Scott Harris is about to face a good kind of problem with Bryce Rainer.
Detroit’s first-round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft has gone from a rough start at Lakeland to looking like a bat the Tigers may have to move quickly. Rainer, the No. 3 prospect in the organization, struggled in his first 11 games of the season, hitting .167 with a home run and five RBIs. Since his jump to High-A West Michigan, though, he’s been locked in.
The power surge has been the loudest part of the story. Rainer hit his 15th home run of the season on Tuesday, and it was his fourth in four straight games.
After a June breakout in which he hit over .350 with six homers, 21 RBIs, and a .478 on-base percentage, he cooled off in July with a .222 average. August has brought him right back to life.
This month, he’s hitting .286 with five home runs, 11 RBI, and an on-base percentage just under .350.
For the season in High-A, Rainer is now sitting at a .270 average with 14 home runs, 59 RBI, a .376 on-base percentage and a .473 slugging percentage. At the moment, he’s doing exactly what a top prospect is supposed to do: punish the ball.
Beau Ankeney is forcing his way onto the radar, too.
He wasn’t one of the names Tigers fans were circling at the start of the year, but the 14th-round pick from the 2025 MLB Draft has started to make noise. He’s not in Detroit’s top 30 prospects, yet his numbers have been impossible to ignore, especially since his promotion to High-A West Michigan.
At Lakeland, the first baseman hit .279 with 15 home runs and 66 RBI. Since moving up, he’s taken another step.
In 16 games with West Michigan, Ankeney is slashing .352/.470/.815 with 19 hits, seven home runs and 17 RBI. Combined across the two levels, he’s up to 22 home runs and 83 RBI.
That kind of production from a 14th-rounder gets attention fast. Ankeney is still building his name, but the surge is real.
The Tigers’ updated prospect rankings tell a bigger story about the organization’s recent moves.
Zyhir Hope, River Ryan and Kash Mayfield now sit inside the top 10, landing at No. 2, No. 4 and No. 8, respectively.
Cameron Flukey, taken in the first round by Detroit in last month’s draft, is another fresh face in the mix. Altogether, 40 percent of the top 10 consists of players who were not in the system when July began.
Brett Callahan also made a major jump. Before his call-up to the majors last week, he was hitting .269 with 13 home runs and 56 RBI across 96 minor league games split between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. In his first two big league games with the Tigers, he collected two hits, including a triple, and drove in four runs.
And there’s more movement coming. Once Max Clark graduates from prospect status, Hope is expected to take over the No. 1 spot in Detroit’s rankings.
Put it all together, and the Tigers’ system looks a lot deeper than it did a month ago. The new top-end talent from the draft and the trade deadline has reshaped the list, and it gives Harris plenty of reason to believe the pipeline is headed in the right direction.
In Other News...
Max Clark Just Forced A Big Tigers Decision About The Future
Max Clarks rise has already pushed the Tigers into the kind of conversation teams usually prefer to delay until much later. A former high draft pick who has quickly become one of the organizations most closely watched young players, Clark is now the sort of talent around whom long-term planning starts to shift from theory to reality. Tim Britton of The Athletic recently projected that kind of deal could land in the neighborhood of $120 million over eight years, which places Clark in the company of the sort of extension talks reserved for foundational pieces.
For Detroit, the appeal is obvious: locking in a player this young can bring cost certainty and keep a core talent in place before the price climbs even higher. The risk is just as clear, because any extension of that size asks the Tigers to make a major bet on early promise and continued growth. Deals for players such as Corbin Carroll and Konnor Griffin show why clubs chase that upside, but they also show how carefully teams have to weigh timing when a future cornerstone is still writing his first chapters. [Read more 🡒]
Tigers' Bullpen Decision Looks Worse With Every Giants Save
The Tigers moved on from Dylan Smith by designating him for assignment and sending him to San Francisco for cash, a transaction that barely registered at the time. Since then, Smith has turned into one of the more useful arms in the Giants bullpen, stacking up saves and turning in the kind of clean, high-leverage outings that tend to get noticed in a hurry.
For Detroit, the awkward part is not just that Smith is thriving elsewhere, but that his success keeps making the decision look harder to explain. A two-inning scoreless outing with five strikeouts only adds to the case that the Tigers may have let a capable reliever slip away before getting a real look at what he could become. [Read more 🡒]