As the inevitable selling of assets and restocking of the farm system continues for the Detroit Tigers, chatter about prospects is buzzing more than ever.
MLB Pipeline updated its list of prospects across the minor leagues on Tuesday. In doing so, they shuffled around the rankings of each prospect for all 30 major league clubs. There are some notable changes the Tigers’ list of top 30 prospects.
#Tigers Matt Manning at no. 72, Alex Faedo at no. 78, Beau Burrows at no. 100. https://t.co/lF6H909DCf
— Emily Waldon (@EmilyCWaldon) July 25, 2017
Detroit is one of five teams with three prospects listed among the top 100 overall in Major League Baseball. However, of the 27 clubs that have at least one top-100 prospect — Royals, Angels and Marlins do not have one — the Tigers have the third-lowest amount of “prospect points” according to MLB Pipeline.
19-year-old Matt Manning, the team’s top pick (No. 9 overall) in the 2016 MLB Draft, still remains the franchise’s top prospect where he has been going back to before the season started. He’s piggybacking his professional rookie season where he made ten starts last year, by registering a solid 2.70 ERA in seven starts thus far for short-season Class A Connecticut.
Detroit’s top pick this year, former Florida right-hander Alex Faedo, vaults right up to the No. 2 slot in the team’s farm system. Faedo was selected 18th overall this past June while he was helping carry his Florida Gators to their first ever College World Series championship. He signed his professional deal earlier this month and the Tigers decided to shut him down from pitching for the remainder of this season to preserve his workload and given his relatively recent injury history.
20-year-old right-hander Beau Burrows tops off the list of top 100 MLB prospects and checks in at No. 3 for the Tigers, behind Manning and Faedo. Burrows has climbed rather rapidly through the system since being drafted No. 22 overall in 2015. He’s currently at Double-A Erie after mowing through High Class-A Lakeland earlier in this year. He’s made eight starts thus far for the SeaWolves.
Elsewhere on the list of top 30 prospects for the Tigers:
- Joe Jimenez, RHP (No. 6): Jimenez has been dominant for Triple-A Toledo this season before and after his early moonlight showing for the Tigers. Jimenez has a 1.57 ERA in 24 outings for the Mud Hens and is currently riding a scoreless streak of 14 innings.
- JaCoby Jones, OF (No. 11): The Tigers have been trying to find moments to call up JaCoby Jones but hasn’t quite been able to convince them to do so. Jones is hitting .244 in 65 games for Toledo this year, after mustering just a .137 BA in 22 games with Detroit.
- Dawel Lugo, 3B/SS (No. 12): Lugo was the highest-rated player the Tigers received in a package of prospects in exchange for J.D. Martinez. The career .276 BA/.707 OPS hitter and 22-year-old Dominican-born Lugo is the Tigers’ top-rated infield prospect.
To view the rest of the top 30 prospects for the Detroit Tigers, click here.
The new list of MLB top-100 prospects is headlined by the recently-promoted Yoan Moncada of the Chicago White Sox. Moncada is one of eight minor leaguers the Sox have listed in the top 100, only the Atlanta Braves have more. Both Chicago and Atlanta also have 527 of those aforementioned “prospect points.”
Here are some other nuggets about the new list:
- Eight of the top 10 are age 20 years or younger, including two teenagers: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (No. 6, TOR) and Ronald Acuna (No. 8, ATL).
- An unprecedented sighting on the prospects list shows that the top 11 MLB hopefuls are all position players.
- Moncada, Guerrero and Acuna make up three of eight international prospects to top the chart, also a never-before-seen sighting regarding MLB prospects.
