Sure things will change, but right now this is how the draft is lining up for Detroit.

The Detroit Tigers came away from the 2024 MLB Draft lottery with the 11th overall pick. The Tigers have selected in that range just once since tearing the team down to its studs, when they drafted Jace Jung with the 12th pick in 2022. After crawling out of the league’s basement in 2023, Detroit wasn’t poised to make a real run at a top pick and had just 1.6 percent odds of drafting first overall. Detroit had the tenth-worst record in MLB, meaning the eleventh pick is just one spot lower than what they would have been awarded under the old system.

With just one draft under their belts, there’s not enough data to get a precise read on Detroit’s current leadership group. However, considering the entire body of work of Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg, VP of scouting Rob Metzler’s work for the Tampa Bay Rays, and director of amateur scouting, Mark Conner’s work in that role for the San Diego Padres, a few possible trends emerge that are worth monitoring.

Selecting Max Clark instead of Wyatt Langford with the third pick last year was an omen, and the Tigers boldly pursued prep talent at every stage of the draft. Then they acquired 2023 draftee Blake Dickerson in a cash trade with the Padres this offseason, after the Padres had originally inked the prep southpaw to a hefty bonus in the 12th round. Conner may be a driving force in this strategy. He was hired from San Diego, a team who has famously placed a premium on youth. Metzler’s background with the Rays isn’t dissimilar either.

There was some loud complaining about how far Clark is from MLB play after he was picked, and has intensified as Langford has rapidly blossomed into one of the best near major league ready hitters in the minor leagues. However, in a poll we ran in early February, the vast majority of Tigers fans voted that the team should draft the best player available with their first pick regardless of whether he comes from high school or college. People are philosophically on board, but you still have to pick the right player. Hopefully Clark proves them right, but it’s going to take a while to know.

The trick to going heavily prep in a draft is finding ways to set aside enough money to pay high schoolers enough in the middle rounds to pass on their college commitments without sacrificing talent at the top of the draft. For the Tigers, that only gets harder as their top pick dropped from third overall in 2023 to eleventh this summer. Accordingly, the amount of money they have to play around with has gone down as well. We’ll see if that affects their strategy, or whether they double down and just take as many tooled up prep players as they can sign once they get past the early rounds and the top college talent.

The projected top group of players in this class is primarily from the college ranks, which may present another challenge in finding wiggle room. Outside of the early round college talent at the top of the draft, most teams would prefer to take shots on high schoolers with a wider range of outcomes whose growth they can supervise from the start. However, it’s harder to evaluate and project players at that age, and consistently signing the guys you want requires a lot more ground work and planning.

When he took over the team last winter, Scott Harris spoke about dominating the strike zone as his guiding principle. That’s held true in a loose sense, but he’s been willing to bend that rule for excellent athletes and seems to be more particular about good swing decisions than bat to ball ability. Second round pick Max Anderson dominated at Nebraska, but scouting reports express concern about his contact ability springing from his kinetic chain and bat path, yet the team invested the 45th overall pick in him. Ultimately (and this may sound silly but it is significant) “good at baseball” seems to be what this team is looking for rather than overemphasizing any one particular attribute. The only player archetype we have yet to see Harris pursue with meaningful draft picks or depth signings is the slap hitting, slick fielding type.

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