Tigers high on new switch-hitting catcher prospect

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

COMSTOCK PARK, Mich. -- Thayron Liranzo wasn’t in the Great Lakes Loons lineup the day he got traded, but the Dodgers catching prospect was on the field at Dow Diamond in Midland, Mich., taking ground balls at first base as part of pregame infield work. He wasn’t thinking about the looming Trade Deadline that day, or the Dodgers’ surplus of catching prospects. But it quickly hit home when he was called off the field shortly before the game and told he was getting traded.

“It was a little shock at the beginning,” Liranzo said Tuesday through a translator. “However, my mind kind of changed quickly. I went inside and said, ‘Well, I’ll turn to the Tigers.’ The mentality’s the same. I’m still working for the same goal, and it’s just the same baseball game that I was playing with the other team.”

It’s not the first quick transition he has had to make for the sake of his career. Because until shortly before turning pro, the top catching prospect in the Tigers’ farm system was actually a third baseman, until one of the best to play the position in his generation gave him a change of plans at age 15.

Fernando Tatis Sr., who runs a baseball academy in the Dominican city of San Pedro de Macorís, had made a visit to Liranzo’s hometown of San Francisco de Macorís and watched him work out. He liked the switch-hitting bat and the potential, but didn’t like the position. We should keep working with your hitting, Liranzo said he was told, but it would be better for you to go behind the plate.

“I didn’t want to at the beginning. I was hesitant,” Liranzo said. “However, at 15 years old and getting close to the age of signing, I realized that was the best option. So I just went with it, and now here he is.”

Years before that, Liranzo had taken up switch-hitting on his own. A natural right-hander, he said he watched the sweet left-handed swing of fellow Dominican Robinson Canó and decided to give it a try.

“It felt very uncomfortable,” he said, “but I just knew that I have to do keep doing it, and with repetition I’m going to get it. So I dedicated himself to hit from the left side, being naturally righty, and I haven’t stopped since.”

The willingness to change over the years, to get out of a comfort zone, has put Liranzo in a fascinating position, a switch-hitting catcher in an organization that has been looking for an impact hitter behind the plate for nearly a decade since Alex Avila was an All-Star. He has a ways to go, but if he makes it, he could put the Jack Flaherty trade in an interesting light.

“We added a switch-hitting catcher who has an advanced approach and hits the ball really, really hard,” president of baseball operations Scott Harris said last week, “And [he] has a chance to project into a front-line catcher for us moving forward.”

Catching isn’t just a path to the big leagues for Liranzo, it’s a passion. He keeps a notebook on his setup and his approach, along with his setup and feeling at the plate as a hitter, and he supplements it with watching videos. He thinks through at-bats as a hitter with a catcher’s mindset, mindful of how he would try to get himself out in a similar count, and he turns the tables when he gets behind the plate. Liranzo tries to use his 6-foot-3 frame to provide a big target for his pitchers, but also provide a big obstacle to block pitches in the dirt, something he takes a lot of pride in.

So far, the transition has gone well. While Liranzo has become the Whitecaps’ primary catcher and Detroit's No. 5 prospect, he has also provided extra-base power in what was already a prospect-heavy lineup behind Tigers prospects Max Clark (No. 1), Kevin McGonigle (No. 4) and Max Anderson (No. 16), with Roberto Campos (No. 27) batting behind him. Liranzo entered Friday batting 3-for-18 with six walks and six strikeouts as a Whitecap, but two of the hits have been hard-hit doubles, good for three RBIs.

While High-A pitching has been a challenge for Liranzo, who just turned 21 last month and is two years below the weighted average for the Midwest League, the Tigers like the ability, notably the ability to hit the ball hard. He wouldn’t be the first switch-hitting Dodgers catching prospect to make it somewhere else. Carlos Santana went to Cleveland in the Casey Blake trade at the 2008 Deadline, traded at an older age but similar level to Liranzo now, debuted two years later and is still playing, now as a 38-year-old first baseman for the Twins.

Nobody is projecting that quite yet with Liranzo, who’s focused on his own career. But he believes getting into the Tigers' system is an opportunity.