On Sunday night in Kansas City, Detroit Tigers infielder and longtime farm hand Gage Workman, launched a two-run homer in his first major league at-bat with the Tigers. He’s already contributed, but whether he can continue to help the Tigers is a pretty big question mark. For years, Workman has been a talented minor league player whose weaknesses at the plate were too exploitable by upper level pitching. He’s still only 26 years old and the Tigers could certainly use an injection of power and better defense. Workman may be able to provide that in Kerry Carpenter’s stead, at least in the short term.
Gage Tater Workman played with Spencer Torkelson at Arizona State and was the guy who bumped Tork from third base over to first base, his more natural position. The Tigers drafted Workman in the fourth round in the shortened 2020 draft, the same year Torkelson went first overall. In our early prospect coverage after the draft, we preached patience with Workman, as he was both a little young for his draft class and pretty raw as a switch-hitter with power but plenty of swing and miss in his game. But at the same time, he had speed, defensive ability, a pretty good idea of the strike zone, and power. He was a high risk, high reward prospect from the beginning.
Workman struck out 30.6 percent of the time in A-ball in 2021, and there aren’t many college hitters who start out with that many strikeouts and go on to significant major league success. On the other hand, he cracked 12 home runs and stole 31 bases as a strong-armed shortstop. The biggest issue for him was a right-handed swing that just wasn’t getting it done. For a couple of seasons, the Tigers worked with him on it, but eventually were able to convince him to abandon switch-hitting in 2024.
By then, he was also starting to transition to playing third base in the upper minors while still sidelining at shortstop and sometimes in the outfield. Even in 2026 with the Toledo Mud Hens, Workman has started 15 games at shortstop, though that’s partly due to Trei Cruz getting injured early on. He can handle the position decently well, but has always been a little mistake prone making more subtle plays around second base. Third base allows him to pick balls and let his arm eat, and that’s really where he’s best suited. He also has enough speed to play anywhere in the outfield. He just doesn’t have as much experience with it.
Workman reached Double-A in 2022, but he struck out 40 percent of the time with the Erie SeaWolves. 206 strikeouts in 515 plate appearances is a wild amount of strikeouts, and there probably aren’t too many successful major league hitters who ever struck out 200 times in a minor league season. Things went no better in a little extra work in the Arizona Fall League that October. He struck out 38.8 percent of the time with Erie in 2023, and by that point prospect watchers were cutting bait on him.
Workman’s transition to hitting left-handed full-time really helped him. His cut his strikeout rate with Erie to 27.5 percent hitting only left-handed in 2024, and he hit 18 homers and stole 30 bags along the way. That was progress in terms of trimming the strikeouts, and to his credit, Workman has always drawn his share of walks. He wasn’t doing any better against left-handed pitching than he had when he switch-hit, and he still was highly vulnerable to good breaking stuff, but he was hammering right-handers with much better consistency. There was, and is, still a lot of swing and miss, but those improvements finally got him within striking distance of the major leagues.
At that point, with the 2024 Double-A season behind him, Workman turning 25 years old, and he was exposed to the Rule 5 draft. The Tigers elected not to protect him or catching prospect Liam Hicks, and it was suspected that Workman might well be picked up by another team. That team was the Chicago Cubs, and they took Workman on their Opening Day roster last year. The Miami Marlins took Hicks, and that has gone much better for them.
It was a short struggle for Workman in his few weeks on the north side, and he was quickly designated for assignment and then traded to the Chicago White Sox. That didn’t go very well either, and when he suffered a minor hip injury, the White Sox designated him as well, and he returned to the Tigers in May of 2025. All tolled, he only got 17 major league plate appearances combined between the Chicago clubs. He’d made his major league debut, but otherwise wasn’t in any better position than he started, and didn’t get much of a chance either. Things didn’t improve with the Tigers, as Workman struck out nearly 40 percent of the time with the Toledo Mud Hens over the rest of the season.
All of this is to say, don’t go getting too excited just yet. Workman has power, zone recognition, speed, and pretty good defensive ability at third base. There’s plenty to like, but he’s always been really poor against breaking stuff and will strike out quite a bit. Workman isn’t an unknown around the league. He has huge potential, because if he could hit even decently against right-handed pitching, you’d have a pretty valuable strong-side platoon player who does a lot of things to help you win in all phases of the game. If there was real confidence league wide that he’d figure it out at the plate, the Tigers may never have gotten him back.
There is one key sign to watch this spring that might indicate that Workman is starting to find his way against upper level pitching. Workman batted a grisly .146 against breaking stuff in his combined time at the Triple-A level last year, with a horrendous whiff rate of 49.6 percent. Every once in a while he’d run into a hanger, but for the most part pitchers who could command a breaking ball could get ahead and then spam breaking balls down without throwing another strike and pretty easily get Workman out.
Against fastballs he was still quite good. Against offspeed stuff he was at least okay. But breaking balls, and not even good quality ones, were his kryponite, and most prospects who flame out against upper level breaking stuff never break through.
However, the worm turned a bit this spring. He’s still whiffed at breaking pitches 41.3 percent of the time in Toledo this season, so he hasn’t suddenly turned into a low risk contact hitter. But, he also hit .324 against breaking balls over the first five weeks of the Triple-A season, with a whopping .265 isolated power mark. His expected batting average is just .240 and his expected slugging percentage is just .408 compared to actual results of .588 slug, so he’s certainly had plenty of good fortune, but he is also clearly doing better at avoiding chasing so much, and hammering some mistakes up in the zone.
Overall, he’s cut his strikeout rate down to 23.7 percent in Toledo this spring, so while that’s not the kind of sample you want to bet the house on, he’s never put up numbers this good either. Possibly, he’s figured it out just enough that he’s no longer easy prey for breaking stuff, and if he can at least keep pitchers honest and not chase sliders and curveballs in the dirt constantly, they’ll have to feed him more fastballs and try to spot some sliders and curveballs in the zone. Workman is a solid fastball hitter who will do some damage and always has been. It’s partly a question of patience, partly a matter of breaking ball recognition.
So, expect plenty of swing and miss from Gage Workman, and know that this may just be a case of catching a hot hitter and riding him until major league pitching figures him out. It’s at least possible that some growth last year may have been masked by the chaos of getting picked by the Cubs, making his major league debut, struggling, bouncing through the White Sox organization briefly, rehabbing a minor injury, and then ending up right back in Toledo after a whirlwind ride to the places with the tall buildings, as Jim Price would say. He still did plenty of damage against right-handed pitching, and he’s a versatile defender who can steal you a base.
Gage Workman doesn’t have to become a good pure hitter to help the Tigers. He just has to avoid slipping back into old bad habits that made him an easy mark for upper level pitchers with good command of their breaking stuff. If he’s just disciplined enough to get pitchers up in the zone, Workman might do enough damage to let his secondary skills play up and find a sustainable role in Detroit. For now, any contributions are much appreciated.
