Generally speaking, the best prep baseball players in the country are selected in the first and second rounds of the major league draft. Other top talents who haven’t quite earned that kind of investment from teams typically head to college in the hopes of improving their draft stock. So it was notable when the Detroit Tigers selected prep outfielder Kingston Liniak with the first pick in the fourth round of the 2018 amateur draft.
While Liniak was too raw for teams to risk a pick in the first few rounds, his blend of youth, athleticism, and power potential made him an attractive option the Tigers couldn’t pass up.