The next Detroit Tigers’ prospect on the list stands out for several reasons. Six-foot-eight reliever RJ Petit is a truly large man, and while he has the usual work to do to refine his command, the ironically named right-hander isn’t too far from being in a position to help the Tigers sometime this summer.
The Tigers drafted Petit out of Charleston Southern back in 2021 with their 14th round pick. The South Carolina product was always going to be a longer-term project. Outsized players, particularly pitchers, typically take a long time to get their long limbs synced up. While his power sinker, steep angle, and strike throwing made him an effective reliever from the start, he struggled to refine his secondary stuff early on and was prone to hanging some breaking balls. Still, when he didn’t make the big mistake A-ball hitters had a tough time against him in his full season debut in 2022, and the strikeouts piled up rapidly.
The jump to Double-A Erie in 2023 was much more of a struggle. A better class of hitter struggled less with his sinker, and while they still couldn’t do much damage against it, Petit’s strikeout rate dropped off a good deal. Top hitters could battle him into making big mistakes up in the zone with his breaking ball. He was pounding the strike zone well, and still not surrendering too much hard contact in the air, but hitters sprayed a lot more line drives than they did in A-ball. Hopes for a little more velocity didn’t really come to pass, and he slipped off the radar somewhat by the end of the season.
Finally in 2024, Petit’s age 24 season, things started to come together. His massive, 300 pound build was even more solid after his offseason work, and the velocity gains the Tigers hoped for started to show as the year progressed. He was also getting much more consistent movement and location from his slider. That was the biggest development for him as it really became a major league quality weapon on a pretty consistent basis. He had a few bouts during the season in which he gave out more free passes than normal, but his strikeout rate spiked from 20.4 percent at Double-A in 2023, to 31.1 percent last year, and the home runs disappeared almost entirely.
Petit gave up just two long balls all season over 58 2⁄3 innings while pitching in a fairly hitter friendly run environment in the Eastern League. He struck out 76 hitters to 27 walks, and he also got back to racking up a 50 percent ground ball rate. He seemed to run out of gas in September, which hurt his numbers a bit, but so far Petit has been a workhorse as a reliever over three years in the minor leagues. Work remains to turn him into a major league reliever, but the progress was really encouraging. Now we’ll see if he can take the next step and pull it together at the Triple-A level this season.
RJ Petit 2023-2024
| Season |
IP |
ERA |
K% |
BB% |
HR/9 |
FIP |
| Season |
IP |
ERA |
K% |
BB% |
HR/9 |
FIP |
| 2023 (AA) |
51.2 |
3.83 |
20.4 |
7.2 |
1.05 |
4.20 |
| 2024 (AA) |
58.2 |
3.68 |
31.1 |
11.1 |
0.31 |
2.87 |
Despite his size, Petit has a balanced, clean delivery and rarely gets too out of sync. Despite his size, he has a pretty compact arm path, releasing the ball from a high three-quarters angle, and his smooth delivery and easy armspeed give him a little deception.
Petit’s average fastball has ticked up closer to 94 mph over the past year, but he’s always had the ability to reach back for more. The difference was that as the 2024 season progressed, Petit more often reached back for 95-97 mph heaters and mixed in some better high fastballs as a change of pace. He looks like he has that upper range whenever he wants it, but the sinker is perhaps less effective when he starts forcing it.
Petit’s towering frame and arm slot give him a tough angle to the bottom of the zone with his sinker, and while that’s not the hotness, things may be trending back the other way somewhat. The game has come to emphasize riding fastballs and hot tailing twoseamers over the last decade, and that isn’t going to change. The pitchers with super high spin, high IVB stuff get snatched up early in the draft, but there are still plenty of other ways to get guys out. Petit can add and subtract some run, but it’s a true bowling ball style sinker with late tail and few minor league hitters have been able to do much with it when he’s locating it well.
There are plenty of good pitchers around that are better down in the zone, and the Tigers seem more interested and equipped to get the best out of a pitcher like Petit. Their emphasis on catcher framing at the bottom of the zone has been notable the past few years. The Tigers helped Jake Rogers and Carson Kelly to produce more strike calls down, and the organizational move to catching with one knee down is part of that effort. Petit fits right in, and while he’s unlikely to be a real strikeout artist at the major league level, he’s got the stuff already to take advantage of a major league caliber defense.
The big development for Petit last season was far greater consistency with his 83 mph slider. The pitch functions like a true power curveball with a lot of depth and 12-6 break. AT his best he can throw it a little harder and really snap it off in the mid-80’s, when it becomes a legitimate plus pitch. He’ll get more tilt on it to his gloveside, and can back foot lefties with it, but it’s the consistent depth and consistent command he showed last season that made it such a tough pitch for hitters last year.
Petit not only gets a good amount of whiffs on the slider, he can also lean into throwing sliders for strikes to both sides of the plate and pitch backwards with good effectiveness. In multiple outings where he couldn’t quite nail the edges with his sinker, he was able to spam the slider with good command and remain pretty effective. That new dimension to his game, along with the modest velocity increase, brought renewed interest after Petit slipped off the back of most prospect lists in 2023-2024.
The pitch that hasn’t really come along that much is Petit’s changeup. It remains a little inconsistent. He can mix it in to lefties and get some whiffs down and away, and his smooth delivery combined with good armspeed sells it well. It feels like it needs some tweaking to be so useful against the best hitters in the game.
Based on Petit’s stuff, you’d kind of like to see him try a cutter. The slider is a north-south pitch with a lot of depth that it doesn’t really function like a traditional power slider. A harder breaking ball that moved horizontally in opposition to the sinker would be a nice addition to his game. The Tigers are teaching everyone and their brother a split-change these days, and a solid one would play really well off the sinker. Still, the fastball and slider are good enough for him to pitch high leverage innings if he can sharpen his fastball command a little more.
2025 Outlook
When he’s on, Petit’s stuff is enough to get him to the big leagues already. It’s just a question of him refining his command a little more. He would also benefit from letting it loose and throwing his max stuff more consistently. He’s shown the ability to ramp it up, and he has the size, the easy delivery, and the durability to think he might make that happen this season.
You can squint and see a future version of RJ Petit who commands 95-97 mph with a nasty power sinker and a firmer mid-80’s slider with the shape of a straight knuckle curve. That gives him the potential to be a fairly dangerous high leverage reliever.
The more realistic hope is that he just spots his fastball more consistently and is an effective middle reliever of a type that fits the Tigers preferences. Petit has pretty even splits, he’s been durable and can go more than an inning at a time, and he generally puts his defense to work without giving up too much damage. The Tigers seem stacked with pitching right now, but if Petit is at his best a little more consistently this year, he might get a chance to show what he can do.
