Tigers Minor League Baseball Blog

Number seven and number six are actually a tie.  I hate ties so I decided to arbitrarily pick one at seven and one at six and Brent Clevlen got the short end of the stick.

Brent Clevlen has been the Tigers minor league version of Jeckyl and Hyde.  He was the Tigers second round pick in 2002 and he put together a very good season at rookie ball. He then continued to hit well in 2003 when he got promoted to West Michigan.  In 2004 though, the wheels fell of the wagon and Clevlen put in a season at Lakeland that ended up putting him at .224/.300/.350.  His stock fell but when he returned to Lakeland in 2005, he tore things up and his stock went back up.  Then in 2006, he struggled at Erie but actually played pretty well, both with the bat and in the field, when he got called up by the Tigers.  Which Brent Clevlen will show up in 2007?  Your guess is as good as mine.

He was also kind of across the board on the prospect lists.  He was eighth on both Sickels and Goldstein’s but he finished a very high third place on the Baseball America list.  Clevlen will probably play in Toledo to start the season but that’s mostly because the Tigers have a glut of outfielders.  You have the three starters (Craig Monroe, Curtis Granderson and Magglio Ordonez) as well as Marcus Thames and Gary Sheffield but you also have Omar Infante who will probably make the team and spot in center.  Clevlen will probably be the guy who gets called up if an outfielder goes down though, at least for this year.  If he doesn’t show something soon, Cameron Maybin is going to vault over him.