PHOENIX — He still has trouble believing he’s here, but then again, Detroit Tigers rookie Kevin McGonigle always knew this is where he belonged.
He was born and bred a baseball rat, convinced that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer.
And now that he’s arrived as the youngest Tiger to make his debut since George Burns in 1914, it already feels as if he’s been around for 20 years.
The dude may be 21, but he’s going on 41 in maturity.
“I think he’s a lot more polished and more mature as a ballplayer than when I came up,” said Tigers infielder Colt Keith, who made his major-league debut at 22. “I mean, he’s handling it really well. I don’t see any panic in his eyes. I mean, he’s out there just playing loose, having fun, just trying to help us win.
“It’s really awesome to see. He’s going to be a great player for us.”
McGonigle, who never played above Class AA Erie, has spent one week in the major leagues and already is establishing himself as one of the finest young players in the game and certainly a future face of the Tigers. The Tigers would love to keep him around as long as possible and have engaged in talks with him and his agent about a long-term deal of at least eight years.
“We don’t need him to be the savior,” Scott Harris, Tigers president of baseball operations, said after announcing McGonigle’s promotion, with McGonigle producing an .888 OPS with two homers and six RBIs, drawing as many walks as hits this spring. “We don’t need him to carry us. We just need him to help us.
“This roster is pretty darn good with or without Kevin. We just think it’s better with him on it. That’s why he’s here.”
McGonigle, the second-ranked prospect entering the year, has been nothing short of dazzling in his first week in The Show. He produced four hits in his major-league debut – the sixth to achieve the feat on opening day since 1900 – and was rewarded with the lineup card along with baseballs from his debut.
He spent the first seven games hitting .346 with a .952 OPS, and perhaps even more surprisingly, playing dazzling defense at third base. He’s a natural shortstop, and his best defensive position may be second base, but he’s been smooth at third, making the throws that need to be made while showing strong range.
“He never quits on the play, which is a great characteristic to have,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch says. “He can get on the ground. He comes up and throws accurate. When the speed of the game is speeding up, he stays with the same rhythm and cadence to complete the play.”
He’s the reason why the Tigers didn’t bother pursuing free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman this winter.
He received a thunderous ovation from the sellout crowd at Comerica Park at the Tigers’ home opener Friday, which included about 15 members of his family.
“Are you surprised?” Hinch said after the game. “This city is going to fall in love with this kid because of how he plays and how he represents himself. We just got to let him play, got to let him learn, and we got to let him fail a little bit.”
It still seems all surreal for the kid from Aldan, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, who started swinging a bat with his dad at the age of 2, grew up a huge Chase Utley fan, and studied hitting tapes from eight-time batting champion Tony Gwynn.
“I just love the way [Utley] played,” McGonigle, the 5-foot-10 left-handed hitter, tells USA TODAY Sports. “He played the game hard. And I feel like he played it the right way, as well. That’s the way I want to play.”
And, yes, he would love to hit like Gwynn, the 15-time All-Star who not only had a career .338 batting average, but who never struck out more than 40 times in a single season, and never more than 30 times in his last 13 seasons. He was thrilled just to meet and speak to Gwynn’s son in San Diego, Tony Gwynn Jr., the Padres’ radio analyst.
“Growing up, my dad would show me film on him and Chase Utley,” McGonigle says. “They’re two guys that he would show their swings and says to kind of try to copy the way they swung, especially Tony, it’s unbelievable how few times he struck out.”
These days, at least in the infancy of his career, McGonigle reminds Hinch and starters Justin Verlander and Tarik Skubal of Bregman, now with the Chicago Cubs, who eats, sleeps and dreams baseball.
“That’s an ultimate compliment,” McGonigle says. “I’m a big fan of Bregman as well. He plays the game really, really hard. And obviously, he’s super, super good.”
Then again, as Skubal, the Tigers’ two-time Cy Young winner says, there will come a time when McGonigle is the one everyone wants to be compared to.
“They’re both obsessed with the game of baseball,” says Skubal, who got to know Bregman during the winter working out in Phoenix and were teammates in the WBC. “I don’t really like comparing though. I want Kevin to be Kevin. In five or six years, they should be comparing someone else to Kevin. That’s kind of how I want it to be.
“But they’re both obsessed about the game, and they both grind in the box. They both grind in the weight room, the training room, everything. And they take this game pretty seriously and want to win really badly.
“Those are all really positive things, but as Kev gets more comfortable here, and just more time on his side, he’s going to blossom into an even better baseball player. That’s what I’m excited about. He’s doing to experience all of the growing pains this year, success, failure, all of that stuff, but he’s going to be a really good baseball player.”
Really, McGonigle’s toughest task in his first week was simply finding the players’ parking lot at Comerica Park, circling the stadium several times before finding it.
“I did laps around the park because I didn’t know where to go,” McGonigle told reporters Friday morning. “But I ended up finding the parking lot. This place is unreal.”
If he has the career everyone in the Tigers’ organization anticipates, he’ll have a nameplate reserved for the closest spot near the ballpark entrance of his choice.
“There’s just something different about him,” Tigers outfielder Riley Greene says. “The best way to describe him is that he’s a ball of fire. He’s finding barrels all of the time. He’s making plays. His energy is up. He’s doing stuff like guys with five or six years in the big leagues.
“It’s pretty impressive to watch.”
And once McGonigle learned he made the team, well, that fiery emotion became even more intense.
“I feel like he was even more motivated,” Greene says. “He was like, ‘We’re here to work. We got a long year. Let’s win some baseball games. Let’s go.’”
That’s McGonigle. He doesn’t care where he plays in the field. Where he hits in the lineup. Just give him a uniform, and even without playing a day at Triple-A, he wants to do everything possible to lead the Tigers to where they haven’t gone since 1984: A World Series championship.
“We’re trying to win the World Series,” Hinch says, “and Kevin McGonigle helps us get there.”
Says McGonigle: “I’m just taking it all in, trying to get prepared, and doing everything possible to help this team win. I’ve always been good telling myself it’s the same game, no matter what level I’m at.
“I feel like I’ve handled that well so far, and I’m looking forward to keep doing it.”
Welcome to the big leagues, kid.
Now find the parking lot.
Around the basepaths
– MLB and the players union have yet to engage in preliminary negotiations on the next collective bargaining agreement, but their first meeting is expected to be in the next few weeks.
The owners have a $2 billion war chest while the players union has about $520 million stashed away in case of a lockout after Dec. 1.
– The Miami Marlins, off to a surprising 5-2 start, could have one of the most difficult dilemmas at the trade deadline if they are still hanging around.
They must decide whether to trade ace Sandy Alcantara, who is showing signs of his 2022 Cy Young form by starting the season with a 2-0 record and 0.00 ERA, striking out 16 in 12 ⅔ innings, including a three-hit, complete-game shutout in his last start against the Marlins.
Alcantara’s five-year, $56 million contract expires after this season, but he has a $21 million club option or a $2 million buyout in 2027. Rival executives still fully expect the Marlins to trade Alcantara, knowing they should have perhaps baseball’s most lucrative trade chip at the July 31 deadline.
– Arizona Diamondbacks All-Star second baseman Ketel Marte became a 10-and-5 player on Friday, meaning that even if the Diamondbacks change their mind and want to trade him, it’s too late. Marte can’t be traded without his permission.
– The Dodgers certainly have a competitive advantage with their massive revenue streams, the latest a five-year, $125 million deal with Uniqlo, with Dodgers president Stan Kasten saying: “I recognize that we have advantages that other teams don’t get to benefit from. I acknowledge that. I’m not going to apologize for capitalizing.’’
Yet, Kasten cautions, they don’t have a monetary advantage in everything. Taxes for California residents can be a deterrent for free agents. There’s also one revenue stream their competitors enjoy that simply doesn’t exist for the Dodgers.
“I do have a business disadvantage,” Kasten said, trying to keep a straight face. “In Washington, I got decent money for selling an ad on the tarp. Morton Salt .I can’t get a [expletive] penny for a tarp ad here, because we never roll it out all year. So no one talks about that.”
Kasten, knowing there has been only one rainout at Dodger Stadium since 2000, couldn’t help but laugh when it began raining Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, forcing the tarp to come out.
Alas, there was no advertisement on the tarp.
– While there have been a run of teams locking up their young players with no big-league experience to long-term contracts, from Seattle’s Colt Emerson (eight-year, $95 million) to Milwaukee’s Cooper Pratt (eight-year, $50.75 million) and soon Pittsburgh’s Konnor Griffin (nine years, $140 million), Detroit Tigers infielder Colt Keith can only sit back and smile.
Keith signed a six-year, $28.64 million contract in January 2024, becoming the first Tigers player to receive a long-term deal before his first major-league game.
“It’s really cool to see guys get their money early and locking down long-term,” Keith tells USA TODAY Sports. “We’ll see what the effect is on other other end.”
Will it relax them?
“I think it depends on the personality,” he said. “For some guys, the long-term commitment knowing they’re going to be in the big leagues and having that money helps them relax. I think I was more on the other side of that, where the money wasn’t as big a factor. I just wanted to be in the big leagues and perform well.
“I had only spent two months in Triple-A, and I guess I would have been optioned out of camp if I didn’t sign it. A lot of times signing that money commitment with the team guarantees you a spot on the roster, whether you’re struggling or not, which is good for the player.
“That’s the biggest factor I did it, getting on that [26-man] roster and getting more of a leash than other players. It’s definitely an advantage, a positive for a lot of guys.”
– The ABS challenge system has been in effect for only a week, with players, managers and umpires all weighing in.
There’s not a consensus opinion on whether it’s good or bad for the game, but there’s a sense that within five years, there will be a fully automated system in which the strikezone is completely governed by “robo umpires.”
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch’s quick takeaways?
“The benches are a lot quieter during the game,’’ Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “You don’t hear the razzing with players and umpires.’’
Hinch on whether the game will eventually go to a full ABS system: “I hope not. I think the human element is super important. I don’t want to lose the catcher catching a close pitch and being frustrated, but not willing to challenge. That element of the game I think is important.’’
– How is it possible that Atlanta opens the season playing 13 consecutive games without a day off and the Yankees have four days off before playing their 10th game on Tuesday?
– The Yankees don’t need days off the way they’re pitching. They yielded just eight runs in their first seven games, tying an MLB record, while their starting pitching has given up just four runs, also tying an MLB record.
– So, just how much did Venezuela’s WBC championship mean for Arizona Diamondbacks starter Eduardo Rodriguez, who started that game: “It was the greatest moment of my career. No matter what I do the rest of my career, nothing will ever top that.’’
– Who is that one surprise team scouts are raving about this year?
The Texas Rangers.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see those guys in the World Series, especially with that pitching,’’ one veteran scout said. “They are that good.”
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