A little bit of this and that on the guys who might be the next great Tigers…
International Signings
Baseball America lists all of the international free agent signings. The Tigers inked eight players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. All of the players are 16. Who know, maybe one or more can be helping the 2014 Detroit Tigers.
Dominican Republic: RHP Yinio Calderon, 16; RHP Emmanuel Del Orbe, 16; SS Domingo Gonzalez, 16; RHP Carlos Melo, 16
Venezuela: OF Avisail Garcia, 16; IF Oscar Gomez, 16; 3B Francisco Martinez, 16; SS Hernan Perez, 16
BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: Full List Of 2007 International Signings
Mike Hollimon
Mike Hollimon is a hard guy to peg as a prospect. He’s always been old for his league, but he’s always hit well. And this year he skipped hi A ball and succeeded at AA. Now he’s hitting well in the Arizona Fall League. And now, he’s been featured by Jon Paul Morosi. Without having full developed a Tigers top 10 prospect list, I know that Hollimon would rank somewhere in the 6-9 range for me. He’ll also be one of the players to watch during the spring to see if he can play his way onto the roster.
QUICK TURN: Tigers’ infield prospect Hollimon gets back on track
Arizona Fall League
Today’s Freep also had a feature the AFL in general. If you haven’t been keeping up with the daily updates from Take I-75 North, the Tigers haven’t had overwhelming results. Hollimon has been solid, and the good news from Cameron Maybin is that he’s only fanned 5 times in 31 at-bats. Larish has had the toughest go at only 3 for 25 with no extra base hits.
STAR SEARCH: Looking for the Tigers’ next hero? Check out the Arizona Fall League
Someone I’ve talked to who’s watched him in Arizona thus far, and I trust, has stated they believe Hollimon is absolutely a MLB ready SS defensively.
This surprised me as Erie moved him to second base to start the 07 season but he eventually was moved back. Which made me think his
While obviously too big of a risk to take for him next year, if they have belief in him it could change what they look for in a SS in the short term.
Man, I haven’t seen a team lay down and die in the playoff like the Indians just did since, uh, the 2007 World Series. God, there’s getting beat, and then there’s putting your manhood in a blind trust and playing like a group of surrender monkeys.
I’m still skeptical on Hollimon. His glove is there but even skipping Lakeland and heading straight to Erie, he was still old for his level. I still need to see more from him offensively against kids near or older then him. I’m fine with him taking Infante’s spot though, because it’s not that hard to get passed over for other veterans for no reason at all other then Jim Leyland isn’t in your corner.