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Some of the top names in the Detroit Tigers’ 2025 draft class may take a while to really cook up. With a team led by Jordan Yost and prep catcher Michael Oliveto, the Tigers are unlikely to see either of them run at the highest levels anytime soon. Meanwhile, eighth-round pick Nick Dumesnil was among the few who got a brief look at Single-A Lakeland last summer. He has shown enough to keep an eye on him as the California Baptist University product looks to push his way to Western Michigan and beyond this year.<\/p>\n
Dumesnil is a 6’2″ 210 outfielder, and was drafted at 21, so he was on the small side of the kid in his draft class and won’t turn 22 until March. The Tigers paid him $214,500, just a bump over the minimum price, so he was another pick to save his high school background. He scored 19 runs in his first year. in 61 games and showed some good swinging wood bats in the Cape Cod League later that season.<\/p>\n
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By then his draft stock had reached the point where he was universally considered a first round pick. However, his power output was cool as a youngster as he had little trouble breaking out. He still had 10 hits in 57 games while stealing 27 bases and drawing a walk. The strikes had increased somewhat but he was still having a hard time connecting with her. Still, a young year cooled his draft stock elsewhere, even though Baseball America still had the 52nd year on their draft board in one of their final mock drafts last spring before the July draft.<\/p>\n
Dumensil only played 16 games with Single-A Lakeland, so we’re not going to take anything away from the results, although they were modestly good, but he showed some nice fundamentals. He walked more than he struck out and his strikeout rate was a very low 8.7 percent. He averaged 89.5 mph with his average exit velocity, which is pretty good by MLB standards, though again, this was just a few weeks worth of games. Still, those are some interesting numbers for a player with the size and speed to play solid center field right now. As a college hitter holding Single-A fast is a must, but the amount of hard contact was nice to see.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of questions that will need to be answered starting in 2026 as Dumesnil completes his full pro season. Still, there’s a chance the Tigers get a sleeper here with a lot of solid tools. He probably isn’t a full-time center fielder for a long time, but it looks like he’ll be able to handle all three outfield positions well. His arm is solid, though not a typical right fielder’s cannon.<\/p>\n
Dumesnil has a habit of going forward rather than sitting back to drive pitches into the draw, but there is time to work on it. He produced a lot of ground balls and precious little contact in the air at Lakeland. Still, his size and history mean there’s room for improvement up the middle, especially if he can start driving the ball more in the air. He’s not a burner, but he has above-average speed as well. Combine those tools with a history of hard-hitting contact and a good local demeanor, and there’s a lot to like when you consider the price the Tigers paid to draft him.<\/p>\n
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We’ll have to see how he handles the better, more consistent form of breaking and offspeed this season. The ideal would be for Dumesnil to make his way to Western Michigan this summer and hold his own there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of the top names in the Detroit Tigers’ 2025 draft class may take a while to really cook up. With a team led by Jordan Yost and prep catcher Michael Oliveto, the Tigers are unlikely to see either of them run at the highest levels anytime soon. Meanwhile, eighth-round pick Nick Dumesnil was among …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3080,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions\/3080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}