10 months ago
Bryce Rainer is learning in all ways Tigers life and a rookie’s realities
Given what he experienced six pitches into his first official professional baseball game, Bryce Rainer’s early spring for the Single A Lakeland Flying Tigers has been all the more imposing.
He was batting in Lakeland’s opener, April 4, against the Yankees’ low-A team, the Tampa Tarpons, at the Yankees' Complex Field 2 in Tampa.
On the mound was a left-handed starter named Griffin Herring, who a year ago was pitching for Louisiana State. At bat was a 20-year-old shortstop who last July was the Tigers’ first-round choice and 10th overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft.
Bryce Rainer’s first 10 professional games:
.226/.381/.484 (.192 BABIP)
2HR, 2 2B, 2SB - 19.0 BB%, 11.9 K%
You can see every ball he has put into play (with EV) below. pic.twitter.com/m8DxuXJhYF— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) April 28, 2025
Rainer worked Herring to a 3-2 count.
Herring followed with a fastball that smashed into Rainer’s batting helmet.
He was done that day and missed a handful of games as concussion protocol followed.
And then Rainer got busy being Rainer.
In eight games from April 23 through Saturday, he was 9-for-27, with what seemed to be a jet-engine contrail of 100-mph-plus exit velocities that ripped from his left-handed bat.
Through those same eight games he had seven walks to match seven strikeouts. He had two home runs and three doubles.
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It should be noted, also, the trauma from Herring’s beaning didn’t lead to any bail-outs against left-handed pitchers. In eight plate-appearances against lefties after April 4, Rainer had two hits, two walks, and zero strikeouts.
“He’s a player, man – a ballplayer,” Rene Rivera, who manages Lakeland, said during a Sunday phone interview. “And that’s the beauty of this league. Here’s a young player who until this year hadn’t played a game of pro baseball, showing his potential and his desire to be better every day.”
How does Rainer assess all this first-year drama?
Carefully, for sure.
The Tigers prefer that their young players stick to a marvelously altruistic script during media interviews. And they would be delighted to know Rainer was a veritable Boy Scout during a Saturday chat.
“I think the coaches and staff have done a great job,” Rainer said when asked how he had sized-up his first month of professional games that count.
Rainer said, “I can’t really go into specific detail” about what he has been doing during at-bats or what might have changed mechanically in the 10 months since he was drafted out of Harvard-Westlake High, in Studio City, California, which also happens to be the school at which Tigers pitcher Jack Flaherty and one-time Tigers outfielder Brennan Boesch also played.
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He revealed, under heavy questioning, that the most gratifying part of his first professional spring “is mainly being around older guys and watching how they play – how they conduct themselves.”
That, he said, was “the coolest thing,” along with what he considers to be the most specific benefit from his hitting seminars under the Tigers development team:
“It starts with the hitters’ meetings in the morning,” he said, avoiding steadfastly any further insight. “We have great hitting coaches.”
As for what he believes he has learned, offensively or defensively, that might have most affected him since he left high school for life at Lakeland?
“I really don’t know,” Rainer answered, staying faithful to Tigers interview coaching that might match any schooling he’s received on the field. “I kind of move day to day. Really, my favorite part is watching my teammates hit.”
Ah, but last summer, just a few weeks into his TigerTown initiation on Lakeland’s back fields, Rainer did concede there was a quick lesson in sharpening his infield defense:
Coaches were working to keep him lower as he fielded balls ahead of throws. And those throws, then and now, are rather something from a man with a fastball in the upper 90s who had shown at Harvard-Westlake that he almost was as hot a draft prospect as a pitcher.
Had there been anything in the months since that represents new knowledge, different techniques, or refined tactics he might have been expected to absorb in these early months?
Rainer could have been injected with two pints of truth serum.
No go.
“I’m going to give all the credit to my infield coaches,” he testified. “They’ve been great. The one thing each game on my to-do list is to make as many outs as I can for my pitchers.”
Gold star coming from your bosses, bro, after this debriefing.
Rivera, of course, knows what’s going on. It is why he is skippering a low-A Tigers farm team. This is a baptism, this first long and hot (Florida State League), body-sapping, mind-jamming, exposure to baseball and its daily demons.
What makes it all worthwhile, of course, for a manager, for a player, and for a development staff, is when a talent on Rainer’s level shows such sensational early aptitude.
Rainer might be zipping his lip, but Rivera can level on what he’s seeing.
“He’s a really, really good baseball player,” said Rivera, who worked 13 seasons as a big-league catcher. “He often is making everything look easy, and not only on routine plays. We know there’s some balls (grounders) that can be challenging.
“But he makes even the challenges look good. A special kid there. We know we have to work hard to get him better every single day. But his range is impressive. The kid is really fast. He takes a good first step, and he gets to the ball.
"His positioning, I would say, can sometimes be a little bit off. But we all know his arm is powerful. And it really is.”
Rainer was considered a potential Tigers steal when he stuck around, through those nervous early turns, and was unclaimed as Detroit got busy with pick No. 10 in last July’s draft.
A year later he looks every bit to be the prize the Tigers, perhaps even more than had been appreciated by national appraisers, sensed they were grabbing.
Of course, that’s for them to say.
Rainer? He’ll resist any introspection.
Not happening, Mr. Interviewer.
You’re chasing outside the strike zone.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit news sports reporter.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Bryce Rainer is learning in all ways Tigers life and a rookie’s realities
Bryce Rainer is learning in all ways Tigers life and a rookie’s realities #BryceRainer #BaseballLife #DetroitTigers
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