We’re pretty excited about Lucas Elissalt. Right now he doesn’t really have the stuff of a frontline starter, but there are a lot of traits that point toward a very advanced young pitcher who repeats everything well with good command. As we keep noting in these reports, the Tigers have had a lot of success plucking undervalued college and JUCO pitchers beyond the top few rounds of the draft. In Elissalt they may have landed a real steal.
The Miami native wasn’t a very notable college name in the hotbed of competition that is the Florida baseball scene. He went to Coastal Alabama JC as a freshman, and transferred as a sophomore to one of the top JUCO baseball programs in the country at Chipola College. A good season got the Tigers’ interest, and they snapped him up in the 13th round with seemingly no one else paying attention to the young right-hander. They only had to pay him $187,500 to sign, just a little over the minimum, though there were D1 programs interested in picking him up for his junior season. As a result, Elissalt was still a week shy of his 20th birthday when he signed with the Tigers.
The traits that made Elissalt intriguing to the Tigers were his cutting fourseam shape, extension, and advanced command. The lanky 6’4” right-hander gets way down the mound, producing nearly seven feet of extension. That low angle to the strike zone helps his riding fourseamer play up, and yet he’s able to repeat well and spot a deep pitch mix that includes a kick change the Tigers taught him in 2024 during his work in Lakeland after the draft.
The reason Elissalt didn’t attract much attention on draft day is the fact that his velocity sits in the low-90’s. The Tigers bet that he had plenty of room on his frame to build muscle without sacrificing that easy delivery and great extension. His brother, Frank Elissalt, was drafted in the 2024 draft by the Cardinals in the 19th round as a college junior, and had a similar build and low 90’s fastball on draft day. He has since built himself up to throw in the mid-90’s, touching as high as 98 mph and so the hope is that Lucas, who is about a year and a half younger, will follow that example.
The Tigers sent Elissalt to Single-A Lakeland last spring to begin his pro career, and he quickly opened a lot of eyes after going fairly unnoticed on draft day. As a JUCO pick and still younger than most college pitchers in his draft, he struck out 28.8 percent of hitters faced over 65 1/3 innings for the Flying Tigers, with a walk rate of 7.5 percent. The strikeouts, advanced control, and his 2.48 ERA/3.09 FIP combination got our attention, and the Tigers promoted him to West Michigan in August after the trade deadline. He made six starts there, and though he walked a bunch of hitters for the first time in a couple of those starts, his strikeout rate held up and he didn’t allow a home run, producing very similar ERA/FIP numbers. By season’s end, he had the highest strikeout rate of any Tigers prospect who worked full-time as a starter last year.
Elissalt doesn’t pop crazy IVB numbers, sitting at 17 inches of vertical break last year, but that can be improved somewhat. It also matters less because that huge stride and his arm angle produce a lower release point and a really good attack angle to the upper parts of the strike zone. He was still generally around 92 mph, touching as high as 94 mph, and if that velocity starts to tick up, the late cutting action, ride, and extension will produce a very good major league heater.
He backs the fourseamer with a pretty good slider after ditching the harder cutter he had in college. It’s a pretty classic gyro spin slider from 83-85 mph and Elissalt took to it quickly and was pretty consistent with the break and location all year. His best pitch is an above average curveball with really good depth in the 78-79 mph range that got whiffs and stole strikes for him consistently last year. He can tilt it away on the outer edge against right-handers and showed some feel for adding depth when hunting for chase swings. Like the fastball, the breaking balls could use a touch more velocity to help them bite a bit later. The Tigers helped him develop a kick changeup post-draft and that pitch has really good deception, though it too would benefit if the fastball was firmer.
The big selling points for Elissalt are his extension, smooth, easy delivery, and advanced command of a pretty deep pitch mix. He’s already got a year of pro ball under his belt and handled two A-ball levels pretty well despite being the age of most 2025 college draft picks. He shows a good understanding of how to work his fastball around the zone and set hitters up for his secondaries, and took to some minor mechanical adjustments the Tigers made with him after the draft pretty quickly, while also refining the new changeup nicely over the course of the 2025 season.
Right now, if Elissalt had a couple more ticks on his heater consistently, he’d already look like a upper level starter closing in on the big leagues. As things stand, he does need that bump in stuff to take him from a future depth starter into more of a future mid-rotation type with the potential for more. While his delivery is smoother and lower effort than his older brother, Elissalt knows he needs that velocity bump and trained for it this offseason. We’ll be looking for that to arrive, with some positive reports in camp already indicating that he’s been throwing harder this spring. The feel and adaptability he’s shown bodes well for a major league career in a starting rotation. He should start the season with the Whitecaps again, but we expect him to move to Double-A pretty quickly if things go well.
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