Franyerber Montilla Might Be a Dude
You can be forgiven if you don’t recognize the name Franyerber Montilla. He’s not ranked on any public prospect list. And he didn’t even make our top 30, which we just updated a few weeks ago. (Kudos to Rogelio, though, who ranked Montilla 30th on his list.)
At Tigers Minor League Report we like to describe our prospect rankings as a snapshot in time. We do our best to offer the most up-to-date information we can. But in-season updates are always tough, because hot streaks and real improvement look identical from up close.
The panoramic views provided by a full season of information offer a more complete picture and make for better lists. But they aren’t as fun as trying to catch a breakout in progress.
So we take our shot, and it doesn’t always work out well. Sometimes the prospect you thought was Sasquatch is actually just Bob from craft services in a gorilla costume.
And sometimes you have the misfortune of taking a snapshot one second before a real-live Bigfoot wanders into frame. Which brings us back to Franyerber Montilla.
Who is Franyerber Montilla?
Franyerber Montilla is a 19-year-old, switch-hitting infielder currently playing for the Florida Complex League Tigers. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, he signed with the Detroit Tigers in January 2022. He landed Detroit’s 5th biggest bonus that year as part of the same international free agent class as Samuel Gil and our number eight prospect, Josue Briceno. They all began their professional career together in the 2022 Dominican Summer League.
Briceno and Gil are a bit older than Montilla — seven months and five months, respectively — and they performed better overall in the DSL in 2022. So they came to the United States and played in the FCL last year, while Montilla stayed in the DR for another season. He improved across the board in 2023, though he did miss some time during the year.
Montilla was assigned to the FCL Tigers to begin the 2024 season. He went 2-for-2 with a double, two walks and two stolen bases in his first game. And he hasn’t really slowed down since.
On Saturday, June 8th, he went 2-for-4 with a home run, raising his season slash line to .325/.465/.506 in exactly 100 plate appearances. He has 19 walks and 19 strikeouts in 21 games, and he has stolen 14 bases in 16 tries.
It’s always good to perform well. But surface-level stats in the rookie leagues are pretty meaningless, because it’s the lowest level of affiliated baseball. The database at Baseball Reference is filled with players who dominated rookie ball but never even made it to Double-A.
To really know if Franyerber Montilla’s numbers mean anything we need underlying data, and the thoughts of scouts. Fortunately, we recently got a little of both. And somehow they’re both louder than the stats.
FCL Tigers infield prospect Franyerber Montilla went 2-for-5 today. Sharp single from the left side and an RBI double from the right side. He turned 19 in April and is now batting .344/.482/.516 through 18G. pic.twitter.com/e8vEezBEQa
— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) June 4, 2024
Scouting Franyerber Montilla
We don’t like to write scouting reports about players we haven’t seen in person. At the very least we like to watch a lot of unedited video on players before we start to judge their tools and ability. Otherwise we’re just playing a game of telephone and repeating the work of other analysts.
But there wasn’t really much public info out there to suggest a big breakout from Montilla anyway. Baseball America subscribers got a paragraph about him when he signed, and another before this season ($). And Eric Longenhagen briefly mentioned Montilla in the Other Prospects of Note section of his Detroit Tigers rankings.
So Montilla had a little attention, but nothing crazy. But then, two weeks ago, Geoff Pontes of Baseball America brought up Montilla during a podcast.
“The reports that I’ve gotten is that he and Staryln Caba are the best players in that particular pod within the Florida Complex League,” Pontes said. “The skills are awesome. We’re talking about a guy that’s making contact at an elite rate. An 8% zone miss rate, 11.3% chase rate, 104.5 (mph) 90th percentile exit velocity…twitchy, gonna stick on the left side of the infield is what I’m told. Really high makeup. I’m kind of all in on this guy.”
For context, Starlyn Caba is a slick-fielding shortstop in the Philadelphia Phillies system who is currently ranked as the 99th best prospect in all of baseball to MLB Pipeline. Baseball America has him ranked 55th overall.
And if you’re curious about those numbers, Wenceel Perez currently leads the Detroit Tigers with an 12.4% in-zone miss rate. Mark Canha and Matt Vierling both run a chase rate of about 20%. And that 90th percentile exit velocity is almost identical to Kerry Carpenter.
FCL pitching is not MLB pitching. But hitters have to start somewhere, and right now Franyerber Montilla is flashing all five tools in a very exciting way. We’ll have a better picture of him at the end of the season, but it wouldn’t be shocking if he’s a top ten prospect in Detroit’s system at this time next year.
Rogelio Castillo