The top two 2024 draft picks will head straight to full season ball, and that seems like a good sign.
While the Double-A Erie SeaWolves and the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps announced their rosters on Tuesday, the roster for the Lakeland Flying Tigers was a little slower to emerge. We still don’t have a full roster, but Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline reported on Thursday that the Detroit Tigers top two picks from the 2024 draft will indeed start the season on the Flying Tigers roster.
Looks at both SS Bryce Rainer and RHP Owen Hall have been very hard to come by since the draft. The only views of Hall have come from his throwing sessions at PitchingWRX, a facility in Oklahoma where Jackson Jobe trains as well in the offseason. That footage was really impressive. The teenager was pumping 94-97 mph with high spin and great riding life alongside a nasty looking mid-80’s slider. Hall also packs a splitter and a curveball along with traits like long limbs that give him added projection on his extension to the plate, and a relatively low release point that adds to the induced vertical break (IVB) he gets on the heater, make him a development staff’s dream.
You can find his full scouting report here.
The Tigers are typically cautious with pitching prospects, and even more so with prep picks. So it’s notable to see him on Lakeland’s roster from the jump. Based on the little footage we’ve seen and a few positive reports from the backfields, progress from Hall in the roughly nine months he’s been in the organization has been very good. Of course training sessions don’t tell you much about his progress in terms of command and sometimes longer limbed pitchers take longer to control everything, but we’re very excited to see him tackle A-ball this spring.
As for shortstop Bryce Rainer, the Tigers first rounder last summer , he too was basically shut down after the draft and didn’t play any Complex League ball. That led to some idle speculation that he was struggling with pro pitching on the backfields. Cooler heads recognized that the Tigers really like to do some serious work on a player’s body and mechanics post-draft, and don’t send them out to play in public until some of that work is already accomplished. And so Rainer finally emerged from the shadows at the Spring Breakout game back in March, and he did not disappoint.
Facing High-A pitchers in his first public game as a pro. Rainer hit the heck out of the ball twice for RBI singles to the opposite field. We already know he’s a good defender with speed and a great arm. The power potential is clear. But seeing such an advanced approach right out of the gate against much more experienced competition was pretty opening. The starting shortstop for your Lakeland Flying Tigers looks ready to lead the way, and he won’t turn 20 years old until July.
Other key prospects starting the year at Lakeland will be 2B/SS Franyerber Montilla, RHP Josh Randall, LHP Paul Wilson, and SS/3B Carson Rucker.
The 19-year-old Montilla played second base and shortstop in the second half for the Flying Tigers after a very strong Complex League debut. He’s a smooth defender with a very advanced eye for the strike zone and plenty of speed on the basepaths. The switch-hitter stands just six-feet tall and 160 pounds officially, and developing his batspeed is going to be a key factor in his growth. Right now he projects like a future middle infielder who will give you 15 home runs per year, but with some more muscle that could quickly improve. With Rainer presumably getting most of the shortstop reps, Montilla will presumably play mostly second base this season and that’s probably where his arm projects best.
Rucker is returning to action after separating his shoulder early last season. The infielder can play shortstop but is generally viewed as a future third baseman with a good arm. The right-handed hitter, drafted in 2023 with the Tigers fourth round pick, has good power projections but will need a lot of work in his swing and approach to get to it. With only 57 pro plate appearances to date, he deserves plenty of time this spring to try and catch up, but reports this spring have been pretty promising.
Paul Wilson was the Tigers third rounder in 2023, and was drafted boasting a deep pitch mix and advanced mechanics and control. That proved elusive as he and the Tigers worked on things in extended spring training and then in the Complex League. Wilson was exceedingly wild in his 35 1⁄3 innings of work, but he just turned 20 years old and we’ll hope that his work ingraining some of the adjustments the Tigers wanted will have made a lot more progress over the offseason.
Finally, right-hander Josh Randall was the Tigers third rounder last year, drafted after Rainer, Hall, and lefty Ethan Schiefelbein, who will get some extended spring training work as expected before joining the Complex League and eventually the Flying Tigers if things go well this summer.
Randall boasts an advanced fastball-slider combination and has the makings of a quality changeup as well. As his work with at the University of San Diego illustrated, there are still some issues with his control, but he’s had plenty of time to work on things since draft day. He did get two brief starts with the Flying Tigers late last summer and looked reasonably good already.
One prospect we were excited to see but who will now be a good while is RHP Zach Swanson. The Tigers went overslot to land the hard-throwing prep pitcher after selecting him in the ninth round and he has outstanding potential. Unfortunately, he blew out his UCL heading into camp and had to have reconstruction surgery. He probably won’t be back in action until late in the 2026 season.
This Flying Tigers’ roster should be a lot of fun to follow this year. The Tigers under Scott Harris have stockpiled a lot of prep talent in the draft, and the majority of those players are just ready to be fully unleashed in full season ball. While their more precocious peers such as Max Clark and Kevin McGonigle are already racing toward the Double-A level this spring, there is a lot of talent coming that just wasn’t quite that advanced on draft day. It should be an exciting season under first year manager, René Rivera.