When the Detroit Tigers traded left-handed reliever Andrew Chafin to the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline in 2024, it was never likely to be an impactful deal. The Tigers got sidearmer Chase Lee in the deal, but it was the second piece, right-handed starter Joseph Montalvo, who was expected to be the modest centerpiece. Unfortunately, another injury plagued season for a Tigers pitcher made 2025 a lost season for him.<\/p>\n
The Rangers drafted the Puerto Rican product back in 2021 out of Central Pointe Christian Academy in Kissimee, Florida. Montalvo had moved to Florida for high school with the ambition to pitch, and he was willing to take the minimum bonus to forego college and start a pro career as a 20th round pick.<\/p>\n
At the time of the trade, Montalvo was injured with a torn ligament in his foot, which may have helped the Tigers pry him away from the Rangers for a two months of a solid reliever. Prior to that injury, Montalvo was on a great run in his first look at the High-A level. A distinct fly ball pitcher, he was racking up tons of quick outs in the air and striking out 29.9 percent of hitters faced. His stuff wasn\u2019t overpowering, but he was mature in his ability to vary his approach and spot his fastball and slider.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the hoped for bump in his stuff didn\u2019t come to frution as Montalvo moved up to the Double-A level in 2025. His reesults were really mixed from one start to another and his strikeout rate plunged. That isn\u2019t too unusual as a young pitcher adapts to the upper levels, but he didn\u2019t show much improvement over his 2024 work early on. Finally in late May and early June, Montalvo seemed to be settling in, but after ripping off several good starts in a row he suffered an unspecified arm injury in early June that ended his season.<\/p>\n
About the only thing we can say is that it didn\u2019t appear to bea major surgery involved as the Tigers often announce those, but don\u2019t provide any details about injuries otherwise. However, Montalvo did post one picture on social media showing a full arm brace on his extended right arm in September, three months after the initial injury. So we can at least assume it was a significant injury. This makes it difficult to project him in 2026. Is he going to start the season on time? We\u2019ll assume so since it apparently wasn\u2019t a UCL surgery, but his status remains a little bit up in the air.<\/p>\n
Montalvo has the size at 6\u20192\u201d 185 pounds to develop more velocity, and his flexibility and athleticism say that may come with a little more time, but the injury short-circuited progress in that regard last year. One of his key selling points when the Tigers traded for him was his ability to command three pitches, but he still needed a bump in terms of his stuff to carry him into the upper levels of the farm system as a legitimate starting pitching prospect.<\/p>\n
Montalvo\u2019s athleticism helped him command everything despite a lot of subtle variants in his approach. He gets down the mound pretty well and smoothly works into a low three-quarters release that seems to throw hitters off a bit. He also has pretty good feel for varying his angles and shapes to suit the hitter. He would jam left-handers with more of a true riding fourseamer to his gloveside, and then shift to get a better angle to his armside and throw the same fourseamer with more run. In short, he has quite a bit of what scouts will sum up as pitchability.<\/p>\n
Montalvo is often able to get a lot of weak fly balls, pop-ups, and some whiffs just by never letting a hitter see anything quite the same way twice. On the other hand, without overpowering stuff, his mistakes get hit over the fences a fair amount and he\u2019s had some bouts of giving up homers in bunches. So instead of hoping a harder throwing pitcher develops some command, the upside with Montalvo is that a little boost in stuff will take advantage of his pitching ability and get him to the majors in relatively short order.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a look from after the trade in 2024.<\/p>\n
He backs the fourseamer with an above average sweeping slider at 83 mph and a decent circle change that is still a little firm but does run a good amount. At his best with the Rangers, his ability to spot both of those pitches consistently helped them play up and made him a pretty decent starting pitching prospect. The hope was that he\u2019d add a little more strength to his lanky frame and get to sitting more consistently in the mid-90\u2019s. As things stand he\u2019s usually around 93 mph, and with the Tigers he\u2019s had some off days where the velo is down a little bit. Steadier mid-90\u2019s velocity anda minor breakthrough with his changeup are the keys for him going forward.<\/p>\n
The lack of progress since he was acquired, combined with the recent injury history, have the risk meter pretty high on Montalvo now. At his best he shows a lot of nice feel for pitching and can move his stuff around the zone, set hitters up, and get them off balance. He needs to stay healthy and develop a little boost in the stuff department. Hopefully he\u2019s able to take advantage of the rehabilitation process and the offseason to get stronger. If he\u2019s able to start getting traction in Double-A this spring he\u2019ll move right back up the rankings by midseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Detroit Tigers traded left-handed reliever Andrew Chafin to the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,38501,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-526568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-prospects-minor-leagues","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115917214468107364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}