Motor City Future Starts to Come Into Light
The Detroit Tigers have been in the middle of a rebuild for the past few seasons. The 2020 regular season has been much of the same for the franchise. Going into play Monday, the Tigers sat in fourth place in the American League Central with a 9-10 record. Over their last 10 games, the team has a 4-6 record and is in the midst of a five-game losing streak.
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The #Tigers today announced that three top prospects are scheduled to make their debuts this week: No. 2 RHP Casey Mize, No. 5 LHP Tarik Skubal and No. 6 INF Isaac Paredes. pic.twitter.com/CLkyTF6Dx7
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) August 17, 2020
The Future Starts to Come Into View
Over the last few years, the excitement regarding the Detroit Tigers has laid in the promise of the team’s exciting pitching prospects headlined by the team’s number two prospect Casey Mize. Mize gets the start Tuesday against the Chicago White Sox. While Mize will have his work cut out for him against a tough lineup, he will have the opportunity to show why he is the team’s future ace.
The best part about Mize’s overall pitch repertoire is his splitter. On the scouting scale, it gets a grade of 70 out of 80 overall. Furthermore, when he is on top of his game, scouts say that Mize does a tremendous job of throwing all of his pitches for accuracy and striking out hitters both inside and outside of the strike zone.
When the calendar turns to Wednesday, that’s when the team’s number five overall prospect Tarik Skubal will head to the mound for his major league debut. Both Mize and Skubal should form a formidable 1-2 punch for the Tigers for years to come. The left-hander Skubal was originally drafted during the ninth round of the 2018 MLB Draft.
Skubal has a very impressive pitch repertoire, but the most exciting pitch in it might be his slider. His slider received a grade of 60 on the scouting scale and results in a lot of swing-and-miss. As he gains more experience at the big league level, his repertoire could become even more interesting and effective.
Finally, infielder and the sixth overall prospect Isaac Paredes was called up. Paredes was in the starting lineup on Monday and the need to add him to the mix stemmed from the recent injury news surrounding C.J. Cron. Jason Beck, who covers the Tigers for MLB.com, had that angle on Twitter.
C.J. Cron's injury played role in Paredes promotion. "We're adding a bat, basically," Avila said. "We lost Cron to injury and we felt we need some offense."
— Jason Beck (@beckjason) August 17, 2020
Going into play Monday, the Tigers had a middle-of-the-pack offense. Collectively as a unit, the Tigers are batting .235/.299/.435 over 19 games or 625 at-bats. In that span, Detroit hitters have jacked 28 home runs and recorded 89 RBI along with 190 strikeouts.
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