Can Detroit Tigers improve results with prospects signed from international market?

For too long, the Detroit Tigers have failed to sign and develop elite players from the international market.

The Tigers haven't signed an international prospect ranked in the top 12 of any class since MLB Pipeline began ranking them in 2012. The Tigers haven't developed an international position player into an everyday player on their roster with a positive Wins Above Replacement since 2014.

It was no surprise then, that the Tigers restructured their international scouting department when president of baseball operations Scott Harris hired assistant general manager Rob Metzler away from a long tenure with the Tampa Bay Rays in October 2022.

"What we're focusing on is establishing the process for ourselves to find benchmarks internally," Tigers director of international operations Tom Moore said Thursday. "That's part of our scouting process to make sure we can evaluate our decisions on a yearly basis and set parameters for ourselves. That's our internal process to make sure we push ourselves and make sure we're making the best decisions possible."

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Metzler, who was scheduled to speak with reporters Thursday but wasn't on the video conference call, didn't work in international scouting during his 15 seasons with the Rays, but over the past 15 months, he has overseen the Tigers' amateur and international scouting departments.

There have been some changes to the international department since Metzler joined the Tigers, such as new hires in baseball operations and the promise of a new academy in the Dominican Republic.

The Tigers hired veteran scout Chip Lawrence in October 2023 as the special assistant to scouting and global crosschecker. He has previous experience in Latin America and the international market, including eight years with the Philadelphia Phillies (2002-10) and 12 years with the San Diego Padres (2010-22).

The Tigers also promoted Walker Reinfeld, a Northwestern graduate in 2020 and an employee of the San Francisco Giants in 2021, from an analytics associate to an analyst in the international scouting department in January 2023. He has since been promoted to senior analyst.

But some things stayed the same.

The Tigers retained Moore as the director of international operations and Miguel Garcia as the director of Latin American operations, as well as the area scouts. Moore and Garcia worked for former general managers Dave Dombrowski and Al Avila. (Garcia's claim to fame is signing Miguel Cabrera to the Florida Marlins in July 1999.)

"First of all, we're signing 16- and 17-year-old players outside the United States," said Moore, when asked about the struggles of the international department. "Obviously, there are a lot of challenges in that. The first thing is, what's the definition of success?"

The latest lottery ticket prospect is Dominican Republic third baseman Nestor Miranda. The soon-to-be 18-year-old power hitter signed Monday with the Tigers for a $1.5 million bonus when the 2024 international signing period opened. He was ranked No. 45 on MLB Pipeline's top 50 list of international prospects in the 2024 class.

Cris Rodriguez, a 15-year-old outfielder from the Dominican Republic in the 2025 class, is an important name to consider when evaluating the current state of the Tigers and the international market. He is about to turn 16; his birthday is Jan. 28, 2008.

His name was first linked to the Tigers on Wednesday by Joe Doyle, a senior analyst for New Balance Future Stars Series.

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Rodriguez, recruited by area scout Rodolfo Penalo, is expected to sign with the Tigers for north of a $3 million bonus in January 2025, sources confirmed to the Free Press. He can't officially sign until Jan. 15, but there's an agreement in place.

It will be a new club record for a signing bonus when Rodriguez puts pen to paper with the Tigers. One evaluator is counting on Rodriguez, who is already 6 feet 3, to net one of the biggest bonuses in the 2025 class, and another evaluator suggested Rodriguez could rank among the top three prospects in the 2025 class.

"If you want to look at a few examples, then you can draw conclusions," Moore said. "If you look at the entire scope and really dig deep into the details, there's a lot more to it. That's a challenge for our organization, like it is every other organization, to set up the best process possible. I think we've made a lot of strides doing that, especially in the last couple of years."

Signing prospects is one thing.

Developing them is another.

Reflecting on the past

Moore, the director of international operations, joined the Tigers on Nov. 30, 2005, after 11 seasons with the Boston Red Sox. Garcia, the director of Latin American operations, joined the Tigers on the same day in 2005, after working with the Red Sox and Marlins.

"The thing that we're trying to do, as the international market is ever-changing with rules and whatnot, we try to really push the envelope to always improve our process," Moore said. "In that process, there has been a lot of collaboration among departments. We're really leveraging a lot of experience, not just through our international scouting department, but through all the departments of player development, analytics and even amateur scouting. I think that's been a big piece of the process in the last year or two, for sure."

Since 2006, the Tigers have signed four players from the international market who ended up thriving in the big leagues: Venezuelan outfielder Avisaíl García in 2007, Venezuelan third baseman Eugenio Suárez in 2008, Dominican shortstop Willy Adames in 2012 and Dominican left-handed reliever Gregory Soto in 2012.

None of them were Tigers during the 2023 season.

Actually, the four of them played fewer than 10% of their combined 3,373 MLB games with the Tigers. A majority of the percentage comes from Soto's 186 games in 2019-22, while Adames never played for the Tigers in the big leagues and is on track to sign a lucrative long-term contract as a first-time free agent after the 2024 season.

Dombrowski traded Adames, Suárez and García. The current boss of baseball ops traded Soto — who has two of the four All-Star selections among the four international players — to the Phillies last offseason for Matt Vierling, Nick Maton and Donny Sands.

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The next wave of notable international players, all signed by the Tigers for seven-figure bonuses since 2018, includes Miranda (2024), catcher Enrique Jimenez (2023), outfielder Cristian Perez (2023), outfielder Anibal Salas (2023), shortstop Javier Osorio (2022), shortstop Samuel Gil (2022), shortstop Cristian Santana (2021), shortstop Abel Bastidas (2021), outfielder Roberto Campos (2019), outfielder Jose De La Cruz (2018) and shortstop Adinso Reyes (2018).

Santana ($2.95 million) and Campos ($2.85 million) received the two biggest international signing bonuses in club history.

"If you talk about Cristian Santana or Roberto Campos, they're still young," Moore said. "At 20 years old, in comparison to a college-drafted junior, they're not even in professional baseball yet. There's still a lot of time to see the success or failures of those classes, and those classes were several years ago."

Santana, 20, hit .156 with 12 home runs, 91 walks and 116 strikeouts in 97 games last season with Low-A Lakeland. Campos, 20, hit .257 with five homers, 28 walks and 81 strikeouts in 88 games with High-A West Michigan.

Focusing on the future

The Tigers are working behind the scenes to create a better environment for their international players in the Harris regime. It starts with building a new academy in the Dominican Republic.

The Baltimore Orioles and Milwaukee Brewers opened new Dominican academies this offseason. The Tigers, currently in San Pedro de Macorís, purchased land for the new academy but declined to share project details about the location, acreage or timeline.

It's believed to be in Santo Domingo.

"That's going to make us a lot more competitive internationally," Harris said in October 2023. "It's also going to include some development features that are going to allow us to tap into that development on the day that these young players walk into the organization, and then we're going to be able to hand them off to Lakeland."

Meanwhile, the Tigers point to right-hander Keider Montero and utility player Wenceel Pérez as reasons to be optimistic about the last decade of international signings, but also as a reminder of how much time prospects need to develop in the minor leagues.

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The Tigers, of course, haven't experienced the luxury of signing a player from the international market and developing him into an immediate superstar. Not like the Seattle Mariners, who landed Julio Rodríguez out of the Dominican Republic for a $1.75 million bonus in 2017. The now-star center fielder made his MLB debut at age 21 in 2022. He won Rookie of the Year and has launched 60 home runs with 62 stolen bases across two All-Star seasons.

Montero, 23, and Pérez, 24, signed with the Tigers as part of the 2016 class for five- and six-figure bonuses, respectively. Finally, Montero and Perez played with Triple-A Toledo in 2023 and are eyeing their MLB debuts in 2024.

"I think that shows the process of development, especially when the entire baseball world lost a year of development in 2020," Moore said. "It takes a long time for that development process to happen, so before we look back at every year and every development class, it takes time for those guys to reach the big leagues or not.

"So, is it the person that reached the big leagues the quickest, or the person that had the longest career? Willy Adames, for example, didn't have the quickest ascent to the big leagues, but he's probably one of the best players out of that class. Same thing with Eugenio Suarez. For me, right now, I'm concentered on the present and our '24 class."

The Tigers' 2024 class is headlined by Miranda.

Next year, Cris Rodriguez — an outfielder from the Dominican Republic with a sweet swing from the right side of the plate — will be at the top of the class for the Tigers. The only difference is Rodriguez, unlike any player the Tigers signed previously, could end up at the top of MLB's entire international class.

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Can Detroit Tigers improve results with international prospects?