Detroit Tigers: Top 20 prospects for 2022 – Part One

Detroit Tigers No. 15 Prospect – Beau Brieske – RHP

Beau Brieske might have been the best story in the Detroit Tigers minor-league system in 2021. An Arizona native, Brieske spent his first two years of college as a two-way player at Glendale Community College, before moving on to Division II Colorado State University-Pueblo. The Tigers selected him in the 27th-round of the 2019 draft, and he now appears poised to become the first former ThunderWolves pitcher to reach the big leagues.

Brieske’s overall profile isn’t all that different from Garrett Hill, but Brieske performed better at Double-A, and he’s more than two years younger. Brieske’s fastball is an average, low-90s offering that will occasionally hit 95 MPH, but his changeup is a plus pitch with sink and fade that helped him hold left-handed hitters to a .512 OPS last year. He throws a curve with 11-7 action and a harder slider, but both pitches are fringy and inconsistent. Brieske pounds the zone with all of his offerings, and he looks like a potential back-end starter who could make his MLB debut in 2022.