Some of the top names in the Detroit Tigers’ 2025 draft class may take a while to really get cooking. With the group headed by prep shortstop Jordan Yost and prep catcher Michael Oliveto, the Tigers are unlikely to see one of them rushing the upper levels anytime soon. In the meantime, eighth round pick OF Nick Dumesnil was among the few who got a brief look at Single-A Lakeland last summer. He showed enough to keep an eye on him as the California Baptist University product looks to push his way to West Michigan and beyond this year.
Dumesnil is a 6’2” 210 pound outfielder, and he was drafted at age 21, so he was on the youngish side for a junior in his draft class and won’t turn 22 until March. The Tigers paid him $214,500, just a modest bump over the minimum, so he was another pick to save money for their top targets. His college career was impressive despite his small school background. The center fielder hit 19 home runs in his sophomore year across 61 games and he showed out pretty well swinging wood bats in the Cape Cod League later that season.
By that point his draft stock had rocketed to where he was pretty universally viewed as an early round pick. However, his power output cooled as a junior as he had a little more trouble with breaking stuff. He still cracked 10 bombs in 57 games while stealing 27 bases and drew his walks. The strikeouts were up somewhat but he still made a good deal of hard contact. Even so, the down junior year chilled his draft stock in some quarters, though Baseball America still had him 52nd on their draft board in one of their final mock drafts last spring prior to the July draft.
Dumensil only played 16 games with Single-A Lakeland, so we can’t really take anything from the results, though they were modestly positive, but he showed off some interesting underlying traits. He walked much more than he struck out and his swinging strike rate was a very low 8.7 percent. He averaged 89.5 mph with his average exit velocity, which is really good by MLB standards, though again, this was just a couple weeks worth of games. Still, those are some intriguing numbers for a player who has size and also carries the speed to play a fairly solid center field right now. As a quality college hitter handling Single-A pretty quickly is mandatory, but the amount of hard contact was nice to see.
There are plenty of questions that will need to start being answered in 2026 as Dumesnil makes his full season pro debut. Still, there’s a chance that the Tigers landed a sleeper here with a lot of strong tools. He’s probably not a full-time center fielder in the long-term, but he looks like he’ll be able to capably handle all three outfield spots. His arm is solid, though not a prototypical right fielder’s cannon.
Dumesnil has a tendency to get out in front rather than sitting back to drive pitches to the pull field, but there’s time to work on it. He did produce a lot of ground balls and precious little hard contact in the air in Lakeland. Still, his size and his history say there’s a chance to develop average power, particularly if he can start driving the ball in the air more. He’s not a burner, but he has above average speed as well. Put those tools together with a history of making a lot of hard contact and pretty good zone discipline, and there’s a ton to like considering the price the Tigers paid to draft him.
We’ll just have to see how he handles a better, more consistent brand of breaking stuff and offspeed this season. A good goal would be for Dumesnil to hit his way to West Michigan by this summer and hold his own there.