit the ball over the fence without pulling the ball more consistently in the air, and tougher pitching in the upper levels is going to test him in that regard by pitching him aggressively inside rather than letting him extend his arms and just punch a ton of balls the opposite way for hits.

So there are things to work on. Despite better than plus speed, his routes still need some work. He’s improved since last season though, and that’s probably just a matter of reps and refining his technique. It’s still pretty easy to envision a plus center fielder in Clark with more work.

He’s off to an excellent start and people are rightly excited about him. We’ll just have to see if the power to the pull field develops as expected over the course of the next season or two. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see him ready to help out the big league club by mid-2026 on his current trajectory, though a 2027 debut, when he’ll be 22 years old all season long, is certainly the most likely scenario.

Overall things are looking good for Max Clark.

Max Anderson

The most notable offensive breakout in progress belongs to the Erie SeaWolves second baseman, Max Anderson. Selected in the second round out of Nebraska in 2023, Anderson didn’t have a particularly impressive pro debut last year. Most of the issues present on draft day, namely a very free-swinging nature and a swing and approach geared toward hitting the ball on the ground and largely to the opposite field, were still very much in evidence in 2024.

A bit of progress is underway at Erie, however. Despite swinging a lot, Anderson does have good hands and that is still showing up in a good 16.7 percent strikeout rate. He still isn’t anywhere near selective enough, and is walking just 4.9 percent of the time, but he is hitting the ball hard and a little more often in the air. After hitting 11 home runs in 126 games last year, he has five already in just 23 games this season, all while making a pretty good leap up in competition level.

He’s still a limited defender who looks more like a future first baseman, and he needs to become more selective in his swing decisions, but there are positive signs with Anderson. He’s certainly had some luck on his side in the early going, but the project to make swing and approach adjustments is well underway. Anderson does show plus raw power when he squares a ball up, and so there is a potential 30 HR hitter in there if he can continue this transformation.

Josue Briceño

Already turning heads with his strong start in pro ball, the now 20-year-old Briceño suffered a PCL tear in his knee in last May just as he was really starting to tear it up in Single-A ball, and didn’t return to action until late August of last year. When he did return, he had lost weight and gained muscle, emerging from rehab in outstanding condition. The Tigers didn’t let him catch and kept him playing some first base and DH-ing the rest of the year. He struggled for a few weeks as he tried to get up to speed, but when he landed in Phoenix to play in the Arizona Fall League to make up for the lost reps, everything started to click in a big, big way.

As the least experienced hitters in the league, Briceño had arguably the best Fall League season in its 32 years of existence. He crushed 10 home runs, including one particular missile to straightaway center field off a high-90’s Andrew Painter fastball that I can’t get out of my head. Still playing first base and filling the designated hitter slot rather than catching, Briceño hit .433 with a staggering 1.376 OPS, leading in all major categories to win the first AFL Triple Crown and easily taking home league MVP honors.

Very quickly he entered the upper echelon of top power hitting prospects in baseball. With good plate discipline and contact rates in place, along with the ability to drive the ball to all fields and handle velocity, the only major question with his bat would be handling better offspeed stuff and tougher sets of left-handed pitchers as he moved up minor league levels.

So far all systems are go. Briceño has five homers in 25 games, a .350 on-base percentage, and a 130 wRC+ despite medicore batted ball luck considering the big-time exit velocities he’s posting. Even better, he’s returned to catching and still looks like he could be a solid catcher, though not the kind of everyday defensive star that Jake Rogers and now Dillon Dingler have developed into.

He has the arm, and his framing and blocking are pretty good considering his lack of experience. He’s not the explosive, twitchy catcher with outstanding pop times and buttery hands that A.J. Hinch demands for his pitching staff, and it will probably take the ABS system to make him a regular starting catcher, but it probably isn’t going to matter. The potential is this bat is enormous. Briceño has a good chance of being an absolute menace at the major league level in another year or two whether he’s behind the plate a lot or not.

The Tigers have an interesting needle to thread here, as Briceño’s bat is likely ready for the Double-A level right now, but ideally he’d get plenty of work to make up for lost time with his defensive game before a promotion. After a hot start, teams have been giving him very little to hit and so far he’s been willing to expand the zone a little more than we saw last season. That’s led to an uptick in strikeouts and pop-ups, but really it just looks like Briceño is just trying to find something to drive and needs to wait these pitchers out a little more. He has the eye and the discipline to do it without question. He is starting to take his walks and holds a 14.5 percent walk rate against a 21.4 percent strikeout rate. Look for that adjustment to continue, but if teams are going to avoid pitching to him, the Tigers may feel a little pressed to promote him to Erie anyway.

Franyerber Montilla

A little lost in the buzz around Bryce Rainer has been a strong first month from infielder Franyerber Montilla in Lakeland. The 20-year-old is a smooth defender with good hands at both shortstop and second base, but his arm is a little better suited to second and with Rainer playing shortstop that seems Montilla’s main home going forward. While his hit tool has been fairly well regarded for a while now, he’s really hitting the ball with surprising authority in the early going.

Montilla holds a 124 wRC+ with two homers and four total extra base hits in 23 games, but he’s also hitting .276 and walking 14.4 percent of the time. Using the whole field, he’s hitting a lot of line drives and holds an average exit velocity of 88.9 mph. He has a ground ball at 109.5 mph as his max velocity off the bat, and 17 of his 54 balls in play have been hit over 100 mph. The power potential certainly is more in the neighborhood of Max Clark than the other three hitters we’ve covered, but his six-foot frame has room to grow and he’s already looking like a good pure hitter who makes plenty of hard contact with potential 15-20 HR juice in the making.

The real fly in the ointment early on is that while he has good zone judgement and is punishing fastballs and the nascent offspeed stuff guys tend to be throwing at this level, Montilla is still getting carved up by breaking balls. He shows enough discipline and enough quality zone coverage to think he should overcome that with some reps. Montilla just started stateside in the Complex League last summer, and has a grand total of 43 games played at the Single-A level. The Tigers would be wise to give him most of the season in Lakeland to keep him comfortable and focused on handling his first full season of pro ball, but he only has some minor issues to clean up to move quickly into the upper minors over the next year or so.

Montilla doesn’t have the standout tools to crack top 100 lists, but he’s a good looking young middle infielder who can take his walks, puts up scrappy at-bats, and is driving the ball really well so far this season. If he grows into a little more power he’s going to be pretty interesting to watch and he’ll start creeping onto more top 10 lists for the farm system by midseason if he keeps this up.

Roberto Campos

The final hitting prospect on our list is one whose reputation is suffering from some prospect fatigue. It’s worth remembering that Roberto Campos has reached Double-A already at the age of 21 and won’t be 22 for another five weeks. While he’s been in the system quite a while now, and remains one of their top international free agent expenditures, Campos is still ahead of the curve. He just hasn’t been able to break through and start doing more damage as of yet.

Campos has good raw power and the discipline and contact numbers to keep the strikeouts under control and to draw more walks. He’s just at a key point in his development as he works to become more selective and to pull more balls in the air to tap into that power. If he can make gains in those areas at a new, tougher level in terms of pitching, he’ll be on his way, but as you’d expect it’s been a bit difficult to make those adjustments while also adapting to a tougher class of pitcher at the Double-A level in the early going this season.

Campos is putting up really good numbers so far and holds a 142 wRC+ through 24 games. He’s walking more, showing that work toward becoming more choosy in his swing decisions. The effort to drive more balls in the air hasn’t really taken yet, however. Campos is hitting .313, but it’s all BABIP driven and he hasn’t hit for much power so far this year, holding a .100 ISO mark. He’s also swinging a missing a little more, leading to a 27.1 percent strikeout rate so far. He’s facing a lot better command and secondary pitches now, so we’ll have to see if he can bring that under control.

Still, the right fielder is having success at a fairly young age for the level. Campos is a solid defender with a pretty good arm, but he isn’t likely to provide much more than average defense. The bat has to carry him most of the way to a potential major league future. While he continues to perform reasonably well, we’ll have to see if a real breakout is in the offing or not over the next season or two. For now just settling in and being productive at the Double-A level is fine, but he’s in a better hitting environment for power and still has to learn to tap into much more of it to look like a future starting outfielder for the Tigers.

There is still plenty of time.

Kevin McGonigle

Overall, things are going very well, but let’s get the more notable struggles out of the way first.

Kevin McGonigle, in my view the club’s best overall hitting prospect, suffered an ankle sprain at the beginning of the season and while one would expect a return to action in the coming weeks, there has been no information provided about his status. We don’t love that, and McGonigle has lost significant time now to a hamate fracture and an ankle sprain early in his pro career.

Still, he’s just an extremely precocious hitter who looked like he belonged in Triple-A all spring long. Despite the concern over the hamate, McGonigle crushed some rockets that reassured everyone that his power was unaffected. He won’t turn 21 until August and he’s on the kind of rapid path to the major leagues that Riley Greene blazed. There’s nothing to be particularly concerned about and no reason to think he won’t be back in the Whitecaps lineup pretty soon. He isn’t struggling. He’s just had a few injuries along the way. Expect him in Erie this summer. Expect him in Detroit sometime in 2026.

Thayron Liranzo and Hao-Yu Lee are struggling so far

The two top names who really have struggled in moving up to a new level are catcher Thayron Liranzo at Double-A Erie, and infielder Hao-Yu Lee at Triple-A Toledo. At 21 and 22 years of age, respectively, both are fairly young for their level and some early struggles were anticipated.

Liranzo is just seeing more breaking balls in the early going, and while he walks a lot and hit the ball extremely hard, there is a good amount of swing and miss in his game as well. So far, Double-A pitchers have been able to exploit that by spotting more breaking balls for strikes early and forcing him to chase from behind. While he’s walking 18.4 percent of the time, he’s also sriking out at an ugly 36.8 percent clip. So there are adjustments to make as you’d expect.

Liranzo’s game is built around zone discipline and big time raw power, particularly from the left-handed side. He’s unlikely to ever hit for high average unless simply hitting a lot of balls really hard produces a couple of peak seasons. Even with the expected improvements he’ll likely always have more swing and miss in his game than average, but Liranzo is young and talented enough to adapt. His ability to get on base, and his massive power potential are going to have to carry the offensive profile. Right now he also has the added responsibility of refining his game behind the plate in an organization that is pretty fanatical about developing their catchers. Patience is well advised.

As for Lee, he had no trouble with the greater volume of good breaking balls at the Double-A level last season, because Lee loves a good breaking ball and is a good mistake hitter. The problem is that he continues to struggle to drive anything more than an average fastball. Lee and the Tigers are working on his batspeed and swing mechanics, and his strikeout rate is still a very reasonable 20.5 percent. So, it’s not like he’s striking out a ton, but he is missing opportunities to do damage and fouling off a lot of heaters hoping to get something in the zone with a little hump in it.

Having only recently turned 22, Lee is pretty young for the Triple-A level and he is holding his own. His expected wOBA is a very solid .341 mark. So it’s just been a combination of poor batted ball luck and his tendency to hit most of his fly balls from center field to the right field foul pole. He has the raw power to hit it out the opposite way, and as the weather warms up more of those will likely clear the wall.

The first adjustment that needs to happen is better contact on fastballs. From there, he can move on to working on pulling the ball a little more. Those are his missions this season, and after advancing so rapidly to the highest level of the farm system, he deserves plenty of time to address those concerns over the rest of this season and beyond.