We begin our Tools series with a look at the best hitters in the Detroit Tigers system.

Last week we finished our Awards series, which was based purely on performance in 2023. This Tools series does take performance into account, but here we’re going to get a bit more granular and talk about ability as much as production. That said, we do need to acknowledge the statistical baselines that underpin scouting grades.

You can find a strong translation of scouting grades to on-field performance over at FanGraphs. But that 2014 chart may need to be adjusted a bit for the current offensive environment. That year the league-wide batting average for non-pitchers was .255. In 2022 the league’s non-pitchers hit .243, though that number jumped to .248 this season. For our purposes we’re going to go ahead and suggest that a 50-grade hitter — that is an average big league batter — will hit closer to .250 than .260.

We also want to give some consideration to on-base ability here. The Detroit Tigers’ struggles during the Al Avila era can be at least partially explained by giving far too many at-bats to hyper-aggressive hitters. Having plus bat-to-ball skills is great. But that positive trait becomes a negative if a hitter lacks the discipline to walk and/or lay off pitches he can’t drive.

You don’t have to walk at a double-digit rate to be a successful big-league hitter. But it’s incredibly hard to succeed without walking at least 6% of the time. From 2017-2022 the Tigers gave at least 400 plate appearances to 11 different players with a walk rate under 6% — during the same span the Astros fielded just two such players, and the Dodgers none.

Now let’s make with the list!

Detroit Tigers Top Hit Tools

1 – Colt Keith

Colt Keith stands shoulder to shoulder with Riley Greene and Nick Castellanos as the best pure hitters to come through the Detroit Tigers system in the last few decades. In fact, in terms of swing decisions, he might be an ideal combination of the two. Castellanos swings with impulsive swagger, leading to a lot of production, but plenty of chases out of the zone. Greene employs a more thoughtful and restrained approach, but he can be prone to letting hittable strikes sail by him. Colt Keith stays in the zone. And if the pitchers meet him there, he’s going to swing with ill intent. It’s an approach that has served him very well.

Keith hits all kinds of pitching, and he drives the ball in the air to all fields. He dominated the Double-A level, but after a loud introduction in Triple-A he hit a bit of a lull. The crafty veterans in the International League started feeding Keith a diet of mush on the edges of the plate. And it worked, for about a month. Keith batted just .219 with one home run over 20 games in July. Then he hit .297/.378/.577 with 10 home runs over his final 44 games. Colt Keith has the approach, bat speed, and discipline to hit .300 with 30 home runs in the big leagues one day.

Here’s Colt Keith’s cycle in its entirety. #RoadtoDetroit pic.twitter.com/OSOBZVxdTB

— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) May 17, 2023

2(a) – Justice Bigbie and 2(b) – Justyn-Henry Malloy

There was a bit of debate about among the TMLR staff about the second best hitter in the system. We could’ve done some math to find a winner, but a tie seems more fitting here, because it gives us a chance to compare and contrast two uniquely talented hitters.

Malloy is the most patient hitter in Detroit’s system, and he led all qualified minor leaguers with 110 walks in 2023. Bigbie is far more aggressive, but his plus bat-to-ball skills kept his strikeout rate below 16%. Both players show above-average raw power, but their batted ball profiles lead to different results.

Malloy’s swing is geared to pull the ball in the air, leading to more over-the-fence production. Bigbie makes more consistent hard contact, but it comes in the form of line drives and grounders up the middle and to the opposite field.

There are plenty of current big leaguers with a batted-ball profile like Malloy’s. And it wouldn’t be shocking to see him lean further into the pull-for-power approach at the expense of some average. But Bigbie’s spray chart is exceedingly rare, with more than 39% of his batted balls in 2023 going to the opposite field. Since 2010 there have been only seven qualified seasons from MLB hitters with such an extreme-oppo approach. But those hitters combined to bat .301, and between them they own six batting titles. It will be fascinating to see how these two hitters perform once they reach the big leagues.

4 – Wenceel Perez

Pro ball has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride for Wenceel Perez. He burst on the scene in 2018, reaching full-season ball at just 18 and looking like a future plus hitter. But his promise seemed to fade away as he stagnated over the next three years. A new approach helped Perez break out in a huge way in 2022, only for a back injury to cut his season short. Perez had a rough June in 2023, but otherwise he was very steady at the plate, and he had a monster August in which he posted a 1.015 OPS.

When he’s at his best Perez is a line-to-line hitter with enough pop and speed to rack up extra-base hits and keep pitchers honest. His swinging strike rate of 8.3% was the 4th lowest in the Detroit Tigers system. And his approach only seemed to get better once he reached Triple-A Toledo. A switch hitter, Perez has historically been slightly better from the right side of the plate (.284 to .270). But in 2023 he hit .301 as a lefty and just .197 with no power as a righty. Maybe it was a small-sample mirage. Or perhaps it was due to lingering effects from his back injury. In any event, he did more than enough as a left-handed hitter to earn his spot on this list.

Wenceel Pérez with a 102-mph line-drive double to right to bring home Tyler Nevin. pic.twitter.com/dJ5eQLQHma

— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) August 15, 2023

5 – Jace Jung

Jace Jung came into pro baseball with a reputation as a plus hitter with patience and power. But he hit just .231 with one homer over 30 games in his professional debut, with a lot of soft fly outs to left field.  Jung started to pull the ball more in 2023, though he was still batting just .229 on June 1st. But from that point he hit .282 with 22 home runs, climbing to Double-A Erie in the process. And he did that while maintaining a 13.4% walk rate. Pitchers can still get Jung with good breaking balls under his hands, or elevated velocity, but he rarely leaves the zone, and he punishes mistakes.  That should be enough for him to bat in that .240-.260 range at the highest level.

Jace Jung almost hits it out of here but gets a double as @erie_seawolves is now up 5-0 in the 5th. pic.twitter.com/ZKQ97b0XWT

— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) September 26, 2023

Honorable Mentions

Roberto Campos finished the year batting just .257 and hit for surprisingly scant power. He needs to refine his approach, but he makes easy contact, and he can hit just about any fastball. Eddys Leonard showed flashes of plus hitting ability in the Dodgers system in 2021, but he saw his batting average dip to about .260 over the next two seasons. He was very impressive for Toledo, however, batting .302 over 40 games and making a lot of hard contact. Like Leonard, Hao-Yu Lee joined the Detroit Tigers system at the trade deadline. He played in just eight games after the trade, but he’s a career .282 hitter in pro ball, and he’s holding his own in the Arizona Fall League.

Andrew Jenkins is a first baseman who doesn’t show much pop, but he hit .314 over 331 at-bats in 2023. His oppo-heavy, ground-ball approach is vaguely reminiscent of Justice Bigbie. Eliezer Alfonzo doesn’t have much in the way of pop, but he makes tons of contact. He’s a career .294 hitter with more walks than strikeouts, and his 5.4% swinging strike rate was among the lowest in minor-league baseball last year.

Future Projection

Kevin McGonigle had a reputation as one of the best pure hitters in the prep draft class last year. Then he went out and hit .315 with 18 walks to 10 strikeouts in his professional debut. He may well top this list in a year or two. Our friend Geoff Pontes from Baseball America had the chance to see Josue Briceno in person this summer, and he didn’t come away terribly impressed from a scouting perspective. That said, Briceno did manage to hit .315 with power and patience as an 18-year-old in his U.S. debut. And some of his underlying numbers($) are pretty encouraging, too. And Samuel Gil is another young international prospect who produced well despite not jumping off the page athletically. He’s a little undersized and considered a glove-first prospect, but he batted .298 with a 15% walk rate in his stateside debut.

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