<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3tgGBI_0w2GLYoT00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3tgGBI_0w2GLYoT00" width="1600" height="900" ></figure>All baseball fans know the story by now. The 2024 Detroit Tigers pulled off one of the most miraculous runs in recent memory to make the playoffs. Their odds to make the postseason were minuscule as recently as late August—but then Detroit became the hottest team in baseball. Pair that with the fact that the Minnesota Twins collapsed down the stretch, and you had the perfect recipe for this type of improbability coming to fruition.But perhaps lost in that feel-good ride post-All-Star break is that Detroit actually sold at the trade deadline. You couldn’t fault them at the time—they were looking up at an incredibly crowded Wild Card race, and the teams ahead of them all seemed better suited for 2024 success. Detroit held onto their prized possession, Tarik Skubal, despite some light rumors in July that he could be on the move, but they did make some other future-looking transactions. Most notably that meant selling Jack Flaherty, who was in the middle of a bounce-back season on a one-year deal. He was a natural trade candidate, and the Tigers moved him to the win-now Dodgers for a package headlined by prospect Thayron Liranzo.Prospect OriginLiranzo signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in January of 2021 as an international free agent from the Dominican Republic. He was 17 at the time and signed for just $30,000. The Dodgers have a knack for doing well with their international signees, and it didn’t take long for Liranzo to show that he might be another great find for the organization. The switch-hitting catcher appeared in 21 DSL games that year, triple-slashing .250/.393/.353 with one home run. Those aren’t eye-popping numbers by any means, and it is a small sample, but Liranzo quickly showed that he was a capable force at the plate. Perhaps most notable is that the 17-year-old posted a 16.5% walk rate. Walk and strikeout rates can be noisy at the DSL level given the wide variance in competition quality, but Liranzo’s walk rate has since become one of his carrying tools, so in retrospect, this was a sign of things to come.The catcher got into more game action in 2022 and this was the first glimpse we got of the power that Liranzo possesses in his bat. In 41 Complex Level contests, Liranzo hit just .236, but he smacked eight home runs and posted a .250 ISO. For a quick reference, Gunnar Henderson ranked 10th in all of MLB this year with a .248 ISO. Again, this was a small sample in one of the lowest levels of the minors, so everything was to be taken with a grain of salt, but that type of power output was a glimpse at the potential thump ceiling for Liranzo. Unsurprisingly, the then 18-year-old continued to draw walks, taking his base on balls at a 12.3% rate.Prospect BreakoutIf evaluators started to take note in 2022, it was 2023 that really put Liranzo on the map. Last year was his first crack at full-season ball, and as a 19-year-old in Low-A, Liranzo did not disappoint. In total, he played in 94 games, all at that level, triple slashing .272/.400/.562. That was good for 24 home runs and a .290 ISO. Again, this was just in 94 games, so pro-rate that out to a full season, and suddenly you’re looking at a 40+ home run bat. That’s extremely enticing for a teenager, especially one who can play behind home plate and hit from both batter’s boxes.Liranzo’s walk rate again remained high, checking in at a 16.7% clip. If there was a red flag, it was that his strikeout rate did climb to 26.8%. That’s certainly acceptable, but a bit on the higher end, and something that everyone would want to monitor as he continues to face tougher pitching as he climbs the ladder.But in all, Liranzo’s profile looked great—he was pulling the (52.1% pull rate) and hitting it in the air (45.3% groundball rate). The catcher entered the season as an under-the-radar prospect which some were keeping tabs on and finished the season as a Top 100 prospect.2024Liranzo’s 2024 is quite literally a tale of two halves. The expectations were high coming off of his 2023 breakout season. As previously mentioned—he was a Top 100 prospect now. More eyes were on him and he was making the jump from Low-A to High-A. This jump can prove difficult for many.For Liranzo, it did just that. The catcher had an absolutely brutal April. In 16 games, he hit just .159 with two home runs. He was still walking 12.3% of the time, but he was striking out at an astronomical 38.4% clip. The challenge of facing quality pitching competition was looking to be too much for the 20-year-old. Things got a bit better from there as Liranzo adjusted. From May through July 25th, Liranzo triple-slashed .239/.365/.363, and he cut his strikeout rate all the way down to 22.4% during that span. Those are fine numbers, but still not reminiscent of the player we saw in 2023—his ISO during that stretch sat at .124.And then the trade happened. On July 30th, right before the trade deadline, the Dodgers traded Liranzo and Trey Sweeney (who became an MLB regular for Detroit down the stretch) for the previously mentioned Flaherty. Despite the sluggish campaign for Liranzo, who in total was hitting .220 with seven home runs on the season, he was viewed as the headliner of the trade. In a deadline that saw a lot of prospects moved, but not a lot of top-tiered prospects moved, some believed that he was the best prospect to switch organizations.Well, Liranzo proved those believers to be right. He stayed at High-A upon joining the Tigers organization and from then until the end of the season, he may have just been the best hitter in all of minor league baseball. The catcher appeared in 26 games following the trade and triple-slashed a ridiculous .315/.470/562, adding in five home runs. That was good for a .247 ISO, and, naturally, Liranzo walked at a ludicrous 22.6% rate. Perhaps most encouragingly, he cut his strikeout rate all the way down to 17.4% during this span.So what changed? Of course, 26 games is not a large sample, so anything here may be considered just the result of small sample size but under the hood it looks like there were some small changes for Liranzo. In those 74 games with the Dodgers, Liranzo had a groundball rate of 44.2%. With Detroit? That number dropped to 38.8%. Similarly, Liranzo had been a pull-heavy hitter throughout his minor league career but had seen his pull rate dip to a career-low 45.3% with Los Angeles, and his opposite field rate increase to a career-high 31.5%. In Detroit, we saw his numbers return to what we had seen in previous seasons—a 50.7% pull rate and a 17.4% opposite field rate.So maybe Liranzo’s surge with Detroit is simple—he adjusted to High-A pitching as the season went on, and started doing what he does best: pulling the ball and hitting it in the air. On the surface, his 2024 may look just fine—a triple slash of .244/.378/.408 with 12 home runs in 100 games is promising, especially for a switch-hitting catcher. But if Liranzo’s August and September with Detroit are an indication of what 2025 will bring, then Liranzo is even more exciting than what his season-long numbers indicate.Looking AheadSo where does Liranzo’s stock check in following the up-and-down 2024? By midseason, his slow start slid him out of most Top 100s. Heading into 2025, he’s back in. Catchers with this type of offensive upside don’t come around very often, so when they do, the positional value they offer provides a boost for fantasy purposes.The long-term question with Liranzo is whether or not he will stay at catcher long-term. With the Dodgers, he caught in 44 games, DH’d for six games, and played first in 24 games. With Detroit, he was behind the dish for 13 games and the DH for 13 games. So it’s interesting to note that he didn’t appear at first base for a single inning with the Tigers. Expect that to change in a full season’s worth of games in 2025. Teams don’t like to run their catching prospects out at the catching position every day, and a prospect that can play multiple positions is certainly more valuable. And given that there are some questions about whether or not Liranzo will be able to catch at the MLB level, it only makes sense for Detroit to give him a crack at another position. Ultimately, he probably plays enough catcher in the bigs to maintain eligibility while also playing first and DH a decent amount to keep his bat in the lineup.With that in mind, for dynasty baseball purposes, Liranzo is somewhat of a discount Samuel Basallo. Basallo hit his way to Triple-A as a teenage-catching prospect and is universally seen as one of the best prospects in the sport. Liranzo may not have quite the upside of Basallo, but there could be some similar production here as they are both bat-first prospects who will likely split time between catcher and first base once they make it to the highest level.We probably won’t see Liranzo in the majors until 2026 or so, but he makes a logical pairing with another Tigers catcher in Dillon Dingler. Dingler made the bigs this season but only appeared in 27 games. He’s a defense-first backstop whose bat came to life in Triple-A in 2024, but there are no doubts that Liranzo has the better offensive floor and ceiling. With these two catchers having different strengths, it is easy to envision a cohesive catching duo for the Tigers in the not-too-distant future.</div></body>

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Thayron Liranzo: Dynasty Prospect Breakdown

All baseball fans know the story by now. The 2024 Detroit Tigers pulled off one of the most miraculous runs in recent memory to make the playoffs. Their odds to make the postseason were minuscule as recently as late August—but then Detroit became the hottest team in baseball. Pair that with the fact that the Minnesota Twins collapsed down the stretch, and you had the perfect recipe for this type of improbability coming to fruition.

Thayron Liranzo: Dynasty Prospect Breakdown

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