The month of July will mark right-handed reliever Tanner Kohlhepp’s fourth year as a professional. Most fans of the Detroit Tigers don’t know his name, yet he’s one of those pitchers with such outlier stuff that if he finally overcomes the injuries and inconsistency to just a modest degree, he could be a household name very swiftly. That makes him interesting, even as something of a longshot at this point.
The Tigers selected Kohlhepp with the third pick in the fifth round of the 2021 amateur draft out of Notre Dame. He received the standard slot bonus, and from the beginning it was easy to see why the Tigers were so high on a college reliever.