Thayron Liranzo and Josue Briceño off to strong starts in the Arizona Fall League

The Tigers big bats feature for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Fall League.

Development of the next wave of players doesn’t stop for the MLB postseason . The Arizona Fall League got underway this week, and the Detroit Tigers have several of their top hitting prospects on hand to get extra reps in October with the Scottsdale Scorpions.

The Tigers top prospect playing for the Scorpions is catcher Thayron Liranzo. The switch-hitting thumper was the lead piece the Tigers received from the Los Angeles Dodgers for Jack Flaherty back in July. Liranzo turned 21 in July, but he already has a strong 6’2” frame that should hold up to the rigors of the position.

Liranzo’s obvious calling card is the bat, and it’s not completely off the table that Liranzo could move to first base if his hitting reached major league readiness well before his defense is dialed in. Tigers President of Baseball Ops looks to have again targeted a talented young player just in time for a big breakout. Liranzo hit .315 with a monstrous 195 wRC+ and five home runs in 26 games in High-A West Michigan after coming over. He struck out just 17.4 percent of the time while walking 22.6 percent of the time.

However, some reports of his liabilities as a defender when the Tigers acquired him looked exaggerated as Liranzo showed plenty of ability and really just needs work on the his fundamentals and game calling. The work ethic, overall athleticism, and arm strength are all in place to be a quality major league backstop, but there is plenty of refinement required. The Tigers are quite good at coaching catching, so I’d say there’s a strong likelihood he’ll stick at the position at least part-time.

The Fall League is generally stocked with High-A and Double-A level players who either missed time with injuries during the regular season and needs reps to catch up, or because there’s something specific to be worked on defensively. Jace Jung spent time in the Fall League last year to work on moving from second to third base, for example. Colt Keith played in the 2022 edition of the Fall League after missing much of the Double-A season with a shoulder injury.

There will be some players who haven’t advanced past Single-A, but it’s generally a little older, more experienced group. Typically the team rosters are big enough that players rarely play more than 2-3 games per week, but their numbers don’t necessarily matter too much. It’s all about the extra time to work.

Liranzo had a huge game on Thursday, going 4-for-5 with a double and a solo home run while knocking in three runs. He also singled and walked back on Tuesday in a Scorpions 9-7 victory over the Salt River Rafters.

The hot hand in that Tuesday matchup was another Tigers catching prospect in Josue Briceño. Having just turned 20 in late September, the big-framed, 6’4” left-handed hitter could well turn out to be the best hitting prospect in the system. Infielder Kevin McGonigle, our third ranked prospect in the system after Jackson Jobe and center fielder Max Clark, holds the pole position as best pure hitting prospect, with Clark and infielder Hao-Yu Lee also in the running, but Briceño’s discipline and contact skills are similar to McGonigle’s but boosted by big-time power as well.

As a 19-year-old still pretty young for the level, Briceño walked 12.5 percent of the time for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, and struck out just 14.8 percent of the time, producing a steady flow of really hard contact. Putting more balls in the air will be the mission as he advances to West Michigan in 2024.

Early in the 2024 season, Briceño was the talk of the Tigers prospect circuit, but a PCL sprain in his right knee cost him over three months of time and convinced the Tigers to move him to first base and designated hitter for the rest of the year. It’s unclear whether he’ll return to catching next year. While neither he nor Liranzo have speed, Briceño is decidedly less quick overall and his arm strength was already fringy for the position. A full-time move to first base seems likely eventually, but they may try to stick with catching next season to see if he can gain any ground there and make himself an even more valuable prospect.

Briceño went 3-for-4 with a walk, a strikeout, a run scored, and a run batted in on Tuesday. He only returned to action after the knee injury at the end of August, playing just 12 games before the season ended. So he’s likely pretty rusty compared to most of his teammates, but he’ll have no trouble holding his own against more refined and experienced pitchers than he saw in Lakeland.

The other key prospect on hand in the Fall League is right-hander Rayner Castillo. The 20-year-old stood out in rookie ball as an 18 and 19-year-old back in 2022 and 2023, but he emerged this season having filled out his 6’3” frame well beyond his listed 180 pounds. With the extra muscle mass came better balance and extension, and Castillo was firing an easy 95 mph sinker that top 97 mph occasionally and a pretty good curveball that wipes out hitters at its best. His changeup is still too firm and just a change of pace pitch, but the Tigers will have some remedies for that next season to experiment with.

Castillo made his first start on Tuesday against the Rafters and it didn’t go great. Much of that had to do with defensive issues, but Castillo hasn’t pitched above Lakeland yet, so he’s also going to see a lot more advanced hitters in his Fall League tour. After pitching around an error by his third baseman in the first inning and throwing a 1-2-3 second, he ran into trouble in the third.

An error on Liranzo allowed the leaoff hitter to reach. That was followed by a grounder that got through the right side of the infield. A line out followed, but Castillo hit the next batter and then issued a walk to force in a run. Castillo couldn’t make the play on a swinging bunt, and everyone was safe as a second run came across. That was the end of the day for Castillo and his reliever allowed three more runs to come across. Castillo was only charged with one, and there was only one hard hit ball allowed, but he does have work to do in developing his breaking stuff and his changeup.

Still, he only turned 20 in June and he’s got a really good sinker and the easy mechanics, balance, and strong build to develop into a good starting pitcher in the Tigers pitching development program. He’ll be well up Tigers prospect rankings this offseason. Tigers Minor League Report has him 23rd in the system already, and preseason rankings next spring will probably see him moving up from there despite his youth.

The Tigers have several other players participating in the Fall League.

Shortstop Peyton Graham has struggled badly through a ton of injuries his first two full seasons in the system, and he’s playing some left field in the desert just to help get him as many reps at the plate as possible. He has some pop and pretty good plate discipline, but he’s struggled with velo at times and just hasn’t been able to make enough hard contact to take a step forward.

The Tigers second rounder in 2022, the Oklahoma product will turn 24 in January and really needs to stay on the field and start making progress both with the bat and with cleaning up his defense. He has the athleticism and arm strength to make a really good shortstop, but his fundamentals still need plenty of work and he’s shown a tendency to hurry a lot of throws with predictably wild results. With only 144 games played in over two years, he needs to make up for lost time in 2025. For some he’s already fallen into org guy territory and is just hanging on at the back of national prospect lists for the system.

Other names from the Tigers include left-handed reliever Jake Miller, who had a great first full season in Lakeland and moved up to West Michigan with pretty solid results. His fastball is bit pedestrian at this point but he has an excellent slider developing.

Right-handed reliever Eric Silva came to Detroit from the Giants in exchange for Mark Canha. Harris was the Giants GM when they drafted Silva in the fourth round in 2021, so he knows his subject well. His control improved this year and he has a good curveball to go with a fastball, slider, and changeup that are all intriguing but still need further development. He too is still pretty young, having just turned 22 last week.

Right-hander reliever CJ Weins was acquired in a swap of reliever Trey Wingenter to Boston back in July. Weins was their sixth round pick in 2023 out of Western Kentucky. He was drafted as a college senior and absolutely wiped out hitters at the A-ball levels before throwing a few innings for the Double-A SeaWolves to end the year. He could be a pretty fastball moving relief prospect for the Tigers next year featured a pretty good fastball-slider combo with a developing changeup. He may be a good candidate for a split-change in the Tigers system.