Detroit Tigers: Get to know second round pick Nick Quintana

In the second round of the MLB Draft on Monday night, the Detroit Tigers selected University of Arizona INF Nick Quintana with the 47th overall pick.

We’ve talked quite a lot about the Detroit Tigers first-round pick from Monday night Riley Greene, so it seems fair to take a look at Detroit’s second-round pick, Nick Quintana from the University of Arizona.

Coming into the draft, Quintana was ranked 77th overall on MLB Pipeline’s list of the 200 draft prospects. A Las Vegas native, Quintana was actually drafted out of high school by the Boston Red Sox in the 11th round of the 2016 MLB Draft but chose to instead continue developing his game by playing college baseball for the Wildcats of Arizona.

The 21-year-old Quintana just finished his junior season with the University of Arizona and it was his best year statistically of his Wildcat career by far. The third baseman finished the season with a line of .342/.462/.626 with and led the team in both RBI and HRs with 77 and 15 respectively.

Shifting from shortstop the third base coming from high school to college, and has become a solid fielder in the hot corner. This season with Arizona, Quintana had a career-high .921 fielding percentage and committed just 39 errors over 170 games in his entire college career, leading to his 60 field grade from MLB Pipeline.

What the Detroit Tigers mainly want from Quintana, however, is his ability to drive the ball at the plate. Quintana is a pretty well rounded hitting prospect who needs to make just a few slight adjustments at the plate before becoming a solid everyday hitter at the next level.

Scouts seem pretty high on Quintana’s abilities at the plate being able to translate to the big leagues. Like Greene, he has a seemingly pretty high ceiling as an everyday lineup guy for the Detroit Tigers big league lineup sometime a few years down the road.