The Detroit Tigers draft a pair of infielders in Jace Jung and Peyton Graham in day one of the MLB Draft, but there is still work to be done.
The Detroit Tigers went to the Big-12 conference to shore up the lack of power in the system. At pick number 12, the Tigers selected left-handed hitting second baseman Jace Jung out of Texas Tech University. Then, for the 51st pick, they got Peyton Graham, a 6’4, 185lb right-handed hitter out of the University of Oklahoma.During a Zoom call to the media last night, Scott Pleis, the Tigers Director of Amateur Scouting said that both players will stay at their positions.
Here’s Brian Sakowski of Perfect Game discussing Jung’s skills.
Hard hitting second baseman @jace17jung goes from @TTU_Baseball to @Tigers. @B_Sakowski_PG Scout Notes ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/CayGZGPgtx
— Perfect Game USA (@PerfectGameUSA) July 18, 2022
For Graham, he lead the Sooners in home runs with 20 and hit .333. He was the first Oklahoma player to have 20 home runs and 30 stolen bases. The crew over at MLB Network praised the pick because he was a first-round draft pick talent that fell to Detroit.
Peyton Graham ranks:
Baseball America: 32
MLB Pipeline: 28
FanGraphs: 10Not bad for the 51st pick. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
— Chris Brown (@ChrisBrown0914) July 18, 2022
The Detroit Tigers need this to work
Coming into the season, the Tigers were ranked 6th among the league in MLB organizational talent according to Baseball America($). While rankings serve their purpose of showing the strengths and weaknesses of a team, the fact remains. Detroit has not seen infield positional talent come up from the farm system and be even a serviceable regular. Detroit has not had an Opening Day starter for over one season at short and at second base that was drafted by the club since Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell. If you want to count third base, that includes Travis Fryman from 1991 to 1994.
This problem of developing talent from within goes back further than Al Avila. There have been strides recently in how Detroit develops pitching. On the hitting side, Andre Lipicus, Wenceel Perez, Parker Meadows and some of the international talent down in Lakeland have made big strides. The evolution of Kerry Carpenter has been one to watch. Jung and Graham are nice and will help the prospect rankings that people tend to take solace in.
It was strange last night to see Baltimore, a team that lost 120 games last season, a game over .500 in a tough AL East division. Meanwhile, Detroit is at 18 games under .500 and all what could go wrong for the Tigers this year, has. Still, it’s time to see something from the farm system outside of relievers and starters to contribute.
