Detroit Tigers Links: The MLB draft starts on Monday!

Good Monday morning and welcome to another off-day edition of Detroit Tigers Links. We’re almost mid-way through the June of reckoning that could very well determine the direction this team takes going forward, and the Tigers are fighting to hover in the vicinity of the .500 mark. Fortunately for us, today is a day that holds a measure of hope league-wide as everybody gets a shot at laying the groundwork for a promising future through the MLB draft.

Will the Tigers continue down the path of recent years and draft a pitcher who throws the ball really, really hard, or are they gonna mix it up with the 18th pick of the first round? Well, we’ve locked our prospect guy, Jacob Markle, in the basement and forced him to churn out articles on a variety of young gentlemen the Tigers could target. Whoever the Tigers take in this years draft, we’ll make sure you know everything you need to — and some things you don’t — about the latest members of the organization.

Weekend Wrap Up

It wasn’t the best weekend for this Tigers team. They gave one away on Friday, got pummeled on Saturday, and the bats synced up with the pitching on Sunday resulting in an 8-3 victory. We were treated to too much ESPN and too many reminders of the David Ortiz home run because it was Boston and everything about playing in that place is terrible. The Tigers are now 5-4 in June, and a month that started off pretty promising is now threatening to be just as mediocre as the rest of the season before it. I’m just glad they’re out of Boston.

General team stuff

Outfielder Mikie Mahtook has been seeing time in center field playing a platoon role that has him facing mostly left-handed pitching. Mahtook says he can hit righties, and apparently manager Brad Ausmus thinks it might be possible, saying he could see more at-bats against right-handed pitching if he continues to be successful. His career splits would beg to differ as he is below the Mendoza line against right handers, but I guess we’ll see.

Relief pitcher Arcenio Leon was swapped out for lefty Chad Bell yesterday in the latest move of the never-ending merry-go-round that is the Detroit bullpen.

The latest edition of our Fanpost Friday series asks you what you would do to make the Comerica experience better. Allow me to offer my most humble of suggestions:

Third baseman Nick Castellanos has seen his hard hit rate start to pay off in recent games, and maybe he has pitcher Shane Greene to thank for it. Greene employs a fairly unorthodox training program which Castellanos has recently adopted. If the training has anything to do with Nick’s hard hit rate, I can think of a few other guys Greeney might want to spend some time with.

Starting pitcher Daniel Norris is apparently looking to another hard-throwing lefty for some pointers. Dan watches almost every Clayton Kershaw start, and looks to him for examples on how to improve. I’m no expert, but I think step one would be to pitch more like Clayton Kershaw.

If you’re the type to keep tabs on prospects you probably know enough about the bigger names like Christin Stewart and Beau Burrows, but apparently there’s this kid named Austin Sodders who is pitching well enough to turn a few heads.

Baseball is awesome

New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge continues to murder baseballs.

For your free time

Advanced stats are making their way into broadcast booths with mixed results. Are juiced balls the new steroids? A statistical analysis of the work of Bob Ross. Another entry in the “should the Tigers sell” series.