Warwick profiles as a future minor league utilityman but is young enough to have a fair amount of upside.
One of the side notes to the Detroit Tigers prep heavy draft strategy under Scott Harris has been saving money elsewhere in the draft in order to go over slot to various prep pitchers they like each year. They’ve accomplished this by taking less heralded college players that they can get for minimum or close to minimum bonuses. Many of those college players have been speedy, light-hitting up the middle types who don’t draw a lot of attention from teams looking to hit home runs in the draft.
Players of that ilk might grow into a little more power while maintaining the ability to handle second base, shortstop, or center field. Eventually, one might be useful utility types at the major league level, with the chance that someone really breaks through as a hitter. Our 49th ranked prospect, Jude Warwick, fits that college middle infielder profile, yet the Tigers’ offered the Downers Grove North HS grad $247,500, roughly $100K over the minimum, and that convinced Warwick to pass on his commitment to Michigan State and sign as the Tigers 12th rounder in the 2024 draft.
Warwick is a left-handed hitter with some speed, and in his 2025 pro debut he displayed enough defensive ability at both second base and shortstop to think that he has the range to play either position, though his arm doesn’t stand out at shortstop. For a 19-year-old, Warwick also showed a pretty solid eye at the plate in the Complex League and made plenty of good contact.
The issue is that he’s a pretty lanky 6’1” and 170 pounds, and doesn’t have that much in the way of even gap power at this point. So the big question is how much stronger Warwick will get, and whether he can convert that into enough batspeed to handle good pro pitching and eventually the major leagues. The fact that he’s still just 20 years old bodes well for him getting stronger. Then we’ll still if he can translate it into better batspeed as he advances.
Warwick certainly has the traits of a pesky future utility infielder. He’s a pretty heads up baserunner who will take the extra base and shows signs of becoming a good base stealer. He’s not exactly a burner on the basepaths, but if he can hold his current above average speed he should be a proficient base stealing threat.
The 2025 season got off to a nice start in the Complex League last summer.Warwick walked 13.5 percent of the time with a strikeout rate of just 15.6 percent. He peppered the field with solid contact and in 47 games hit three home runs and stole 22 bases. He was able to slash the ball the opposite way and still pull the ball a lot in the air for a few homers and some extra base hits.
Things were a lot tougher for Warwick once he was promoted up to Single-A Lakeland toward the end of July. Facing a little more consistent velocity and control, he was pretty well overpowered there in his 21 game look at the level. He struck out 33.7 percent of the time, while his walk rate dropped to 3.5 percent and he put the ball on the ground a lot more. If he’d continued to hit the fastball while struggling with a better class of secondary pitches I’d probably be more optimistic, but instead he posted a .231 wOBA and a 28.6 percent whiff rate against fastballs there.
It was a very small sample, and doesn’t say much about his future success at that level. Possibly he was just running out of gas late in the year while facing a big jump in competition. It just cooled some of the optimism that had built around his Complex League performance, and left him in basically the same position he started at year’s end.
It’s a little easier to dream on a player like this when they’re 19-20 years old, as opposed to similarly light-hitting middle infielders coming out of college at age 21-22 without much of a pedigree. Warwick at least has a fair amount of physical projection available. It’s easier to be patient with him early on as he’s seeing a lot better pitching than he was accustomed to in high school. You can flip a coin with players of this skillset. Maybe he fills out and breaks out into a quality role player, or maybe he’s a scrappy infielder in the organization for a while but never impacts a major league roster.
Warwick doesn’t have to develop 20 home run power to potentially be a useful major league bench player in time. There’s no huge rush on him either as he won’t turn 21 until September. If he settles in with the Flying Tigers and hits his way to West Michigan with a little more power developing, that would be a very nice 2026 campaign for him.
Category: General Sports
