We’re pretty partial to FanGraphs here at Bless You Boys. They combine outstanding writing with all the statistics you could want to understand baseball and baseball players, and their subscription cost is extremly reasonable and has remained low for years now. They also have Eric Longenhagen, probably the most thorough analyst on the national prospect scene.
So, the drop of their spring top 100 prospects list is always a notable occasion. It doesn’t hurt that the Tigers’ farm system is pretty great at this point, either. What’s particularly nice, is that you can go over and read their extensive reports on each top 100 player without a paywall, though you will then be subject to the ad-based version of the sight, as you deserve!
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Seriously, FanGraphs deserves subscribers.
But I digress…the Tigers have five prospects on FanGraphs new list of 50 FV or better top prospects in the game. They go 110 players deep this year rather than the arbitrary 100 player cutoff found eldwhere.
You won’t be surprised to find Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, Bryce Rainer, and Josue Briceño all made the list, but unlike a lot of other sites, FanGraphs still has Thayron Liranzo as a 50 FV prospect. Most of the national sites and a lot of local prospect coverage dumped Liranzo all the way down to the 45 and even 40+ tiers after a tough season in which he made the leap to Double-A full-time at age 21 and struck out 31.7 percent of the time, while looking very run down in the summer months and not playing that much behind the pate.
Personally, I kept Liranzo at 45+, just outside of top 100 level, knowing that he’d had some personal issues, and that a switch-hitting, 21-year-old catcher has an enormous workload and level of responsiblity compared to anyone else on the roster. Not only do they have their work behind the plate and plenty of extra drilling on framing, blocking, and throwing, but he’s also learning to hit upper level pitching from both sides of the plate rather than just one. That’s a lot for a player who was still younger than most of the 2025 draft class.
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Evan Woodbery of MLive had a great article over the weekend detailing the difficulties of that season. That is paywalled, but the short version is that Liranzo’s long-time trainer, who was like a second father to him, died unexpectedly during the season, and fatigue really started crushing him in the second half of the season as the swing and miss piled up.
Here’s a key quote from Scott Harris in Woodbery’s article, which can be found right here.
In the middle of the season, Liranzo’s longtime trainer, whom he considered a father figure, passed away. He dealt with family problems back home in the Dominican Republic. A shoulder injury limited him to designated hitter duty at times.
“All these things were affecting me, and I didn’t really know how to handle it,” he said. “It was my first time going through something like that, and I wasn’t having a good year on the field either. Everything kind of piled up on me, and I felt like I lost my head a little bit.”
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The Tigers pushed him to get leaner over the offseason, and Liranzo got his diet sorted out and went all out on the strength and conditioning program laid out for him heading into the offseason. He lost a ton of weight, showing up to camp looking much leaner and stronger, it’s glaringly obvious in pictures from camp, and put plenty of work into refining his defensive game.
This is still a catcher who switch-hits and has double plus power hitting left-handed and a good eye from the strike zone. His power is closer to plus hitting right-handed. Reaching Double-A at age 21 is already a minor accomplishment, but particularly impressive with all the added demands on a catcher. This is still the guy who mauled Arizona Fall League pitching back in October of 2024, and he’s still four years younger than Dillon Dingler was when he finally estabished himself as an everyday big league catcher last year. The jump to the upper levels is no joke.
There is still plenty of swing and miss in the zone, and Liranzo does need to clean up some wasted motion in his swing mechanics to simplify his hand path. He’s probably always going to strike out quite a bit, but as a catcher and first baseman who walks and has 40 home run power, the risk in his hit tool is counterbalanced pretty nicely by his enormous potential. So, a high risk, high reward prospect, still 22 years old. He’s not McGonigle or Clark, but that’s a lot of young player as the fifth ranked prospect in the system. With luck, the Tigers will essentially get something like a switch-hitting Alex Avila who is better as a second catcher on a squad rather than the everyday guy.
McGonigle, interestingly, checks in as FanGraphs 5th ranked prospect after landing in the second spot on most other rankings. Clark is 7th, with both of them getting 60 FV grades. Shorstop Bryce Rainer is 23rd as a 55 FV prospect. Briceño comes it at 63rd with a 50 FV grade, while a pretty deep group of prospects in that 50 FV tier leaves Liranzo 105th out of 110 prospects graded 50 FV or higher.
You find FanGraphs rankings and full reports on all 110 players here.
Read the full article here